SAP

SAP is a German software company founded in 1972 by five former IBM engineers and based in Walldorf. It is best known for ERP (enterprise resource planning) software: one system where a company records its accounting, purchases, inventory, sales, production and payroll. When a factory sells a truckload of goods, the same record updates the stock, the invoice and the books, instead of each department keeping its own spreadsheet.

Its flagship product today is S/4HANA, which runs on HANA, SAP's own database that keeps data in memory so reports can be computed on the fly. Around it, SAP sells software for specific jobs: SuccessFactors for human resources, Ariba for purchasing, Concur for travel expenses, plus tools to analyze the data that all these systems collect.

SAP makes money from software licenses, yearly maintenance fees and, more and more, cloud subscriptions where SAP runs the system for the customer. Installing SAP is rarely quick: big companies spend months or years adapting it to their processes, usually with consulting firms that specialize in it. Once a company runs on SAP, its whole operation depends on it, which is why changing systems is a big decision.