Very general SAP question

I'm not an SAP expert, but I come from a business unit within my company that depends on SAP. I'm always shocked at what is possible with it. I come from the business side of things and I'm very interested in perhaps stepping into a future role where I can learn more about my company's use of SAP (perhaps some basic configuration roles if I could find one). I've stepped into ABAP code a few times and I'd love to learn more about it, but I'm definately not ready for any kind of development or coding.

In any case, some (but not all) of our business areas use a common setup in ECC involving a number of communication structures (in particular, or order and freight processing). Each structure has various components, and each component has a number of different fields. I've noticed that the business areas that use APO don't have the same setup at all.

My question is if any SAP experts here work in an area with a setup like this (either in configuration or development) that could elaborate on the benefits of this kind of configuration for something like order or freight processing, AR, AP, etc. ? Also, is there any recommendations on reading material that could help someone with a business background learn enough about SAP configuration and development in ways that can help me communicate with some of our IT people? My company's design docts are sparse on technical details and our technical specs are often "too technical" and not intended to be used by someone with a business background like me. I feel like I need a little more perspective.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.