Onwards with Duet

About a year ago, SAP announced its first Duet customer, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC). This company is the operator of a 532-mile-long toll highway system with $580 million annual toll revenues and 2,300 employees.

The PTC purchased Duet from SAP but the business solution Duet is a collaboration of SAP and Microsoft and Duet can be bought from both giants. This application enables SAP back end systems to connect with Microsoft Office front end products like Outlook.

Any company wanting to implement Duet needs to meet certain pre-requisites. They need to have a running implemention of mySAP ERP 2004, NetWeaver, and Microsoft Exchange Server and Windows Server 2003. If any of those mentioned is not present, then Duet cannot sing.

As was proven by Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC), they have experienced benefit from implementing Duet and they are still foreseeing long term benefits coming. But for those who are just starting to implement Duet from scratch, it could be a daunting task just like any other solutions intended for long term beneficial effects. Many of the SAP customers who have been joint customers (both SAP and Microsoft) have already been using Exchange Server and Windows Server so implementing Duet could be an incremental investment. Duet exposes employees using certain scenarios to data which have been pretty difficult to get to or hard to be trained on during the past.

For SAP customers who have been considering an upgrade to mySAP ERP, there might be certain incentives if they want to include Duet but the product is still sold separately.
The Duet Version 1 and the upcoming value packs contain several user scenarios that can be easy to access without having to leave the Microsoft Office environment.
The Time Management scenario is designed for employees needing to record work and corresponding billable hours with the help of Microsoft Outlook calendar and the appointments will then be automatically synchronized and updated with mySAP ERP.
The Budget Monitoring scenario is for managers who want access to financial decisions so they can make sharp moves. They can use the budget monitoring, alerts for budget variances and postings, transfers of budgets and posting adjustments functionalities for doing their responsibilities.
The Organizational Management scenario is for all employees and managers to work on HR related tasks and get connected through Microsoft Outlook.

Other business scenarios include Leave Management, Travel Management, Reports and Analytics, Sales and Management, Purchasing Management, Demand Planning, Recruitment Management and Contract Life Cycle Management

I hope this beautiful duet can move on for many years. Perhaps one may ask which vendor to buy duet from (SAP or Microsoft). Well, customers can of course buy Duet from either company. But potential customers are encouraged to discuss with both vendors so they can be advised based on their other existing products from SAP and Microsoft and they are totally have their choice of procurement of the products through whatever channel they really want. They should also know that both vendors are giants in the industry and support can be easy to come.