Basic SAP Interview Questions

1. What is ‘SAP’?

‘SAP’ is an acronym for ‘Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte der Dataenverarbeitung,’ in German, meaning ‘Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing.’ Founded in 1972, SAP—with its headquarters in Walldorf, Germany—is the global market leader in collaborative, inter-enterprise business solutions (i.e., business software). SAP employs close to 40,000 employees worldwide, with more than 100,000 installations in about 40,000 companies in 120 countries. More than 12 million people use SAP on a daily basis. There are more than 20 industry-specific ‘Industry Solutions,’ known commonly as ‘IS’ (IS-Oil, IS-Retail, IS-Bank, etc.).

2. Tell Me More about (The History of) SAP.

• SAP was founded by five former IBM employees, in 1972, to develop a standard business application software, with the goal of processing business information in real-time. The company, SAP GmbH, was started in Mannheim, Germany.
• During 1973, the company released its first financial accounting software, ‘R1’ (the letter ‘R’ stands for ‘Real-Time Processing).’
• In the late 1970s, SAP ‘R/2’ was released with IBM’s database and a dialogue oriented business application.
• R/2 was further stabilized during the early 1980s and the company came out with a version capable of processing business transactions in several languages and currencies to meet the needs of its international clientele.
• SAP GmbH became SAP AG in 1988. Later on, the company established subsidiaries in countries such as the United States, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy.
• The 1990s saw the introduction of SAP ‘R/3,’ with client-server architecture and GUI, which ran on almost any database, and on most operating systems. SAP R/3 heralded a new era in enterprise computing, moving from a ‘main frame’ to a 3-tier architecture (Database->Application->User interface), which became the new industry standard.
• By 1996, the company had more than 9,000 installations worldwide. By the end of the 1990s, SAP had introduced the e-commerce enabled my SAP suite of products for leveraging ever-expanding web technology.
• SAP began the twenty-first century with the Enterprise Portal and role-based access to business information.
• SAP continues to evolve and innovate, bringing cutting-edge technologies to business-information processing. SAP has already introduced SAP Net Weaver, which is based on Enterprise Services Architecture (ESS) with application integration across diverse platforms for providing one-stop end-to-end business processing. With Net Weaver, companies can now integrate people, information, and processes.

3. What are the ‘Solutions’ Currently Available from SAP?

Currently, SAP Solutions include the following:

• SAP ERP
• SAP
• SAP Business Suite
• SAP R/3 and R/3 Enterprise
• SAP for Industries
• SAP xApps
• SAP Solution Manager

4. What are the Components of the ‘SAP ERP’ Solution?

• SAP ERP Central Component (ECC 6.0)
• SAP SEM (Strategic Enterprise Management) (SEM 6.0)
• SAP cProject Suite (Project and Portfolio Management 4.0)
• SAP SRM for ERP (SRM 5.0)
• SAP Catalog Content Management (CCM 2.0 for ERP 2004)
• SAP Internet Sales for ERP

5. What is the Significance of the ‘SAP NetWeaver’
Platform?

The SAP ‘NetWeaver’ platform allows organizations to build new business solutions rapidly while realizing more business value from existing IT investments. SAP NetWeaver supports new cross-functional business processes and helps to lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by reducing the need for custom integration. It offers complete life cycle management for all of your applications. It is also the foundation for Enterprise Services Architecture (EAS) and helps align people, information, and business processes across organizational and technological boundaries.

6. What are the Components of ‘NetWeaver’?

By providing an open integration and application platform and permitting the integration of the Enterprise Services Architecture, SAP NetWeaver helps unify business processes across technological boundaries, integrating applications for employees as needed, and accessing/editing simple information easily in a structured manner.

Components include:

• Security
• People Integration
  • Multi-channel Access
  • Portal
  • Collaboration
• Information Integration
  • Business Intelligence
• BI (Business Intelligence) Content
  • Knowledge Management
  • Master Data Management
• Process Integration
  • Integration Broker
  • Business Process Management
• Application Platform
  • Java
  • ABAP
  • Business Services
  • Connectivity
  • DB and OS Abstraction
  • SAP Knowledge Warehouse
• Life Cycle Management
  • Customizing
  • Software Change Management
  • System Management

7. What are the Components of the ‘SAP Business Suite’?

• SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM 5.0)
• SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM 5.0)
• SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)
  • SAP SRM 2007
  • SAP Catalog Content Management (SRM-MDM 1.0)
• SAP Product Life Cycle Management
  • SAP Product Life Cycle Management 4.00
  • SAP Environment, Health, and Safety 2.7B
  • SAP PLM Recipe Management 2.1
  • Audit Management
• SAP Compliance Management for SOA
  • Management of Internal controls 1.0
• SAP Learning Solution 2.00
• SAP Strategic Enterprise Management (SEM)

