What is SAP?

How does a company like SAP sell $25B worth of ERP software every year? In a sense, ERP is the “brain” of a company — it stores all important pieces of data and all of the actions possible in data-driven workflows.But before taking over the modern business world, how did ERP software get started? This became especially important as hardware spoke more to software, opening new automation opportunities; and ERP shined.The speed at which data can be accessed with integrated software empowered companies to completely rehaul their business models. And that’s why SAP Configuration Specialist is an actual job title!Despite being difficult to set up, SAP’s ERP software delivers on its key value of broad integration across multiple business processes. A whopping 65% of executives believe ERP implementations have a moderate chance of hurting their businesses (which isn’t something you’d typically hear when evaluating software!).The integrated nature of ERP makes adopting it a company wide effort. Installing the software is the easy part; adjusting the whole company’s workflow is the most of the work.A company implementing an ERP system oftentimes hires a consulting firm like Accenture and pays them millions of dollars to work with individual business units and figure out how to integrate ERP into their processes. Nonetheless, there’s always space for niche players, which are generally vertical-focused:Vertical specific ERPs can specialize through integrations and workflows that are specific to their target market: healthcare ERPs, for example, can implement HIPAA protocols.Specialization isn’t the only differentiator, though: a few startups are bringing more modern software platform practices to the ERP “table.” An example is Zuora, a platform specifically focused on enabling companies to integrate (with ERPs!) and manage their subscription businesses.