Am I running an outdated system?
Why does SAP take so many steps and use so many "documents" to execute a process?

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Your question is rather general, and a comprehensive answer would differ from process to process. But if you feel that it takes too many "documents" to execute a process, I suggest you look into the design of your particular implementation. SAP's past reputation for complexity and difficulty is not reflective of the norm today. So if processes are too complex, one of two things is more likely to be at the root of the problem. Either you're running an older system that was implemented according to past standards of complexity, or you are running a newer system that hasn't been tuned correctly.

Either way, the question is not so much "why" SAP takes so many steps and documents to execute a process, but why your particular system functions in this manner.

This was first published in April 2005