The Fast-Payback SAP Projects for Saving Money in 2009: Detailed Data for Business Expense Projects.

June 2009
The Fast-Payback SAP Projects for Saving Money in 2009:
Detailed Data for Business Expense Projects
by Derek Prior
Companies can squeeze further business benefits from their existing SAP ERP and supply chain systems in order to save money at a time when it's desperately needed. This Report, which summarizes detailed data from a field study conducted exclusively for AMR Research SAP Peer Forum clients, was written to help business audiences looking for every opportu-
nity to reduce the total business expenses of their huge, existing investments in SAP.
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June 2009
The Fast-Payback SAP Projects for Saving Money in
2009: Detailed Data for Business Expense Projectsby Derek Prior
The Bottom Line: Enterprises that revisit the business process areas in this Report will have improvement opportunities to reduce overall expenses by instigating a fast-payback project to exploit their huge investments in SAP.
Enterprises are under huge pressure to cut all SAP- The fast-payback lowdown: related costs. This Report was written to help business Results from our field studyaudiences looking for every opportunity to exploit their huge, existing investments in SAP to help reduce their The highest-potential areas for business total business expenses. It summarizes the detailed data expense reduction opportunitiesgenerated from an online survey of 18 respondents in a field study conducted exclusively for AMR Research Respondents were asked to rate the potential of a pre-SAP Peer Forum clients. defined list of business process areas to generate a fast payback for a moderate, overall project expenditure. This confidential cost-savings survey was split into two This potential was expressed through a score of 1 to 5, halves: where 1 is the lowest potential and 5 the highest. Table . Fast-payback projects for business expense reduc- 1 shows the results.tion for a business audience The business process areas in Table 1 have been ranked . Fast-payback projects for SAP operations cost by highest average score (first column) for potential fast reduction for a technical audience payback. For some respondents, particular business pro-We'll present data for the former half, where there cess areas have a higher impact, so those with the high-appears to be considerable potential to squeeze further est score (4 or 5) are shown for additional information cost savings by exploiting SAP investments, especially (second column). This shows that business intelligence in classic ERP and supply chain business process areas. (BI) and manufacturing have a higher impact, with Findings and best practices rising from this data were some companies currently engaged in related projects.identified in the SAP Forum Summit Sessions held on Overall, these are relatively high scores, indicating the April 14, 2009, in Palo Alto, CA and April 28, 2009, respondents believe there's high potential still to reduce in Walldorf, Germany. business expenses, especially in the upper half of the table.
SAP Peer Forum | June 2009 ©2009 AMR Research, Inc. 1Table 1: The highest potential SAP business process savingsAverage Percentage of Score/Rank Score of 4 or 5 SAP Business Process Cost Savings Category1 58.8 Purchasing1 47.1 Supply chain3 47.1 Inventory management4 35.3 Financials-working capital5 35.3 Order fulfillment6 41.2 Business intelligence 7 29.4 Warehouse management7 29.4 Master data management9 29.4 Financials-operating expense10 35.3 Manufacturing11 29.4 Quality control12 11.8 Human resources13 23.5 Scoreboards and... [download for more]