8. What are the Most Recent Releases of the ‘SAP R/3′ Solution?

• SAP R/3 Enterprise Release 4.70
• SAP R/3 Release 4.6C/4.6B/4.5B/4.0B

9. What ‘Industry Solutions’ (IS) are Available from SAP?

There are 22 Industry Solutions available from SAP. They are:

• SAP for Aerospace and Defense
• SAP for Automotive
• SAP for Banking
• SAP for Consumer Products
• SAP Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable
• SAP for Defense and Security
• SAP for Engineering, Construction and Operations
• SAP for Financial Service Providers
• SAP for Healthcare
• SAP for Higher Education and Research
• SAP for High Tech
• SAP for Insurance
• SAP for Media
• SAP for Mill Products
• SAP for Mining
• SAP for Oil and Gas
• SAP for Professional Services
• SAP for Public Sectors
• SAP for Retail
• SAP for Telecommunications
• SAP for Utilities
• SAP for Wholesale Distribution

10. What is ‘SAP xApps’?

The ‘SAP xApps’ family of composite applications enables continuous business innovation—and provides the flexibility necessary to respond quickly and profitably to business changes. They extend the value of core business investments and maximize the return on strategic assets: employees, knowledge, products, business relationships, and IT.
SAP and SAP certified partners deliver these composite applications that drive specialized business processes, provide comprehensive business insights, and focus on the needs of a variety of industries.
All these applications combine Web services and data from multiple systems in an application design made possible by the SAP Composite Application Framework within the SAP NetWeaver technology platform. This framework includes the methodology, tools, and run-time environment to develop composite applications. It provides a consistent object model and a rich user experience, and gives developers a productive way to create composite applications on top of a set of heterogeneous applications.

11. What are all the Components of ‘SAP xApps’?

• Duet
• SAP Document Builder
• SAP Global Trade Services
• SAP xApp Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence
• SAP xApp Resource and Portfolio Management
• SAP xApp Product Definition
• SAP xApp Cost and Quotation Management
• SAP xApp Integrated Exploration and Production
• SAP xApp Sales and Operations Planning

12. What is known as ‘Duet’?

A component under SAP xApps, ‘Duet’ is a first-of-its-kind software solution from SAP and Microsoft that enables users to easily and quickly interact with SAP business processes and data via their familiar Microsoft Office environment. The result of a ground breaking collaboration between SAP and Microsoft, it is the first joint product created by these two industry leaders and is designed to revolutionize how IT workers interact with enterprise applications.

Duet enables:

• Budget Monitoring: Schedule time-critical alerts and notifications to monitor cost centers or internal orders, which are delivered directly to Microsoft Outlook.
• Demand Planning: Create and use planning sheets, as well as analyze and manage demand planning data from the SAP System using Microsoft Excel.
• Duet Reporting: Schedule reports to be delivered regularly to Microsoft Outlook, receive individual reports on an as-needed basis, and view reports in Microsoft Excel.
• Leave Management: Add leave requests as Microsoft Outlook calendar items that integrate approval guidelines in the SAP System and enterprise-defined processes.
• Sales Management: Manage CRM accounts and contacts, create business activities, and access sales analytics information using Microsoft Outlook.
• Team Management: Access up-to-date information about yourself and employees, open positions, and organizational structures that are integrated from the SAP System into the Microsoft Outlook contacts area.
• Time Management: Record time in the Microsoft Outlook calendar, streamlining time entry while ensuring time-reporting compliance in the SAP System.
• Travel Management: Create a travel request and a travel expense report in the SAP System using Microsoft Outlook.

13. Explain the ‘SAP Document Builder.’

‘SAP Document Builder’ (CA-GTF-DOB) is a content-driven and cross-application solution for building and authoring complex documents. As a generic tool, it can be deployed within international organizations and large corporations to generate contract and bid invitation documents, banking-related documents, auto insurance policies, real estate contracts, and corporate employment policies.
You can deploy SAP Document Builder as a standalone application or integrate it with other SAP or non-SAP components. For example, you can generate business documents required in a procurement system and store them in an electronic data storage system.

The SAP Document Builder supports you by:

• Automating and streamlining the document-creation process.
• Enforcing best practices.
• Building documents that reflect company-specific styles and formats from one or more regulation sets.
• Determining inclusion or exclusion of clauses based on legal regulations by means of rules.

14. Explain the ‘SAP Solution Manager.’

Providing central access to Tools, Methods, and Pre-Configured Content, the SAP Solution Manager provides support throughout the life cycle of solutions—from Business Blueprint to Configuration to Support.

