When I was asked to update Sams Teach Yourself SAP in 24 Hours, I was completely
thrilled. Seriously! The world of SAP and our world in general have gone through major
upheavals in the last few years, and I was excited to share with SAPlings and veterans
alike just how much had changed. In the same way, I was anxious to realign and simplify
this book in the way that Danielle Larocca, the original Teach Yourself SAP author, had
done. She did a magnificent job targeting business users and technical readers at the
exclusion of everyone else you tend to find on an SAP project. I’ve tried to reapply some
of that same focus here, which should also (not coincidentally) tackle some of the concerns
my readers expressed. And, I wanted to address additional concerns vocalized by
my readers related to consistency, eliminating repetition, providing better figures, and
more. So thank you for picking up the latest and yes, best ever, edition of Sams Teach
Yourself SAP in 24 Hours. I am confident you’ll find it well worth your investment.
In the name of simplification, I have reorganized and revamped the material into five
easy-to-consume sections. Part I naturally kicks off with an introduction to all the
basics, followed by Part II, which covers SAP’s business applications and components.
In this way, the stage is set for us to explore SAP from a business user perspective (Part
III) and then from an IT professional’s perspective (Part IV). With all your newfound
knowledge and focus, and in response to comments from many readers over the last five
years, Part V concludes with an extensive section devoted to helping you develop a
career in SAP.
Along the way, I cover what matters most to SAP newcomers. For the business users, I
go beyond simply setting up access to SAP and customizing your user interface, and I
walk you through actual business transactions. Together, we explore what it means to
create sales orders, update employee personnel records, and more. I ground you in how
SAP users are assigned roles and provided authorization to execute transactions related
to those roles. We explore mega business processes like “Order to Cash” and how that
breaks down into specific SAP business transactions. And we go into detailed reporting
and query processes executed not only from SAP itself but through other commonly
used business productivity tools like Microsoft SharePoint, Adobe Forms, and more. In
this way, prospective SAP business users can really get a taste of a day-in-the-life-of an
SAP end user.