InformationWeek

But even companies that are technologically ready to incorporate mySAP.com might not choose to do so anytime soon. Even though National Semiconductor has upgraded to R/3 release 4.6B, Groves says it will take about 18 months to evaluate the company's needs and goals in relation to the Internet-centered benefits mySAP.com could deliver. Groves also says he wants a clearer understanding of the cost of upgrading to mySAP.com, in terms of time, money, and manpower. "We have to understand the steps we need to take to move in that direction." And right now, he doesn't.

Groves is far from the only SAP user to be baffled by mySAP.com. According to analysts, SAP is sending confusing signals to its customers-not only about mySAP.com, but also its plans for R/3 and the company's overall direction. For example, R/3 users who are considering an upgrade from release 3.0, as National Semiconductor did, must evaluate three alternatives concurrently: release 4.5, release 4.6B, and mySAP.com. Part of the reason National Semiconductor decided to upgrade to release 4.6B now was because it wasn't clear to Groves how much longer SAP would support release 3.0. Analysts say other users have the same concern.

SAP insists its shift toward the Internet does not mean the vendor is abandoning its traditional ERP products. "We're trying to help customers understand how they can leverage new technologies and new solutions to run their businesses more efficiently," says Monica Barron, director of marketing for the HR sector of SAP America. "We're not just saying, 'Here's the new SAP, love us or leave us.'"

To address users' concerns about the length and complexity of System R/3 implementations, for instance, and widen its market to include smaller companies, SAP created slimmed-down versions of R/3 modules in 1996, called SAP Accelerated Solutions. In the years since then, when SAP added functionality to the applications in the original ERP system, it often mir-rored the changes in its Accelerated Solutions.

One of the first pieces to come to market was SAP Accelerated Financials, which is preconfigured to support the most critical financial and accounting requirements of businesses, the government, accounting rules bodies, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and more. It incorporated AcceleratedSAP, a fast-implementation methodology, and Ready-to-Run R/3, a preconfigured, preinstalled operating system, with financials software and SAP's own database.

Security National Servicing Corp., the second company to implement the fixed-bid, fixed-time, financials-only solution with a Microsoft SQL Server 7 database, was up and running in early 1998 in just 25 days, according to Justin Kirsch, CIO of the Sacramento, Calif., company. The deployment coincided with a companywide technology overhaul that involved replacing every major information system at SNSC. At the time, the company was servicing fewer than 15,000 loans and had 275 employees. With the new systems in place, the company is servicing 100,000 loans with just 175 employees. "It's a minor miracle on the side of technology," Kirsch says.

SNSC's business is complex. The company purchases delinquent loans, such as mortgages, works with borrowers to help them make payments, then resells the loans as securities. Throughout the life of the loan, SNSC is responsible for servicing the loans and ensuring that payments are made on time.

SNSC had been using spreadsheets and PC-based accounting systems to work on its financials, but the process was time-intensive and didn't provide enough detail, Kirsch says. More significant, users couldn't pull information directly from the various accounting systems, a collections system, and a customer-service module, and use it in one of the other systems.

SNSC chose SAP R/3 Financials because it's built on an open architecture, a requirement the company has set for its IT systems. In addition, SAP's financials are capable of real-time transaction processing and can be custom configured to meet SNSC's particular needs. Other financial systems the SNSC team considered also met those criteria, but none could compete with the speed of implementation that was possible with SAP Accelerated Financials, Kirsch says.

SNSC began upgrading its Accelerated Financials system to release 4.6B in mid-May. Although Kirsch says he believes SAP's Financials application is the best on the market, SNSC doesn't intend to implement SAP's entire ERP suite. Companies that use the same software vendor for a complete ERP system-plus