At the same time, the vendor is prioritizing which business processes it will actually include for specific industries.
Christine Clevenger, vice president of mySAP for high tech, said that, as promised at the launch of NetWeaver earlier this year, the vendor will offer support for the RosettaNet, CIDX and UCCnet standards, espoused by the high tech, chemical and consumer product industries respectively.
Once these products are released, SAP will continue to ponder which other industries to tailor its platform to. Automotive and aerospace were high profile industries she said. However, they already use EDI technology to a great extent, she said.
A myriad of other industries were working on data interchange standards, she said, which were at varying states of progress. SAP was looking to get involved with these at an early stage, said Clevenger. Given that a lot of processes may be relatively similar from industry to industry, having a partner already experienced in one sector could make it easier to thrash out standards. However, Clevenger said, SAP could not just force its way into such discussions. They want to do their own thing, she said.
Clevenger added that while particular industries may identify a wide range of processes they would like to automate, in practice a smaller subset of functions were usually all that were needed, for now at least.
We’ve been working with companies to identify priorities, she said. For example, she said, the high tech industry’s key focus was automating the order process, from placing the order through to shipping. For the consumer products industry being able to identify and track multiple product lines was the first order of business.
Once the initial priorities are met, said Clevenger, the company will examine which remaining processes are top of each industry’s list, and decide which to accommodate next.
This article is based on an original published by ComputerWire.
