From one of my internal contacts who worked there & had to actually interface with the SAP implementation:
1) It's one of the largest SAP deployments in the US if not the world
2) SAP (at the time) was the only one who could offer an ERP that scaled to do what Apple wanted.
Homegrown enterprise software is one of those things that sounds great until you realize you're re-inventing a lot of code dealing with regulations (tax/hr legal) that is other companies bread & butter so it's worth "paying their price" rather than getting it wrong and being on the wrong side of litigation/legislation.
1) It's one of the largest SAP deployments in the US if not the world
2) SAP (at the time) was the only one who could offer an ERP that scaled to do what Apple wanted.
Homegrown enterprise software is one of those things that sounds great until you realize you're re-inventing a lot of code dealing with regulations (tax/hr legal) that is other companies bread & butter so it's worth "paying their price" rather than getting it wrong and being on the wrong side of litigation/legislation.