As mentioned in our 'Take a closer look' article (first published July 2002), we believe that Industry Solutions are one of three major advantages that SAP have built up over their competition. Here we provide more information about SAP's industry solutions.

As you know, SAP started many years ago with a single, integrated, solution. For many years they continued along this 'one size fits all' until about 1994/5 when at SAPPHIRE they launched their industry solutions initiative promising that now they understood that industries were different (surely not!) and so they would release versions of their software which were customised for particular industries. SAP have been working on it for around 7 years now, and we think they have a fine job.

Here then are the 21 Industry Solutions. If you want to know more about any of them, use the links to the SAP Industry Solution page. As you read through the list below take a look at some of the key features we extracted (not by any means a comprehensive list).

Aerospace and Defence - including MRO and airline regulations ...
Automotive - including OEM's, aftermarket, sales and service ...
Banking - including customer account, profitability and risk management ...
Chemicals - including unit, campaign, recipe and batch management ...
Consumer Products - including trade promotions, category mgt, mobile and internet sales ...
Engineering and Construction - including machinery, equip, contracting and engineering ...
Financial Service Provider - from deal capture through risk and performance analysis ...
Healthcare - including patient care, bed assignments and treatment strategies ...
Higher Education and Research - including students, grants and budgets ...
High Tech - including OEM, VAR, Contract Management ...
Insurance - including policies, collections, claims and disbursements ...
Media - including advertising, media PLM and managing intellectual property ...
Mill Products - including supply network, delivery schedules and collaborative distribution ...
Mining - including EH&S, bulk material pricing and asset management ...
Oil and Gas - including the entire value chain from wellhead to retail station ...
Pharmaceuticals - including electronic signature, batch controls and recipe management ...
Public Sector - including records mgt, constituent's accounts and grant's management ...
Retail - including strategic partnerships, multiple sales channels and workforce mgt ...
Service Providers - from first customer contact to billing, and performance analysis ...
Telecommunications - including contract accounting and convergent invoicing ...
Utilities - including FERC regulations, load profiling and call centre management ...
 

What an incredible competitive advantage. Can you imagine the integration meetings required to keep all these parallel developments in check and integrated with the core? The answer to the 'how do they keep all this integrated with the core' question we posed at the top of the article lies, we think, in keeping a tight grip on the data ... and there is a lesson in there for everyone working on enterprise systems.