Over 100 companies in South Africa utilise SAP's Human Resources (HR) functionality of the mySAP.com solution suite. To grow this and enhance existing services, SAP Southern Africa is centralising all HR related services into a single group. This is a move set to strengthen the company's dominance in the HR systems environment.
Says Phillip Booth, recently appointed business unit manager for the reconstituted HR business unit: "We have built up a stable and reliable product offering, specifically adapted to South Africa legal and business requirements. This has attracted well over 100 local organisations, with employee numbers ranging from over 60 000 at the top end to less than 100 employees at the bottom end."
Booth believes the major challenge facing SAP over the next few years is to keep its market leadership position by constantly re-inventing itself and exceeding customer expectations.
"With the introduction of full application rental and outsourcing alternatives we are set for a completely new client base. People traditionally saw SAP as a vendor catering only for the large enterprise market. Our client base disproves this notion with the majority of clients - even on an international basis - being from mid market segments.
"Whether a customer has 1000 or 100 000 employees they follow very similar business processes," comments Booth. "The benefit for customers with smaller employee numbers is the larger multinational enterprises have made the investment in partnering with SAP, and all companies can now take advantage of these leading concepts.
"SAP offers a complete set of tools for all of those responsible for managing employees from line management to HR professionals. SAP also offers a full set of employee self service tools via the mySAP.com solution suite, aiming to empower all employees to enter the electronic age," he says. Booth has been with SAP for over five years and came through the ranks since joining as an implementation consultant in 1994.
As expected, the fourth quarter was a pivotal one for SAP internationally. With the shift in global market dynamics, SAP aggressively re-deployed its global energies and resources to achieve a striking turnaround in new software license sales and record pre-tax profits in the fourth quarter. The successful introduction and shipping of the mySAP.com products was a major step in the continuing transformation of SAP into the world's leading inter-enterprise software solution provider.
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