Sap Review

Introduction
SAP wants to shatter what they consider the SAP myth - i.e., that their systems are only for the largest of companies and are too complicated, too costly and take too long to implement. SAP says even their existing suite of solutions "mySAP Business Suite" does not deserve the bad SMB rap. Yes, it's for large companies, but they claim 38% of their customers bring in less than $250million. SAP now has two more offerings for SMBs: The list price for SAP Business One is $4,250 per user. SAP claims it takes 25 days on average for implementation; the average cost of an implementation, including licence and services, will be between $50,000 and $75,000 -- depending on the number of users
Analysis
Assets | Liabilities |
Extensive functionality. SAP Business One is more thanan 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. | With SAP Business One you get it all whether you want it or not. The only exception is that you can get just the CRM component without the rest. |
The vendor. SAP is the biggest ERPsoftware 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 SAPBusiness One, the company claims you can easily upgrade. | The question is whether SAP will ever convince people that its systems are suitable not only for the Fortune 500 but also for SMBs. |
Architecture. The system now supports the Microsoft SQL Server database and the Microsoft Windows operating system. Soon it will also support IBM's DB2 database. By providing SDK (software developmentkit), SAP makes it easier to integrate with other systems. | SAP Business One is not yet a web-based system, which provides a number of advantages (including better remote access). SAP will offer a web-based version in the future. In the meantime, a product such as Citrix is a good way to improve remote access. |
Customer relationship management (CRM). Business One's CRM system includes contactmanagement, 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 CRM is not an add-on - it seems to be interwoven throughout the system, making the terminology commonly used to describe CRM (as front end) and ERP (as back end)obsolete. | To handle marketing automation in Business One, you will require integration into Outlook. |
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. Analysis codes are a great way to keep your chart of accounts slim. Other financialfeatures include allocations and unlimited budgets. | The standard reports are fixed and there is not a lot of flexibility unless you use a third-party product called Vision from Lasata Software. Also, Business One does not support inter-company transactions - although this is scheduled for later this year. Consolidation functionality is scheduled for release in 2005, but is currently supported viaLasata Software. Another limitation is that there is a maximum of two analysis codes. |
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 and an automatic summary wizard...