"The best run businesses run SAP, and so do the best run Small and Medium Enterprises." That was the message passed by Edward Mwakio last week in a media event meant to educate SMEs on the benefits of deploying SAP in their businesses. Mwakio was out to put to rest the mis-perception that SAP was only affordable and deployable by large businesses.
SAP is a German company that touts itself as the world's largest business software company, having been founded in 1972 as Systems Applications and Products. SAP deals with data processing. Edward Mwakio is Enterprise Information Management(EIM) solutions managing director. EIM has been around since 2004 and has 25 certified SAP deployments in the country including Mumias Sugar company which was its first deployment of SAP best practices, the Government of Kenya and Kenya Power and Lighting Company limited.  SMEs that have seen EIM deploy SAP include Acacia Medical Centre, Chandarana Supermarket and Soliton Telemec.

For SMEs, Mwakio says that more than 65% of companies that have deployed SAP are SMEs. This he attributes to SAP's open standards, flexibility and ease of use. He says that the product has a low total cost of ownership, and that a company can configure its needs based on SAP's modules from a cost as low as kshs. 300, 000. This is deployable in a period as short as 15 days, which shatters the myth that SAP takes long to get delivered. The flexibility of the product inherent in its plug-and-play modules means that an Organization can scale SAP to its needs as it continues to grow.

Capabilities of SAP include financial systems, human resource systems, procurement, inventory manufacturing and product development systems. Mwakio says that the product gives the users a high level of integration and visibility and it is quite suitable for both executive and operations managers.

SAP is able to pull in data from non-traditional sources. This include feeds, blogs and other applications, providing the data in the SAP dashboard. SAP is also able to deliver this data to mobile users via a Java application that is capable of running on most mobile phones.

In a competitive environment, the data can be turned into a gold mine through Business Intelligence (BI). BI translates data into information and is useful in formulating future strategies for your business by drilling down into the data and  looking for co-relations. Mwakio summarises BI as a system that runs "what ifs". As an example, Mwakio says that a telecom operator can gauge the viability of a price change and competitor practices by simulating the changing variables in SAP.  With this, the operator is able to focus on the future and inform shareholders of impact of such changes at the end of the year.

Mwakio says that companies that have turnovers of more than Ksh 50 million can in the least run and deploy SAP Business 1.