History of SAP
The product of five ex-IBM employees, SAP started in 1972 as a small software company in Germany with just one customer. The company's name stands for Systems, Applications & Products. Its founders had a vision of producing software that could process data when a user wanted it, rather than in overnight batches as earlier software did. Their first product was a modification of IBM's punch-card data storage, which stored data mechanically and required overnight processing. For their client, the German branch of Imperial Chemical Industries, SAP developed a real-time payroll and punch-card system in 1972.
Accounting:
Finance (FI)
Investment Management (IM)
Project Systems (PS)
Controlling (CO)
Enterprise Controlling (EC)
Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM)
Logistics:
Material Management (MM)
Sales and Distribution (SD)
Logistics Execution (LO)
Warehouse Management (WM)
Plant Maintenance (PM)
Customer Service (CS)
Fleet Management (FM)
Quality Management (QM)
Production planning (PP)
Environment, Health, and Safety (EH&S)
Human Resources:
Organization Management (HR-OM)
Personnel Management (HR-PM)
Personnel Administration (HR-PA)
Personnel Development (HR-PD)
Personal Time Management (HR-PT)
Payroll (HR-PY)
Training and Event Management (HR-TE)
Learning Solutions (HR-LSO)
Compensation (HR-CM)
Enterprise Compensation (HR-ECM)
Benefits (HR-BN)
Recruitment (HR-PB)
Loan (HR-LN)
Advance Business Application Programming (HR-ABAP)
Technology:
Cross-Application (CA), includes classification systems and workflow
Basic Components (BC or BASIS)
Programming (ABAP)
Security and Authorizations
Other Modules (requiring separate installation):
Business Warehouse (BW)
Business Intelligence (BI)
Knowledge Warehouse (KW)
International Demonstration and Education System (IDES)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Master Data Management (MDM)
Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)
Exchange Infrastructure (XI)
Process Integration (PI)
Global Trade Services (GTS)
Strategic Enterprise Management (SEM)
Business Consolidation and Sourcing (BCS)
Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC)
Corporate Finance Management (CFM)
Finance (FI), Controlling (CO), Sales & Distribution (SD), Material Management (MM) and Human resources (HR) are some of the most important sub modules in SAP. Depending upon the organization needs, a client can buy whatever modules needed. For example, a client can buy FI, SD and MM modules only without buying CO and HR modules.
