mySAP ERP Made Easy

MySAP for Dummies, the latest addition to the series, was launched in India at SAP TechEd 2005. The authors of book-- Andreas Vogel and Ian Kimbell--are SAP employees who have combined their experience in technology and marketing respectively to bring out this book. Aparna Lal caught up with Ian Kimbell to get more insight on the book.

It is very important that there is a technical aspect and a marketing aspect to any book. It is also important that people understand the story. Andreas is from the technical side while I'm from marketing, and so it was a very good mix that could help people understand easily.

Can you tell us some details about the book?

The book is about mySAP ERP, which is the successor to SAP R3. We have positioned this as the next generation ERP solution. What mySAP ERP tries to do is to address difficulties that companies face while reducing cost and getting their employees to be more productive. For example, the world is becoming more competitive. It is difficult to put in efficiencies into processes. Traditionally, processes are generally inflexible. But you need that flexibility to be able to compete in the changing market conditions. How to balance the two is what the book tells you. It gives you mySAP ERP in a nutshell--the flexibility through Enterprise Service Architecture, making business processes flexible and productivity tools, analytics and process optimization.

So there are a lot of details packed in the book?

The book doesn't go into functional details. At 300 pages, it is an easy summary for people to dip into. It tells you about benefits of mySAP, how it would help productivity, about tech infrastructure and also on resources. It is not a book about the features and functions of SAP. It describes the benefits and also the architecture direction that SAP is taking.

Is this a good reference guide for developers as well as business people?

Yes. It gives the business perspective of why one should go for mySAP ERP and developers get to know the direction that SAP is taking.

How long did the book take to write?

We started work on the book in the beginning of the year. It was available on the press on September 15. The book was launched at SAP TechEd events held earlier in Vienna, Europe, and then in the US. Now we have also launched it in Bangalore.