Why SAP Business One ERP is a Boon for Small Businesses

Is SAP ERP only for large businesses?

The common misconception in the market is the SAP only provide software to large corporations. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Let’s explore how SAP Business One (SAP’s small and mid-market ERP offering) can give your small business access to enterprise-grade resources at a small business cost.

Managing cash flow, hiring and managing staff, dealing with government regulations and driving growth. These are the typical challenges that keep every small business owner awake at night.

While SAP is a major global company, it’s not just the big guys that can benefit. If you are a business owner with a turnover of AED 5 million or more, SAP Business One can help you manage and scale your business more effectively by bringing together your production, inventory, purchasing, financials, sales, reporting and HR systems together into a single platform.

With that in mind, here’s an SAP Business One ERP overview.

SAP Business One is well-suited for wholesale distribution, manufacturing, service industries and retail because of its inventory management capabilities. Inventory management has always been one of Business One’s strengths. The ERP systems is meant for up-and-coming companies that have outgrown entry-level software packages, as these don’t usually handle inventory very well.

In addition to the usual core modules for general ledger, sales and purchasing, SAP Business One provides CRM, service management, project management, inventory and material requirements planning.

SAP Business One also includes light manufacturing, which is suitable for most companies with modest manufacturing and inventory management requirements. A variety of third-party extensions are available for businesses that require more robust manufacturing functionality.

SAP Business One is potentially a good choice for companies that do business globally because the software supports multiple currencies. It also supports numerous country localizations, including country-specific legal requirements, tax and banking. Business One is available in 27 languages and is localized for over 40 countries around the world.

Anyone interested in using Business One should carefully weigh the ERP system’s benefits and advantages.

Most SME accounting and ERP systems still take a modular approach, allowing you to piece together financial accounting, customer relationship management, human resources (HR) management, and complex inventory management. SAP Business One has a solid accounting core, but integrates functionality in all of these other areas seamlessly across multiple modules through its benefits administration (BA) module.

On the plus side, SAP has continued to invest in developing Business One, and enables other tools within the SAP ecosystem to work with Business One. Most notable among these is Crystal Reports, which enables users to draw data from Business One. Users can also choose to get access to the HANA database. SAP also continues to invest in an enterprise platform that is meant to trickle down to the Business One customer base. SAP aims to enhance its IoT, blockchain, mobile and other transformative technologies as well.

SAP has always placed a strong emphasis on adaptability and integration, and Business One has a reputation for quality and flexibility. In addition, the software has always had strong application program interfaces (APIs). There’s even the capability to track projects and perform predictive business analytics by using advanced features of the SAP HANA database.

Database Choices: Cloud vs. On-Premises

SAP Business One offers the flexibility of deploying locally on a user company’s own servers, in a private cloud with a dedicated server or in a public cloud with a shared server. Although Business One wasn’t originally created as a native cloud product, SAP has worked on adapting the product to a multi-tenant cloud environment.

Companies that choose Business One will also need to decide on the underlying database version they want. The ERP system runs on both Microsoft SQL Server and SAP HANA. Most new customers are choosing HANA because of its speed and flexibility. SAP has announced that new feature enhancement efforts will be focused primarily on the HANA version of Business One.

Pricing

SAP Business One is sold through a network of certified value-added resellers (VARs), which also provide implementation services and ongoing support.

Business One is priced on a named-user basis. There are several different user types. A professional user has access to all system functionality and is therefore the most expensive. Limited users have access to a subset of the system features and are priced lower. Limited roles include CRM and sales users, financial users and logistics users. A system administrator can restrict access to various systems based on data security requirements.

Independent Software Vendor Add-ons

Business One is meant to be flexible and adaptable. SAP placed a strong emphasis on APIs, thus enabling software developers to build extensions and vertical add-ons that could enhance the product and extend its addressable market. Hundreds of independent software vendors have used SAP’s technology roadmap to create SAP Solution Extensions, which integrate with Business One.

SAP Solution Extensions include horizontal products for application programming automation, usability, document management and credit card processing, as well as focused vertical extensions for discrete manufacturing, food and beverage, medical devices and many others.

A majority of the companies that use Business One require at least one add-on product to address requirements that are not included in the ERP’s core functionality. SAP recommends that potential purchasers work with VARs to select third-party add-ons. VARs know the products in the marketplace; they can help find the software needed to address specific requirements. The best third-party products are certified by SAP.

Integration

SAP offers a number of integration options for Business One.

