Amazon.com Review: For those interested in redefining the way in which their business does its business, SAP R/3 Business Blueprint: Understanding the Business Process Reference Model is worth a perusal. Authors Curran and Keller define their central idea--business engineering--as a method by which information technology is used to design and reengineer business processes, such as sales and distribution, instead of simply automating them. And as is clear from the title, this concept is explored almost exclusively within the context of SAP R/3.
The book is broken down into four sections: "Business Engineering," "Process Engineering," "Architecture," and "Framework & Tools." These segments follow a sliding scale that goes from MBA esoterica to practical application to behind-the-scenes implementation. The first section is dedicated to such things as mapping out global goals and identifying the organization processes that need to be reengineered. Next, the authors get more fundamental, looking at ways in which SAP R/3 can enable a retooling of existing practice, illustrating this thought via case studies. Lastly, the book examines the details of an R/3 system and the tools in the R/3 arsenal. A terrific discipline-spanning volume, SAP R/3 Business Blueprint's one shortcoming is that it never addresses a world in which SAP R/3 might not be the ultimate answer to an organization's efficiency problems. But perhaps it wasn't meant to. --Sarah L. Roberts-Witt
Informative But Poorly Written There's a lot of relevant information in this book, but the authors have a repetitive, rambling, and sometimes vague style that makes it anything but a pleasure to read. You really have to work to sift the wheat from the chaff here. It could be easily condensed to half its size without losing any information.
Very well written I don't normally comment, but I don't know what book the reader from Minn. was reading. I'm guessing he meant to review a different book. This is not a "German" book at all. This is the clearest, best written book on SAP I've read, and I've read most of them. If you need an introduction to the business logic behind SAP, this is the book to buy.
Need English Version? This is my third book on SAP R/3. This book is another example of poorly written book on SAP. Though the topics are categorized very carefully and intelligently, the text in the book is in the language that requires 'translation in English.' The terms are either ill defined or if defined, then they have been used inconsistently. It was hard to get out the concept behind a topic, since authors give scattered information without focusing on main idea. Also, authors could have written the business processes (SAP modules) in more like step-by-step (or recipe) method, rather than in 'composition' format.
The SAP Bible Mr. Curran's book is the best book on SAP R/3 on the market. Everyone interested in this area should own this book.
Good introduction to SAP R/3--but not for the experts This book gives a general insight on SAP R/3 functional (and a little bit of technical) model. This book can be very good introduction for the corporate executives with very little or no SAP R/3 experience. However, the contents of this book can be too obvious for those who already have worked with SAP R/3 system.