SAP shares free-fall on third quarter warning

SAP warned its third quarter revenues are expected to come in below Wall Street's projections, driving its stock down by a whopping 17.6 percent in intra-day trading.
The enterprise software behemoth noted that a preliminary review of its financial performance indicates its third quarter software and software-related service revenues are expected to range between 1.97 billion to 1.98 billion euros (US$2.66 billion to US$2.68 billion), a 13 to 14 percent increase over the same time last year.

However, Wall Street had been expecting the company to post revenues of 2.863 billion euros (US$3.87 billion), according to Thomson Financial.
Henning Kagermann, SAP co-chief executive, had this assessment in a statement:
"The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses. These concerns triggered a very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity at the end of the quarter."

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"Throughout the third quarter we felt quite positive about our ability to meet our expectations. Unfortunately, SAP was not immune from the economic and financial crisis that has enveloped the markets in the second half of September, causing us to report numbers below our expectations," Kagermann added.

On the bright note, Kagermann noted that while revenues contracted, the business fundamentals of its operations remain intact.

"SAP did report double-digit growth in software and software-related service revenues for the quarter and we expect to have gained further market share," the co-CEO said.
Nonetheless, SAP fell 17.6 percent to US$37.60 a share in intra-day trading, as investors bailed on the stock.

SAP's archrival Oracle, meanwhile, also saw its stock sink, as investors worried SAP's woes is an industry problem and not just SAP-specific.
Oracle fell as much as 10.5 percent to US$17.43 a share in intra-day trading, compared to Friday's close.


Source: ZDNetAsia

Where skill, mindset and work-life balance come together

Q. I have been a logistics manager for the last nine years, and have a Management degree. As logistics has limited vertical scope, I am planning to switch to either business development or consulting.

My first option is to pursue ERP, but the concerns are:

a.	it will make me restart my career
b.	I will be "a visiting husband and father"--my understanding is that during initial phase as an ERP consultant, I will have to travel both with my family and alone. If one has a child who is schooling, then it's difficult to move family as per a project.
c.	I am not an engineer

My second option is to pursue an executive MBA course. This would give me the edge of starting better as far as placements would take me, at better positions and my current experience. But it's costly. Still, if I take a look at the investment returns, it is very good.

I am confused because ERP is growing and everyone is talking about it? Can you help me to choose the best in terms of current and future monetary and non-monetary perspective?

Career advice from Tay Kok Choon, country manager of JobStreet Singapore:

You will need to examine your mindset, work-life balance, skills and prospects when you are considering a career change.

Let's examine each of the above in relation to your question:

Mindset: You have concluded that logistics has limited vertical scope. In reality, as we progress along our career path, the pinnacle gets sharper and opportunities at the top become less abundant. You will face the same challenge in any other career that you plan to pursue.

The way that many people overcome this is to ensure to be the best in the field. Our experience shows that the best always prevails--they never fall out of the game.

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• An ABAP-trained MBA holder eyes an SAP-based job
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• Road to an ERP career in HR/Finance

Work-life balance: This is seriously considered as part of today�s career pursuit. In other words, people will not blindly choose a career and neglect their family life. I see that coming across in your question--that is a healthy move.

Like all new career moves, we need to spend an extensive amount of time to familiarize ourselves with the new environment and getting into the details of the job. That will expense a huge amount of time/nergy and to some point neglecting of your family.

Please ensure your family fully supports this new venture.

Skills: It poses the least problem of all issues. Our capacity to learn and acquire new knowledge has been very much enhanced by the Internet and further learning. Upgrading of skills may be necessary to keep up with your peers in the job market.

Prospects: All job opportunities provide good prospects. We need to seek out what best suits us and pursue it with passion.

Having considered all of the above and assuming your family is in full support to turn your dream into reality, our feel is that an MBA program will be relatively more useful. It will position you well for either a business development or consulting career. For these careers, a strong technical foundation within a vertical like logistics will be extremely helpful.

To re-establish yourself in the ERP field may come across as a longer path to your goal.

Source: ZDnetAsia

An expense that's worth it?

Q. I am male, about 35 years old, and have been working in a finance position for six years doing accounts payable.

My company is moving to Luxembourg and my friend promised me a job as an SAP data maintenance staff in Luxembourg. It is why I am going to do an SAP course in Singapore.

I have to pay all the tuition fees. Do you think it is worthwhile to pursue the course and work in SAP data maintenance? Will I get a high salary or is it the same level as an account payable job?

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Career advice from Stella Thevarakam, regional HR director of management and technology consulting firm ISS Consulting (M):

Definitely SAP Certification carries a lot of weight if you want to pursue a career in SAP.

The money you spend to get certified will soon pay back with your new SAP career.

The prospects are definitely better and the pay is better.

Source: ZDNETAsia

Netsuite CRM

Pros and Cons of SAP Business One

Pros:
# The user-defined fields very suitable for a lot of companies. Most packages in this price range do not allow you to create additional fields, but SBO allows you to do so very easily within two minutes or so. I usually use these fields for analytical management reports like SalesByCustomerGroup, SalesByItemGroup. SBO already has a group that can be attached to individual item or customer but it is only one level so if a client wants a sub-grouping within a main group, you can create a user defined fields which allows you to further select which subgroups an item belongs to.Also, user defined fields are very good if there is additional information to be printed on documents like Invoices, Credit Notes and etc. which are not available by default from the software

# Great import feature in the form of Data Transfer Workbench. I actually use the Data Transfer Workbench to import Goods Receipt Note into a Material Issue document as well as from a Material Issues document sorted by projects into a Bill Of Material. But to do the exporting, I actually created a miniature program to export the information outside of SAP Business One.

# Great drill-down feature. You can actually determine if a Purchase Order is actually satisfied with which GoodReceiptNote.

# To clarify, Version 6.5 now has multiple vendors to an Item Code. It also allows multiple shipping addresses to one customer but it still has only one Billing address.

# SBO also allows you to copy all the items on an Invoice to a new Invoice and then just select the customer code. This is a great time saving feature.

# Their pricing feature should be more than satisfactory allowing for price breaks as well as different pricing for different range of calendar dates. It also allows you to create Price List books to be attached to individual customer.

# The DragAndRelate feature useful for salesman. Their data entry also serves as an inquiry screen as well. When it serves as an inquiry screen, whatever you fill in those fields will act as criteria for a search process. Initially, I had a little problem coming to terms with it but now I admit it is pretty cool because it does not just restrict you to searching by customer code or invoice number only.



Cons:

# The reports are quite terrible in my opinion. It is more of an on screen inquiry as it allows you to drill down basing on the report generated. I tend to design management reports outside of SBO using Borland Delphi with a royalty free component FastReport. I am not even using Crystal Report because I usually like to give end-users a menu to select which report they intend to run

# It is not an MRP solution because it does not do any scheduling. As far as job costing is concerned, check with your consultant. In my present company, I set up several warehouses to designate as WIP stores and so whatever is left in those warehouses are considered to be WIP.

# Two main weakness in my opinion is their Banking module and Document Editing feature. The Banking module can do the data entry job but the client has to do it in different areas depending on the situation whether in the GL as a journal or the Banking module.
Their Report Designer (known as Document Editing) is only good for designing Invoices, Purchase Orders (SBO terms these as a marketing document). But I would not use it for Management Reports - I still like to use Delphi/FastReport for that purpose.