SAP SE is one of the largest vendors of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and related enterprise applications. The company's ERP system enables its customers to run their business processes, including accounting, sales, production, human resources and finance, in an integrated environment.
The integration ensures that information flows from one SAP component to another without the need for redundant data entry and helps enforce financial, process and legal controls. It also facilitates the effective use of resources, including manpower, machines and production capacities.
SAP comes with prepackaged legal and compliances specific to a geography. Like India, Brazil kind of countries have complex legal requirements for taxation and reporting. Most of these requirements are catered by SAP out of box with minimal customization (changes to standard). This is why SAP is popular across the globe.
SAP has a single database and hence update in one module is available (if needed by the business process) to other modules in real time. For example if you post a vendor invoice in MM, it will immediately reflect in Liability in Finance module. Or if you post a invoice in Sales and Distribution, it will be immediately reflected in Accounts receivables in Finance reports.
SAP applications, built around their latest system, provide the capability to manage financial, asset, and cost accounting, production operations and materials, personnel, plants, and archived documents. SAP is a table drive customization software. It allows businesses to make rapid changes in their business requirements with a common set of programs. User-exits are provided for business to add in additional source code. Tools such as screen variants are provided to let you set fields attributes whether to hide, display and make them mandatory fields.