What makes SAP Business One ERP the right choice for SMEs?

SMEs categorize ERP either as a Luxury, Trend, or Necessity. With the world becoming a global village and business operations become increasingly complex, SMEs have been struggling to grow businesses and get hold of all siloed information across departments. Would an ERP then qualify as just a luxury or a trend?

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is a modular business tool that an organization can use for managing business operations across multiple departments like supply chain, payment management, invoicing, purchase, customer relationship, human resources, etc. These different workflows are integrated under a unified system in an ERP and managed through a centralized Database.

Traditionally ERP systems were priced astronomically and were best suited for large enterprises. It was becoming increasingly unmanageable for enterprises to manage decentralized, disparate systems and processes. Today, however, there is an awareness about the need for customized, smaller-scale ERP systems to help SMEs save more and improve operations.

Enter SAP Business One. With more than 60,000 SME customers across the globe and from a trusted provider like SAP, the Business One system (SAP Business One) sees more than a million end users from over 170 countries transforming the way SMEs work each year.

An ERP system that grows with your business

Typically, in an SME, various applications are used for accounts, purchases, CRM, project management, etc. Once you adopt SAP Business One as your ERP, you can integrate all disparate applications into a single product based on their business criticalities and priority metrics defined by your organization. The system provides seamless integration of all functional modules with easy-to-use workflows and user interfaces. It has extensive analytical and reporting capabilities that can provide a single customer/vendor/organization view to users across the organization. In short, with its scalability, flexibility, and advanced features, you can harness the power of a single core system to grow your business with confidence.

Why should you adopt SAP Business One (SAP B1) as your ERP System?

SAP Business One is the fastest-growing ERP software adopted by SMEs to transform their business. If you are still wondering why it would be a good fit for your organization, we bring below some of the key differentiators:

Simple and affordable.
Capture business information in a single scalable system and helps scale up the existing business.
Manage business functions across sales, finances, distribution, manufacturing, and CRM from a single integrated system.
Access to real-time reporting and analytics giving complete transparency over your business.
Be connected to the head office, associates, and subsidiaries. It allows serving the clients more efficiently. Also helps the inflow of information and achieves greater harmony in business.
Quick access reports and interactive dashboard reports.
Business Intelligence & SAP Business One can improve operational efficiency and productivity.
Track inventory spread across different geographic locations.
Deploy SAP B1 on the cloud or on-premises.
User-friendly interface and serves as your central access point. Access to the system is possible using mobile devices and browsers.
Analytics that allows you to access massive amounts of data in today’s digital economy.
Use the cloud or on-premises model to run your business and allow your team to connect via mobile devices no matter where they are.
Incorporate the data from external sensors and other sources and use innovative technologies to meet several business challenges.
It is also a flexible system that is customizable and tailored to your own business and industry needs.
SAP designed and built the product from the ground up, specifically for the small and mid-size businesses, so you can leverage the best experiences and practices that SAP has to offer.
SAP Business One runs on in-memory technology when you use the HANA database as the underlying platform. You can run it on Microsoft SQL as well. Either way, you have flexible deployment options.

What are the functionalities/modules covered in SAP Business One?

SAP Business One is a modular application catering to all your business and workflow requirements. Its key modules include the following:

Financial Management

Automate journal entries, accounts receivable, and other fundamental accounting processes.
Manage cash flow, control budgets, track fixed assets, and monitor project costs with precision and efficiency.
Simplify the management of fixed assets with a virtual function that eliminates the need for repetitive manual data entry.
Process reconciliations and payments faster via bank transfers, cheques, cash.
Create customized or standard reports using real-time data to improve audit reviews and business planning.

Sales and Customer Management

Track leads and sales opportunities right from the first contact to the deal closure.
Turn prospects into paying customers by creating, managing, and analyzing marketing activities.
Synchronize and manage customer contacts stored in Microsoft Outlook and save critical customer data in one place.
Efficiently manage warranty contracts and service agreements.
Enter and respond to service calls quickly.
Design reports on every aspect of the sales process using templates.

Inventory & Production Functionality

Manage inventory in multiple warehouses and locations using FIFO, actual by lot/serial, moving average, or standard costing from a central module.
Manage inventory by bin location in warehouses.
Track goods by implementing serial and batch numbers through the inventory cycle.
Generate comprehensive item list, transaction, and valuation reports
Min/max designation and reporting.
Maintain multiple item prices and units of measure in both local and foreign currency.
Record goods receipts and goods issues.
Track stock transfers between warehouses.
Enable consignment, drop-ship, and back-to-back orders.
Use the pick-and-pack to fill deliveries.
Avoid full physical inventories and stock-taking delays by performing inventory cycle counts.
Manage shipping and returns.
Maintain and create multilevel bills of materials, resources, and text/instructions.

Purchasing

Streamline procurement processes, including requisition requests, purchase orders, and goods receipts creation and returns management.
Match documents, view information trails and handle multiple currencies to improve audits.
Manage detailed purchasing data in a centralized user-friendly interface.
View account balance and purchase analysis while maintaining purchase item information with price lists and tax information.
Lower costs and optimize your supply chain relationships.
Process credit memos, accounts payable invoices, cancellations, with PO references.
Material needs and schedule purchases.
Use your mobile device or desktop to generate integrated reports and display them in various formats with real-time data to understand what matters most to the business.

Business Intelligence

Access data from multiple sources, create and customize reports in various layouts with minimal IT overhead.
Use SAP Business One integrated with standard Microsoft Excel functionalities to view your business from different perspectives.
Get insights faster, drill down into data, use workflow-based alerts and search assistance.
Improve your sales performance and cash balance visibility with predefined KPIs and analytics.
Enhance your reports and make better decisions with powerful visualizations using SAP Lumira, SAP Business One edition.

Analytics and Reporting

Design interactive dashboards and intuitive reports to answer your most pressing business concerns.
Accurately track cash flow for assessing performance and taking corrective actions.
Access information and evaluate it in real-time with powerful analytics.
Simplify the data search and on-demand creation of standard or ad hoc reports.

Why is SAP Business One better than other SME ERP systems?

SAP Business One is one of the undisputed leaders in the SME ERP market due to its extensive functionalities, apt pricing, and scalable models aligned to your company’s growth. As an ERP, SAP Business One can be the central core in integrating multiple functions across your company and providing a single view across all processes, data, and systems. A few of the differentiating parameters are as listed below:

Superior technology architecture and Enhanced Security
A single view of processes and systems across the organization
Data Validations and Substitution
Data Handling Capacity
A multi-level document approval system
Low Cost of Ownership, Implementation, and Maintenance
Concurrent Multilingual Capability
Data Synchronization
Consolidation of Multiple LOBs, Companies
Enhanced Performance & Stability
Short response time
Data ownership
Control functions keep a watch on errors

Going Forward with SAP Business One

Knowledge of the existing ecosystem, having an experienced partner, and opting for the right solution are factors that define the success of any ERP software implementation. For implementation, you have the option to choose between (a) On-premise (purchase licenses one time and pay annual maintenance fees) and (b) cloud-based subscription type. The actual pricing depends on the licensing type, infrastructure, data migration requirements, choice of DB, etc. At CCS, we work with growing SME’s to architect & build the right business and functional specification to fit their vision and budget. Read more about our SAP Business One practice and how we have implemented SAP Business One for leading SMEs across the globe.