Page 84 -

Chapter 3
number assigned by the SAP ERP system, and so on) and then review the delivery
document for the delayed cases. As another example, a customer may have a question about
an invoice it has received. The clerk can search the SAP ERP system for the invoice, and
the document flow will show all activity that led to the invoice. With an unintegrated
64
information system, researching the invoice would require checking more than one
information system and perhaps searching paper records as well.
Discount Pricing in SAP ERP
When a company installs an ERP system, it can configure it for a number of pricing
strategies. For example, various kinds of discounts can be allowed (based on item number
or for all items, based on unit price or total order value, with or without shipping charges
and taxes, by individual customer, by a class of customer, and so on). As a safeguard, the
system can enforce limits on the size of discounts to keep salespeople from offering
unprofitable or unapproved discounts.
Suppose a salesperson wants to give a certain customer a 10 percent discretionary
discount on NRG-A bars. But is the salesperson allowed to discount those bars? Is that
discount appropriate for that customer? If so, will the discount be so deep that the sale
will be unprofitable for Fitter? An ERP system automatically answers these questions.
Pricing, the process of determining how much to charge a particular customer, can be
very complex. To accommodate the various ways that companies offer price discounts,
SAP has developed a control mechanism it calls the condition technique. While detailed
discussion of the condition technique is beyond the scope of this text, Figure 3-10 shows
how a discount is automatically applied in the SAP ERP system.

Net price for
order, including
discounts

Base price is
$240/case

Discount is
10 percent
The production
cost of the 10
cases is $1,992

Source Line: SAP AG.

FIGURE 3-10 Pricing conditions for sales order

Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.