SAP users fail to exploit systems

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New research released today reinforces comments made by SAP UK managing director last year that users are failing to exploit the full potential of the vendor's enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

Among 13 different industry sectors represented in the report written by SAP consultancy West Trax, many companies are using less than half of the standard SAP code they pay for.

This finding echoed the call from Steve Rogers, SAP UK managing director for customers to use their SAP assets more effectively at last November SAP UK & Ireland User Group Conference in Birmingham.

"I find it frustrating that the majority of you only seem to be using a modest slice of the software you have acquired," Rogers told delegates.

The also report found that in business areas where some SAP standard transactions had been used, a very high proportion of the available standard functionality remained unused.

West Trax added that users paid licence and maintenance fees for this software yet failed to exploit the potential to convert these costs into business value and that they were missing a trick in not optimising a system based on current usage to significantly reduce workload and costs.

The study also found that users' reluctance to upgrade may come from the high levels of customisation in the current versions they are running and the perceived high costs associated with maintaining those customisations in later versions.

Between 20 and 40 per cent of the SAP transactions in analysed systems used were customised, incurring significant development and support costs in addition to SAP's licence and maintenance fees. The study also showed that in many systems much of the custom code was seldom or never used.

"Supporting this redundant code generates significant overhead in terms of maintenance costs, hardware requirements, time and skills," said the consultancy. "It also extends risks, costs and workload for projects such as upgrades, consolidation, virtualisation and outsourcing."

It advised SAP-using IT directors to establish a baseline of current system usage and optimisation levels as an essential pre-requisite for optimising their systems and maximising their return on investment.

The report arrived at its findings by analysing data from 269 benchmarks in 13 different industry sectors, examining the actual usage of SAP systems using West Trax's proprietary key performance indicator (KPI) scan methodology.

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