SAP Business One
Contents:
- What is SAP Business One?
- SAP Business One Functionality Overview
- SAP Businesss One User Interface
- SAP Business One Third Party Extensions
- SAP Business One Demo
- SAP Business One History
- SAP Business One Deployment
- SAP Business One Industry Fit
- SAP Business One Pros & Cons
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What is SAP Business One (B1)?
SAP Business One, also known as SAP B1 is an enterprise resource planning tool from German software house SAP. It was designed to run the back office processes of small businesses (SMB's). Business One offers a wide range of functionality that covers a multitude of business and industry requirements.
Broadly speaking, SAP Business One has modules which cover financial management and accounting, stock control, sourcing, production and manufacturing, procurement, sales and customer relationship management as well as service plus analytics, reporting and business intelligence.
B1 runs on both SAP's proprietary database platform, HANA as well as Microsoft SQL depending on the flavour of the software you choose.
SAP Business One is almost exclusively sold via SAP VAR's, also known as value added resellers as opposed to directly through SAP.
SAP Business One Functionality Overview
SAP Business One offers several modules as part of the core product as well as many advanced modules and third party extensions. In this section we review the core functionality and modules included in SAP's SMB solution, SAP Business (SAP B1):
Financial Management
SAP Business One offers accounting functions including: accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger, fixed assets, cash flow management, reconciliation, bank connectivity and payments. B1 is designed to automate journal entry, AP & AR and enable easy management of budgets and fixed asset tracking with standard and customized reporting and business intelligence (BI) capabilities.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
SAP Business One offers CRM functionality for end to end lead and opportunity management, marketing campaign management and tracking, sales order processing and service management including warranties. B1 also natively integrates with Microsoft Outlook to stay on top of customer and prospect communications.
Purchasing & Inventory Control
SAP Business One provides SMB's with procurement and stock capabilities covering warehouse management, real time stock management, financial accounting integration, purchase order management and end to end procurement processes.
Production Planning
SAP Business One offers small and growing businesses inventory management and production capabilities covering several costing methodologies, goods receipts, bin management, material requirements planning (MRP) and stock transfers. B1 enables multilevel bill of materials (BOM), production orders, backflush and material requirements forecasting.
Business Intelligence (BI) & Reporting
SAP Business One provides several reports as standard and also through reporting customization with extensions such as SAP Lumira & SAP Analytics Cloud for visualization.
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SAP Business One User Interface (UI)
SAP Business One has seen several user interfaces and user experiences throughout its history. The latest release of the software has a user interface which is based upon SAP Fiori, the user experience technology which powers enteprise SAP ERP solutions such as S/4 HANA.
Third Party Extensions
SAP Business One (SAP B1) is a product which is sold and implemented primarily through SAP Value Added Resellers (VARs) and these partners have also contributed to the products development over the years, by developing a whole host of third party solution extensions.
These extensions increase the capabilities of the core SAP Business One product to enable it to provide enhanced functionality for different industries, geographies and use cases. However, be aware that this functionality is not always 100% supported or mandated by SAP and fundamentally you are buying software and extensions with the proviso that these partners will continue to support it.
Some of the SAP Business One solution extensions include:
- eCommerce & online web shops.
- EDI integration
- Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)
- Freight Management
- Dealer Management Systems
- Rental Management Solutions
SAP Business One Demo
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SAP Business One History
SAP Business One was first created in Israel under the name of 'TopManage' in English or 'Menehal' in 1996 by TopManage Financial Systems, designed to handle the back office needs of small businesses. After proving it's capabilities in the Israeli market, the company executives began to sell TopManage in new markets including Europe and South America from 2000.
At the time, SAP could only offer ERP solutions suiting the needs of large organisations and so in 2002, SAP acquired TopManage, allowing them to provide subsidiaries of their large customers, as well as SMB & SME independents with a cost effective, integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.
Since 2002, SAP has continued to develop and support the product with various enhancements including software development kits (SDK), single sign on (SSO), Microsoft Office integration and more.
Since the acquisition, SAP has primarily sold SAP Business One (SAP B1) via it's value added reseller network (VAR) ecosystem rather than selling the solution directly. SAP's VAR partners allows them to scale their sales and implementation efforts globally for SAP Business One, localising the products for different markets, plus providing local consultancy and industry expertise.
SAP Business One Deployment
SAP Business One (B1) can be deployed in many different ways including via software-as-a-service (SaaS), On-Premise or Private Hosted. SAP delivers the SaaS version, whereas On-Premise can be hosted in your own datacentre or preferred datacentre provider. Many SAP B1 partners will host the solution for you in a Private Hosted scenario.
There are some limitations of functionality and flexibility based on how you choose to deploy SAP Business One (SAP B1) so always clarify this with your chosen SAP value added reseller (VAR).
SAP Business One Industry Fit
Which industries and businesses are best suited to SAP Business One SaaS ERP and why?
Retail & Ecommerce
SAP Business One offers a lot of functionality that can help retailers and ecommerce businesses including integrated financial management & accounting, warehouse and inventory management, supply chain plus industry solutions for fashion and clothing.
Discrete Manufacturing
SAP Business One provides a rock solid foundation for small businesses in the discrete manufacturing industry.
SAP Business One Pro's & Con's
SAP Business One (SAP B1) is a well established enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that has been sold for 20+ years. What are the pro's and con's of the solution and in which scenarios does it really shine?
✅ SAP Business One Pro's & Strengths:
- Mature product with tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
- Deployment flexibility for On-Premise, SaaS or Private hosted Cloud.
- Large ecosystem of consultants, VAR's and partners.
- Many industry specific requirements have been developed, albeit mainly via 3rd party add-ons and extensions.
❌ SAP Business One Con's & Weaknesses:
- Heavy reliance on partner addons for deeper and wider functionality such as multi-entity support, advanced warehousing and manufacturing.
- Very mature product with possible successors in the SAP portfolio under development.
- Customization can lead to IT debt.
SAP Business One (SAP B1) Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is SAP Business One suitable for small businesses (SMB) & SME's?
SAP Business One was purpose built to meet the specific needs of small businesses (SMB) and small to medium enterprises (SME) organisations. SAP B1's customer base ranges from organisations with as few as 5 employees, up to several thousand.
How much does SAP Business One cost?
As with any ERP solution, SAP Business One has it's own set licensing, implementation and support costs.
What's the difference between SAP Business One (B1) and SAP Business ByDesign (ByD)?
SAP Business ByDesign is an ERP solution designed for the Cloud, whereas SAP Business One was built for On-Premise deployments, although 'SaaS' & Private Cloud options have been developed since. Aside from this, SAP Business ByDesign offers more capabilities out of the box, whereas SAP Business One covers 'advanced' functionality using third party or partner developed, SAP certified solution extensions.
Is SAP Business One Cloud based?
SAP B1 was developed originally as an On-Premise or perpetual license solution in 1996.
Today, SAP Business One is still available On-Premise but also as a software as a service (SaaS) solution or as a Private Hosted solution ERP.
How do I install or implement SAP Business One?
SAP Business One is primarily implemented by SAP's value added reseller network and therefore it's generally not recommended that you try to install the solution yourself.