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Target
market. Most people have considered SAP as a solution for the Fortune
500 type of company. However SAP claim 38% of their customers have
revenues less than $250 million. SAP now has two offerings for small and
medium-sized businesses (SMBs) 1) MySAP All-in-One is targeted at
companies with revenue of $100 million to $250 million. It’s the mySAP
Business Suite scaled down and preconfigured for specific industries.
2) SAP Business One is meant for companies with revenue of $5
million to $100 million. SAP Business One is not mySAP light – it is a
completely different solution acquired from an
Israeli software company called TopManage Financial Solutions Ltd.
in 2002.
Extensive functionality.
SAP Business One is more than an accounting system. It has all the basics,
including financials, distribution and light manufacturing. It
distinguishes itself by also including customer relationship management,
work flow and human resources.
SAP is the biggest
ERP software vendor in the world and is committed to making SAP Business
One a success. It has 60 developers – mostly out of Israel, where the
system was first created – enhancing and maintaining the system. It has 40
product managers in different countries ensuring that local requirements
are understood and built into the system. SAP Business One is integrated
with its big brother and if you outgrow SAP Business One, the company
claims you can easily upgrade.
Customer relationship
management (CRM). Business One’s CRM system includes contact
management, salesforce automation and a very impressive service management
system that includes dispatching, contract management, warranty tracking,
knowledge management (track problem resolution) and billing for services.
SAP Business One
Financials. You get
up to 10 segments, each with up to 20 characters. The system also offers
analysis codes (project base and cost centre) that can be attached either
to account segments or transactions. Other financial features include
allocations and unlimited budgets.
Distribution.
Business One includes quotes, returns, flexible pricing (multiple price
lists, contract pricing, quantity breaks, group pricing, etc.), multiple
warehouses, serial number tracking, landed cost, alternative items, vendor
and customer item number cross-referencing.
User interface. It
looks good and relatively easy to use. Features such as drag and relate
make it easy to find additional information about anything.
Work flow. With work flow you are able to route transactions
such as requisitions to the appropriate person for approval. You
can also create alerts for cases where, for example, inventory falls
below a threshold.
Light Manufacturing. MRP, Demand Planning based on history
and manual entry. For more complex planning – can use 3rd party
program. Order recommendations. Create PO or Production Order automatically.
Update Bill of Material on the fly for Engineer to Order. Track
work in progress. For more complex manufacturing, use 3rd party
product from n’ware.
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