The business landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. Today, businesses need to pay attention to so many different aspects in order to serve customers in the best way possible. The changing business landscape has made traditional ways of managing business processes obsolete. Agile and automated business processes are the need of the hour. While the big businesses can afford to have enough bandwidth to make their processes automated and agile, the small businesses usually don’t have the necessary bandwidth. This is where SAP Business One ERP comes in.
SAP Business One is specifically made for small businesses so they can benefit from automating their processes. A smooth flow of information is the hallmark of a good business process. SAP Business One empowers growth-focused businesses to establish a culture where there is a single platform for all the business data. And this platform is accessible to all.
A good SAP Business One Partner can help you:
- Make management convenient and effective by providing a coherent and unified top-down view of every aspect
- Ensure maximum utilisation and optimisation of all resources; nothing goes to waste
- Make your business a 24/7, global powerhouse by leveraging the power of the cloud
In this article, we will go over what exactly SAP Business One is, what you should look for when you set out to choose an SAP Business One partner, and the best SAP partner for your needs.
What is SAP Business One? How Can It Help Grow Your Business?
SAP Business One is a one-stop software solution designed specifically for SMEs. It is a comprehensive Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system which greatly improves transparency, efficiency, productivity and decision-making.
SAP Business covers all the needs an SME might have. Some of its key features include:
- Sales and Customer Management are made easy with forecasting, segmentation and relations management tools.
- Tools like supplier databases, stock trackers and pricing managers greatly facilitate Purchasing and Inventory Management.
- Minimise cost and time overruns with an in-built Project Manager and its inbuilt time and expense trackers.
- Accounting and Financial Management become super convenient, with all your financials collated in one place, and in-built ledgers, cash managers and more.
- Holistic Manufacturing and Production Management capabilities include material requirements planning, resource management and production scheduling.
- SAP Business One also covers Human Resource Management and helps you ensure your team is always performing to its full potential.
- Powerful Analytics tools provide real-time reporting on several Key Performance Indicators and help streamline business processes
All in all, SAP Business One is a perfect fit for SMEs, as its flexibility, customizability, and scalability allow it to be tailored to fit the specific needs of every small business. Custom third-party apps can also be integrated to extend their functionality. Today, more than 55,000 companies across the world use SAP B1 to improve their operations.
To make the most of this powerful software suite, it is recommended you find a reliable and certified SAP Business One Partner to help integrate this software into your business, train staff and provide after-sales support. Read on to find out what exactly you should be on the lookout for.
How to Choose an SAP Business One Partner? What to Look For?
Any tool is only as useful as the person that uses it. To make the most of the powerful capabilities of SAP Business One, finding the right partner to help you leverage this platform is essential. Planning, implementation, customisation and support are important steps of the process, and the right partner can make each step quicker and more convenient,
while the wrong one can make things go haywire and unnecessarily complicated. It can get quite overwhelming to choose, considering the complexity of the software and the number of different factors. So here is a checklist of questions you should consider before choosing:
Is the potential partner and their team certified by SAP?
This is the first thing you should be on the lookout for! SAP certifies organisations and teams that are authorised to provide support for its software, and ensuring your SAP partner has all the relevant qualifications is crucial.
Does the potential SAP Partner have the appropriate expertise and experience?
This is extremely important! The lifeblood of any IT service is the quality and experience of their team, and you should pay careful attention to this. Even if certified by SAP, different partners can have different areas of expertise, and if they have a proven track record of working with similar businesses or sectors as yours, it can make the whole process much more painless.
A team with many years of experience will have knowledge of current best practices, and there will often be a marked improvement in cost, time, and support. They can also offer insights based on having completed similar projects. Conversely, a team with expertise in a different sector might not be the best fit for your specific needs.
What do previous clients say about the company and their user experience?
One of the best ways to judge the quality of a potential SAP partner is to find out what other customers say about the service. Ask the partner for customer references that demonstrate their ability to successfully deliver on their promises. Getting input from previous clients can give you a complete picture of the process, potential problems, what type of businesses the partner has worked with in the past, and what their support is like.
Is the SAP Business One partner known for being secure?
These days, data leaks have become worryingly common. To protect the integrity of your business and keep it safe, it is very important that the partner has a focus on and a track record of being secure and protecting data well. A conversation about security measures with the potential partner is a must.
Is the partner price competitive, and are you getting your money’s worth?
Obviously, the cost is a major concern for any business, and your chosen SAP partner is no exception. It is important to consider what the pricing scheme of the partner is, what you get for that price, and what the competition is like. Asking the partner for price quotes and comparing them to other offerings is a no-brainer. If there is a difference in price, you should inquire about the reasons. Just being cheap is not a benefit; what’s important is value, both in terms of service quality and features.
How big is the partner?
This is another important factor to consider. On the one hand, a large organisation often has more resources and scale to help your business and may beat others on price. However, a smaller partner can often be much more responsive and flexible. If your business has special requirements, needs customised solutions and prefers more personalised service, a smaller partner may be the better choice. Find the sweet spot between these two poles to balance scale and focus.
Does the partner provide seamless integration with other services?
SAP is a large company and has many other products other than Business One. For example, there are SAP Cloud Hosting and SAP HANA, which is a cutting-edge database management and analytics tool, among many others. Even if you don’t need them at present, a need may arise in the future. To make the most of Business One, it is crucial that your partner has experience in providing seamless integration with other SAP products as well as your pre-existing services. This will ensure that all your software functions as one unified system, eliminating a lot of headaches.
What is the quality of training and after-sales support provided?
A powerful platform without appropriately trained staff to use it or without proper long-term technical support won’t do you much good. You should pay particular attention to the training and support packages provided by a potential SAP Business One partner. Make sure that the training program is holistic and covers all aspects of using the platform, is tailored for your business, and has refresher courses for any future software upgrades.
Similarly, after-sales support is also crucial. Make sure the partner has a comprehensive support team, which can aid throughout the lifecycle of the platform. You want partners who can quickly address any questions that may arise, fix technical problems with minimum downtime, and provide software and security upgrades regularly, along with general maintenance.
For this reason, a partner with a good local presence is recommended to ensure location-specific needs and personalised requirements are better addressed.
Why is Silver Touch the SAP Business One Partner for Your Needs?
We at Silver Touch are proud of always delivering personalised and cutting-edge software solutions to our clients, and SAP Business One is a speciality of ours. But don’t take our word- look at what some of our many satisfied clients have to say, and decide for yourself!
Silver Touch Technologies has more than 22 years of experience making clients happy across a variety of sectors, such as retail, construction, agriculture, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and healthcare and professional services like media and finance. This has given our team an enormous pool of experience working with different clients with different needs, and we continuously work on leveraging that experience into ever-improving our offerings and service.
Are you Looking for the Best SAP Business One Partner?
If you choose us to be your SAP partner, we will handle the entire process, from consulting, implementation and training to building custom add-ons and offering dedicated support and product upgrades. Just tell us your needs and watch your business transform! Our more than 1200 happy clients covering 15 different industry sectors and more than 100 government organisations trust us to handle their software needs in a cost-effective, timely and painless manner!
Choosing an SAP Business One partner is a major decision for any small enterprise to boost its operations, and we believe we are the best option to help you. Contact us today, and watch your business grow in leaps and bounds!
