## 4 Case Study Analysis and Results
### ERP Mapping
The advantages deriving from the use of SAP are many [84]. * Improves business efficiency from an operational point of view, reducing costs and increasing control over company management. * The risk is lowered thanks to the integrity of the data and thanks to a more significant number of financial controls. * They increased management efficiency. The data are readily available as they are present in a single database. This allows to speed up and make business and decision-making processes more reliable and reduce the costs related to operational management. * The shared system allows more users to access a more significant number of information. * There is better management of human resources such as workers and employees. The SAP module FI manages the mandatory accounting process--financial accounting to generate the external disclosure (financial statements) and is further integrated by the module CO--controlling for managerial accounting (internal) purposes [54; 55; 85]. Moreover, many other modules deal with accounting and finance purposes, among them TR--treasury and EC--enterprise controlling [86]. The bunch of accounting-and-finance-related modules form the core of the SAP architecture, and they can be identified as the core AIS--accounting information system part of this ERP. Addressing the first research question requires presenting an overview of the leading business processes to match the ERP modules that facilitate the operations in that specific area. The ERPs and their necessary IT infrastructures are complex systems tailored for business processes [87; 88; 89; 90]. The complexity of ERPs depends on many factors like size, integration, compatibility, and industry. In the specific case of SAP, the German-based ERPs implemented by most multinational companies, several modules match multiple business needs and processes. Table 1, below, displays the most used functional modules (in this particular case, in the SAP system). Technical modules are not considered as they deal with the general management of the ERP [91; 92; 93; 94; 95; 96; 97]. It can be argued that centralised systems currently manage all the modules listed above. Data warehouses are used as centralised data repositories, and they can be located on-site or cloud-based [98]. An essential practical development is the project \"SAP Leonardo Blockchain\", which attempted to implement a blockchain platform in 2017 [99]. Leonardo was initially implemented as an IoT (Internet of things) platform, later transformed into an AI (artificial intelligence) one, and it is currently more focused on ML (machine learning) systems (an AI's subset) rather than on block \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Module Code** & **Business Function** & **Module Code** & **Business Function** \\ \hline FI & Financial Accounting & CO & Controlling \\ TR & Treasury Management & RE & Real Estate Management \\ EC & Enterprise Controlling & IM & Investment Management \\ SCM & Supply Chain Management & APO & Advanced Planning Optimization \\ MM & Material Management & LE & Logistics Execution \\ SD & Sales Distribution & CS & Customer Service \\ PP & Production Management & EHS & Environment Health and Safety \\ QM & Quality Management & LO & Logistics General \\ SRM & Supply Relationship Management & PM & Plant Management \\ PLM & Product Lifecycle Management & HR/HCM & Human Capital Management \\ ESS & Employee Self Service & MSS & Management Self Service \\ CRM & Customer Relationship Mgmt & FSCM & Financial Supply Chain Mgmt \\ GCR & Governance Risk Compliance & CPM & Corporate Performance Mgmt \\ PS & Project System & IS & Industry Specific \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: SAP Functional Modules 1.  
evant development have been recorded so far [100,101]. Furthermore, another vendor (SAP competitor) platform, Microsoft's Azure Blockchain Service, is set to be retired on 10 September 2021 [102], which can be considered as demonstrating integration challenges with ERP systems.