SAP E-Academy: the impossible made possible

What is SAP E-Academy?
E-Academies represent SAP Education's latest flexible learning program, offering comprehensive training in a convenient and cost effective manner. Each eAcademy is an e-learning bundle representing the content you would receive in an SAP Education classroom delivered academy curriculum. With eAcademies students are provided between one (1) and five (5) months of access to a self-paced learning environment enabling them to:

• Achieve expertise in specific SAP solution areas.
• Prepare for a certification exam.

Whether you are a consultant, implementation project team member, or center of expertise/excellence member, eAcademies will allow you to learn whenever and from wherever you want.

eAcademies Provide Superior Learning Value Through Multiple Deliverables

Depending on the eAcademy you register for you will have between one (1) and five (5) months of access to the following content and resources:

• Online Learning Content - The academy course content is delivered in an e-learning format consisting of presentation slides with audio commentary, system demonstration/practice simulations, slide notes, and mentor tips. This flexible format allows students to learn on their own and at their own pace and repeat lessons; if required; throughout the access period.
• SAP Training Systems - Hands-on experience with SAP systems is a key component of eAcademy training. Whether repeating a demonstration shown in the e-learning content, performing a hands-on exercise from the student manual, or just testing a process scenario from their own business experience; the student can use the live training systems to reinforce their learning lessons.
• Student Manuals - Each registered student will receive access to an electronic version of the academy course manual.
• Help Desk Support - eAcademies feature asynchronous help desk support throughout your learning access period, with all queries being answered within 24 hours Monday-Friday. Students get technical support for their learning environment as well as the use of FAQs and "Ask the Expert" features which are part of the content delivery infrastructure. On-line support is available via web conferencing, and scheduled expert instructor sessions.

Does your team need more training but the time runs low? Keep in mind SAP E-Academy and probably you will find the most affordable and complete training resource for your organization.

Available E-Academies

•     SAP eAcademy – Implementation and Modeling with SAP HANA 1.0
•     eAcademy SAP Business All-in-One Financials Specialization
•     eAcademy SAP Business All-in-One Logistics
•     SAP eAcademy ABAP Basics
•     SAP eAcademy ABAP Basics
•     SAP eAcademy - Business Intelligence with SAP BW 7.3 and SAP BI 4.0
•     SAP eAcademy SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 7.5
•     SAP eAcademy SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse 7.0
•     SAP eAcademy ERP - Integration of Business Processes eacademy
•     SAP eAcademy Financials - Management Accounting
•     SAP eAcademy Financials - Management Accounting
•     SAP eAcademy Financials - Financial Accounting
•     SAP eAcademy Human Resources (HCM) - Management & Administration
•     SAP eAcademy Human Resources (HCM) - Management & Administration
•     SAP for Retail eAcademy
•     SAP eAcademy PLM - Plant Maintenance & Repair
•     SAP eAcademy SCM - Planning & Manufacturing
•     SAP eAcademy SCM - Procurement
•     SAP eAcademy SCM - Procurement
•     SAP eAcademy SCM - Order Fulfillment
•     SAP eAcademy SCM - Order Fulfillment
•     SAP eAcademy SUP 2.1 Mobile Application
•     SAP eAcademy - Sybase Unwired Platform 2.1 Administration

Of course, you can find more information on SAP website.

The ABC

What is the ABC? Is it something concerning EPM projects or are we kidding? If you never heard about ABC, here one of the best definition. Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is a method of allocating costs to products and services. It is generally used as a tool for planning and control. It was developed as an approach to address problems associated with traditional cost management systems, that tend to have the inability to accurately determine actual production and service costs, or provide useful information for operating decisions. With these defiencies managers can be exposed to making decisions based on inaccurate data. The higher exposure is for companies with multiple products or services. ABC allows managers to attribute costs to activities and products more accurately than traditional cost accounting methods. The activities responsible for the costs can be identified and passed on to users only when the product or service uses the activity. Some of the advantages ABC offers is an improved means of identifying high overhead costs per unit and finding ways to reduce the costs. The way it works is first major activities are identified in the process system. Next cost pools are created for groups of activities that can be allocated together. Following this cost drivers are identified. The number of cost drivers used vary depending on the balance between accuracy and complexity. After determining the cost drivers, rates are calculated. The rates are then applied to the respective cost drivers for each product or service that is being considered. The overhead cost per unit is then derived by dividing the total cost for the product by the total product units.

Activity-Based Costing makes a lot of sense for companies with multiple products or services who are suffering from inaccurate costing information and need to know which products are really winners and which are losers. For these companies the effort required to successfully implement ABC is worth the time and resources. ABC can identify high overhead costs per unit and find ways to reduce the costs, avoid decreases in head counts due to inaccurate allocation of costs, and measure profitability with higher accuracy than traditional costing that uses direct-labor hours as the only cost driver.

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Is SAP HANA the next revolution of EPM market? Probably it is...

The EPM market is changing and the biggest vendor are creating new platform to improve service and quality served.
But, first of all, what is SAP HANA?

SAP HANA is SAP AG’s implementation of in-memory database technology. An in-memory database (IMDB; also main memory database system or MMDB or memory resident database) is a database management system that primarily relies on main memory for computer data storage. It is contrasted with database management systems which employ a disk storage mechanism. Main memory databases are faster than disk-optimized databases since the internal optimization algorithms are simpler and execute fewer CPU instructions. Accessing data in memory eliminates seek time when querying the data, which provides faster and more predictable performance than disk. So, according with Wikipedia, HANA DB takes advantage of the low cost of main memory (RAM), data processing abilities of multi-core processors and the fast data access of solid-state drives relative to traditional hard drives to deliver better performance of analytical and transactional applications. It offers a multi-engine query processing environment which allows it to support both relational data (with both row- and column-oriented physical representations in a hybrid engine) as well as graph and text processing for semi- and unstructured data management within the same system. HANA DB is 100% ACID compliant. Now, the newest version of SAP BPC (SAP BPC 10) can take the advantages of a SAP HANA DB. This means a lot of things as fast data access, speed, and many other feautures. Of course this kind of implementation can be done by big customers that have a really complex database environment. By the way SAP HANA will be the next generation of EPM implementation giving owr customer all the power needed. Here the architecture schema: