Sap system

Del007

I'm an electrician and I'm going for an internship in a pharmaceutical company and part of the job is learning how to use the Sap system.

I've never used this software before and I'm not even sure what it is.

Could anyone shed light on how it's used and what it's used for?

Cheers

Rodgeb

SAP is business software which mainly large companies can then customise for whatever their needs are.

Usual examples of what it is used for include things like payroll, stock control, billing, ordering, call centres, running reports, running factory production lines etc pretty much anything a company uses computers for.

It will be installed on huge servers and be used together with a database like Oracle and an Operating System like Unix or Windows.

They will expect to train any new employee on how they have developed and set up the system themselves, most employees may use it in form or another without necessarily knowing it.

Some common everyday examples would be if you were to use itunes or order something online from say Amazon, then everything in the background is done by SAP software from searching, checking what you want is in stock, accepting payment, informing the warehouse, passing on your delivery information etc

I work for SAP so if you have any questions let me know.

Del007

well the job is in the engineering department so 'running factory production lines' looks the most likely to what I could be doing.

How would it be used for this?

Cheers for your help

Rodgeb

For an electrician I guess it could be used for keeping a record of power outages, how much electricity the different areas are using, managing equipment, that kind of stuff. If you have a look on youtube there might be something there which explains it. It is different for every different company.

I think the important thing to remember is you will probably just be considered an end user you will just need to know what information needs to be put in where and also how to understand any reports or warnings will might be run at the end of every day/ week. You will not be expected to know whats going on in the background.

What you see when you use it will probably just look like any other website.

Pharmaceutical industry is probably the most regulated industry there is. A record needs to be kept of pretty much everything and kept for years, SAP can do this. Companies like Pfizer and Novartis have huge SAP setups and have a background team of hundreds keeping it going

Del007

Cheers for the info lads

Am I right in saying that with Sap you open up applications such as excel, word, power point etc and enter info, create spread sheets etc?

mawk

we used to use it in conjunction with gls for keeping track of labels. also for stock and component control iirc, but that wasnt really my dept

Rodgeb

Its seperate from Microsoft Office. Much more powerful, I suppose one way of thinking of it would be like excel on loads and loads on steroids:)

How did the interview go?

buzzard

Del007,

Bear in mind that SAP is designed for the specific needs of a company and the functionality will differ from company to company although the concept and look/feel is the very same.

A very powerful tool particulary when BW is adopted with it.