Translated material
Quiet SAP
The German company carried out a multi-billion dollar takeover and automated the energy supply management of AvtoVAZ.
German software manufacturer SAP AG announced a large-scale transaction, which became one of the main events in the global IT market in the beginning of the year. The main supplier of ERP systems in the world (from Enterprise Resource Planning - this is the name of computer systems for integrated enterprise management. - Ed. ) acquired Business Object, the largest developer of tools for business analysis, for $6.8 billion. This is the first major acquisition in SAP history.One of the immediate consequences of the transaction is a change in SAP's software product line. Already at the end of last week, a few days after the merger was completed, the company announced nine new joint products. Business Object technologies will give SAP systems obvious competitive advantages due to the possibility of in-depth analysis of enterprise activities in the process of managing it. It is also possible that SAP will have a better chance of succeeding in the SMB automation market. So far, despite significant resources invested in this area, SAP has not achieved decisive success.
How the consequences of the transaction will affect the business of the company’s clients (including Russian ones) will be possible to understand, at best, in a year or two, when the first full-fledged introductions of new products take place. But even without this, it is not without interest to see what is happening in the domestic industry under the influence of SAP and its competitors (among them, Oracle and the Russian 1C should be mentioned first of all). The use of ERP systems in Russia has become commonplace, and the more opportunities there are to observe the development of what is called “post-industrial society.” Commissioning an ERP system at an enterprise is comparable to installing a new operating system on a computer: the hardware remains the same, but works differently. Generally better.
A recent (and typical) example - by January 1, Volzhskaya TGK (VoTGK) completed the automation of the business of its main asset, the Tolyatti CHPP VAZ. Complex automation should be carried out by the top officials of the company, “otherwise, no matter how good the specialists implementing the system are, the result will be worse than it could be,” Ilya Kiriyenko, deputy general director of OXS, an IT consulting company carrying out automation, convinced during a trip to Tolyatti WoTHC. Perhaps, the “top officials” at VAZ will henceforth monitor projects for the implementation of ERP systems less closely: within a year and a half, the ERP system will be “replicated”, it will be installed at all enterprises of the holding. From the outside one gets the impression, which is generally correct, that this matter, although complex, is quite routine. Like the launch of a new factory workshop during the industrialization of the USSR.
This routine masks the non-trivial results of implementing an ERP system. In an informal conversation, the general director of the VAZ CHPP, Oleg Rozhdestvin, surprised the Vremya Novostei correspondent with a clear example: it turns out that storekeepers and other business employees (as a rule, people of age and without higher education) who have experience working with SAP software, due to this one skill earn 20-30% more than their colleagues. The same is true for other employees, up to managers, and not only “middle management”. The company itself improves the production process and reduces costs (in particular, on staff - after full integration of the ERP system, as a rule, the number of IT services is noticeably reduced, and this is in conditions of an acute shortage of such personnel). Dmitry Sergienko, director of strategic development at VoTGK, expects to recoup the project in seven years, taking into account production costs. However, an ERP system increases the company's capitalization on the stock market or in the eyes of a strategic investor. It was precisely this circumstance that explained the marketing director of a mid-sized Moscow bank, which does not suffer from excess funds, the desire of its management to implement SAP software before a possible sale of the company.
In the heart of the VAZ CHPP - two huge hangars 450 meters long, where steam turbines are installed - nothing has changed outwardly. Changes took place not here, but in accounting, administration, and warehouse services. The old Soviet enterprise received a computer control system, the quality of which corresponds to world standards. There is no exaggeration in this. If automotive engineers worked like their IT colleagues (and SAP appeared at VAZ, we note, back in August 2002, by order of GM AvtoVAZ), the quality of Zhiguli cars might not have been a topic jokes.