For example, there are a number of integration tools — both from SAP and from third parties — that provide adapters to connect to external products and manage loosely-coupled integration workflows. These connect to e-commerce platforms to shipping companies to EDI services or to a myriad of other software and services that will enhance the reach of the ERP system.

Here are some of the ways that SAP Business One can have a positive impact on your business, particularly if you are ready to start scaling up.

Big Solution for a Small Price

Many small businesses have operational requirements which are just as complex as larger organizations. The great thing about SAP Business One is you can access the same kind of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system multinationals use, without the hefty price tag. SAP provides the same kinds of tools – business intelligence and analytics, sales forecasting and management, customer relationship management – in one integrated solution.

Greater Financial Visibility

Dealing with different data across ten different spreadsheets? By connecting your financial operations in real time with other key processes in your business – like inventory management, purchasing and sales – you can speed up the pace of transactions and improve your cash flow.

SAP Business One makes it possible to select which employees have access to sensitive data such as salaries and expenditures. So not everyone in your business needs to know your business.

Improve Supply Chain Management

For any small business, managing vendor quotes, supplies and payments is a juggle. SAP Business One gives you more visibility and control over the order to pay cycle and provides a better way to manage your PO, receipts, invoices, returns, and payments. Optimise your buying with simple dashboard reporting and match goods receipts with inventory warehouse levels in real time.

Better Anticipate Customer Needs

Bring your sales and customer relationship management functions closer together. Track progress from the start of the deal to the end of the deal and improve your pipeline accuracy. Once your prospect becomes a customer, you can manage all of your customer relationship and marketing activity through a single platform. Having all your data in the one place, enables you to build more effective servicing and communication programs.

Industry Best Implementation

SAP Business One immediately gives you best practice systems no matter what industry you are in. The solution can be customized for your wholesale, manufacturing, construction or distribution business, to name a few. And it’s fairly quick to implement compared to other solutions on the market.

Improve Decision Making

Create and customize all the reports you need to give you greater confidence in your decision making. You can configure the settings and report on the data that’s important to you, and can support a more agile approach to decision making.

Easy to Access Training and Interface

SAP has invested in plenty of on-line training and user help so you can easily get your team and new staffers up to speed. User Interface of SAP Business One is intuitive and users find the UI very simple to use. Some customers are under the impression that users need to be high on computer literate to be able to operate SAP Business One System. This is a myth. In fact, there are several customers where end users having even limited educational background (let alone computer literacy) are using SAP Business One system with ease and comfort.

Global Best Practices

Adopting SAP Business One will, practically, automatically help you run your company better – in terms of streamlining of operations, increasing productivity, reduction in cost, better customer relations and so on. This is possible because SAP incorporates global Best Practices in its products – on the business process side and on technology side.

Future Proof Investment

SAP Business One comes from the world leader in Enterprise Solution domain – SAP SE. SME customers are the largest in percentage terms of its total number of customers. SAP is highly committed to SME customers and offers them great value not only during the time of acquisition of the software application for the first time but for years to come.

SAP keeps publishing its software roadmaps for further improvements and new feature functionalities in SAP Business One regularly. It also keeps releasing updates and upgrades to the solution consistently.

As a customer, your investment in SAP Business One keeps giving you returns on an ongoing basis as SAP incorporates new innovations in the product which ultimately have a positive impact on your business on a recurring basis all the way into the future.

Low Total Cost of Ownership

Investing in an enterprise application like SAP Business One is a key decision for company’s management. As a part of the evaluation process it should assess the total cost of ownership of the solution (TCO) which includes one-time as well as on-going costs.

SAP Business One offers low TCO. Be it licenses, hardware, implementation and on-going support – the price points are attractive in the context of a business case.

Boost Your Company’s Branding and Perception

Running your company on SAP Business One not only gives you direct benefits with respect to its operational performance but it also helps in enhancing your company’s reputation in the market since SAP as a brand itself enjoys high credibility. Whether it’s dealing with potential customers or investors or collaboration partners, you will stand a notch higher in their evaluation process should you be running your company on SAP.

SAP Business One gives you access to enhanced visibility and better decision making at a small business’ cost. SMEs are in particular subject to greater improvement opportunities since most of them are operating in a traditional manner and have probably not taken any significant step towards improvement in ‘management’ of business leveraging Information Technology.

An Enterprise solution like SAP Business One has tremendous potential in helping the company run themselves at higher efficiency levels with increased visibility in operations, reduction in manual and repetitive work, reduction in cost (better inventory control, more checks and balances) and enhanced customer relationship.

To understand more on how SAP Business One ERP can streamline your operations from start to finish, gain instant access to complete information, and accelerate profitable growth, feel free to reach out to us.