The features include:

• Implementation/Upgrade of SAP Solutions
  • Central access to Project Tools (Project Administration, Business Blueprint, Configuration, Test Workbench, Group Rollout Templates)
  • Central management of Project Information (Roadmap, System Landscape, Documentation, etc.)
  • Enables comparing/synchronizing customizing in several SAP components
• Solution Monitoring
  • Central System Administration
  • System Landscape Analysis with System Level Reporting
  • Real-time System Monitoring
  • Business Process Monitoring
• Services and Support
  • Access to programs/services for monitoring and optimizing system performance and availability to minimize risks.
• Service Desk
  • Solution Support through Work Flow to create and manage Process/Problem Messages.
• Change Management
  • Trace and audit system changes and transports through Change Request Management.

15. Explain how ‘mySAP ERP Financial’ is Better/Different than ‘R/3 Financial Accounting.’

‘mySAP ERP Financials’ is built on the NetWeaver platform, which is the foundation for service-oriented business solutions, for deploying financial processes at a faster pace. Irrespective of the business type, mySAP ERP Financials is designed to support financial accounting requirements to provide a single complete platform to achieve excellence in accounting, performance management, financial supply chain,
and corporate governance. The features include:

• Industry-Specific Financial Management:
  • My SAP ERP Financials provides a comprehensive and robust analytical framework to consolidate and/or dissect business information generated in industry solutions or core enterprise processes: all managers in all operations have an improved visibility with a single integrated solution.
• Performance Management:
  • My SAP ERP Financials provides a single solution for the entire life cycle of Corporate Performance Management by delivering real-time, personalized measurements and metrics to improve business insight and productivity of non-technical users. Executives, managers, and business workers will now have access to information such as business statistics and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) presented in the context of business tasks for better insight and faster decision making. mySAP ERP Financials encompasses:
    • Consolidated financial and statutory reporting
    • Planning, budgeting, and forecasting
    • Strategy management and scorecards
    • Risk management
    • Financial analytics
• Financial and Management Accounting:
  • My SAP ERP Financials helps companies comply with global accounting standards (such as the United States’ Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). With the ‘New FI-GL’ functionality (Refer to Q.181 for more details) you will now have the ability to generate financial statements of any dimension of the business (unit, profit center, geographical location, etc.). This offers greater flexibility to extend a chart of accounts and allows an easier method of reporting by individual management units and segments. This feature helps companies reduce the complexity and costs associated with parallel accounting or managing a set of books by region, industry, or regulatory reporting statute.
• Corporate Governance:
  • With a set of applications and tools, my SAP ERP Financials assists in meeting the specific requirements of today’s financial regulations such as the SarbanesOxley Act. You now have an intuitive mechanism to collect, document, assess, remediate, and attest to internal control processes and safeguards to ensure transparent business activity. By configuring controls and defining rules and tolerances for your business, you can easily customize internal processes for security, reporting, and error prevention. In addition, you can now document all your internal control processes and make them visible to corporate executives, auditors, and regulators.
• Financial Supply Chain Management:
  • Provides the tools to help you manage your financial supply chain and cashflow cycle more effectively, through end-to-end process support of:
    • Credit Management
    • Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment
    • Collections Management
    • Dispute Management
    • In-house Cash Management
    • Cash and Liquidity Management
    • Bank Relationship
    • Treasury and Risk Management Processes

16. What is an ‘SAP Solution Map’?

My SAP ERP, besides supporting your most important business processes, also provides tools to help you understand how these processes work. One such tool is the ‘SAP Solution Map,’ a multi-level blueprint of processes, which helps you visualize, plan, and implement a coherent, integrated, and comprehensive IT solution. SAP Solution Maps also show how various processes are covered, including the processes that SAP and its partners support. With solution maps, you quickly understand business solutions and the business value they can bring.

17. What is ‘SAP Business One’?

‘SAP Business One’ is the low-cost, easy-to-implement business management solution from SAP for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). Unlike regular ERP software from SAP, this solution gives managers on-demand access to critical real-time information through ‘one single system’ containing financial, customer relationship management, manufacturing, and management control capabilities. As a result, the solution enables rapid employee productivity, while empowering managers to make better business decisions to stay ahead of the competition. Equipped with a
user-friendly interface, SAP Business One serves as your central ERP hub with standard interfaces to internal and external data sources, handheld computers, CRM applications, and other leading analysis tools.
SAP Business One is based on the Microsoft Windows platform making it easier to comprehend and use. The application comes with a ‘demo company,’ which can be used by the implementing company to become familiar with functionalities.

The modules of SAP Business One include:

• Administration
• Financials
• Sales Opportunities
• Sales—A/R
• Purchasing—A/P
• Business Partners
• Banking
• Inventory
• Production
• MRP
• Service
• Human Resources
• Reporting