SAP Business One

SAP Business One is the ERP system of SAP for small and medium business.

The product is created based on solutions of the Israeli company TopManage which SAP purchased in March, 2002 approximately for $50 million^[1].

SAP Business One can be developed on the party of the customer and also is available as a cloud service through partners of SAP.

Availability in Russia

2017

The Russian provider of cloud SAP Business One curtails service due to the lack of demand

As TAdviser knew in September, 2017, the Dinteg IT company which began to sell to one of the first in Russia SAP Business One from a cloud, is going to contract sales of this service. The representative of Dinteg told about this TAdviser.

According to him, the company began to offer SAP Business One as a cloud service at the end of 2016. In its framework the subscription for the licenses SAP Business One and services of a hosting of the solution based on computing infrastructure of Dinteg and the third-party platform is offered to clients.

Since launch there were a few persons interested to use this service, the representative of Dinteg notes: "we did not see great interest to this service, requests for it were single". He explained that at the same time the company and was not engaged specially in its promotion, for Dinteg it was the experiment on creation of cloud infrastructure. In general the company decided to be reoriented on the new direction and just to lease the computing powers under different tasks, the interlocutor of TAdviser added: "It seems to more profitable at the moment".

SAP Business One, screenshot

Since July, 2017 the cloud subscription to SAP Business One based on DPC of IBS Data Fort is offered by OneSAP company. The company told TAdviser that on this service they have no clients yet.

The first attempt and the offer of this cloud service in OneSAP was even in the fall of 2014. In a case with OneSAP cloud SAP Business One is also available based on a cloud platform of Amazon Web Services.

In terms of the cost of a monthly subscription to one user Dinteg sells cloud SAP Business One at a little lower prices, than colleagues on the market. With unlimited access to all system modules, Dinteg offers the most expensive license at the price of 1.3 thousand rubles, and hosting cost - 1.45 thousand rubles. In total there are 2.75 thousand rubles a month beyond use of a system on one employee.

ActiveCloud which announced start of cloud SAP Business One based on the DPC in partnership with ITIK company in September, 2017 offers similar services in the cumulative price from 4.13 thousand rubles a month for the user. Such data are provided in the press release on this subject. On the website OneSAP the price of service in the amount of 3 thousand rubles is specified.

At the same time, Dinget offers implementation services of the main functionality at higher price, than some of her colleagues on the market: from 290 thousand rubles. For comparison, ActiveCloud and ITIK agreed about provision of services on implementation of the main functionality of cloud SAP Business One for clients of service at the price in 29.5 thousand rubles.

Believe in Dinteg that demand for service in their case did not appear not because of the prices of implementation at all: for the system of the class ERP it is an adequate order of cost, consider in the company. For some clients even costs for a cloud subscription together with a hosting all the same remained high, some had prejudices before placement of the data in an external cloud, the representative of the company noted. In general all know that "SAP products not the cheapest", he believes.

SAP CIS told TAdviser that in a case with Dinteg, ActiveCloud and ITIK absolutely different schemes of work:

"With ITIK all of us do together by turnkey, the solution is transferred to the Russian DPC and adapted for Russia according to the law on a personal data storage and others".

Dinteg, claim in SAP CIS, in fact only sold licenses, software was not in DPC in Russia and even not in Russian. In their case the customer could not be connected and begin to work on one click. Added to the companies that Dinteg is not a partner of SAP any more: to the company there were questions on fault tolerance of a system and other subjects.

Igor Korman, the CEO of Aktivkhost RU (under this legal person ActiveCloud works) notes that, bringing to the SAP Business One market in a cloud, ActiveCloud did the ready-made solution which to use it is possible to begin at once after payment of a subscription.

The cost of service consists not only of the price of the license SAP Business One: the solution is deployed in ActiveCloud cloud in compliance with the best practices of SAP for multitenantny installation and completely corresponds to the Russian legislation in the field of personal data. We in partnership with SAP and the ITIK system integrator the first offered similar model of sale of the SAP solution Business One in Russia, - the CEO of Aktivkhost RU says.

A number of the products on cloud model of SAP offers clients from own DPC in Russia. Explaining why based on it SAP Business One is not offered, SAP CIS told TAdviser that this product is 100% partner business, and a task of SAP – to expand and develop the partner channel.

It is a new type of business for our partners, for us – a scaling method, - told TAdviser in SAP CIS.

Availability in DPC of ActiveCloud

On September 14, 2017 SAP announced the beginning of sales of a cloud ERP system of SAP Business One from DPC of ActiveCloud in partnership with ITIK company.

The cost of service begins from 4,130 rubles a month for the user. Service of IT infrastructure and support of the ERP system are included in service cost.

In addition to a subscription to service, "express project" at which the main functionality of SAP Business One is implemented with the fixed terms and cost — 7 days and 29,500 rubles respectively is also offered to clients.

Believe in ActiveCloud that clients of a segment of SMB are more loyal to innovations in the field of IT and are quite ready to transfer applications, crucial for them, to data centers. The company expects that in SAP Business One from 5 to 50 users within one company will work.

History of development of a product

2017: Version of SAP Business One 9.3

In the summer of 2017 in Bratislava passed traditional internal test of Acceptance Test of new version 9.3 SAP Business One by representatives of the partner companies of SAP. The CMD-Soft company took part in testing as the expert from Russia and the CIS countries.

Acceptance Test is a traditional action of SAP before start of the new version of a product. The action as a rule has large-scale character: SAP holds testing in several world regions at once. This year testing was held in addition to Slovakia, also in China and Israel. For testing of SAP gathers teams of representatives of partners of all countries interested in a product – on one partner from the country or the region. The program of testing is formed on the basis of practice of business and needs of end customers for this or that country. Experts have an opportunity at once to discuss results of work with the new version of a system, to give a feedback to managers of SAP, responsible for development of the software product.

"In this version of SAP Business One it is implemented many new funktsionalnost including connected with issues of the Russian localization. My task as the expert consisted in testing of the largest volume of functionality of a system, using different scenarios and not repeating action of the colleagues. Results of testing were broadcast to the present SAP Business One developers who were extremely interested in receiving trusted reviews", - the participant of Acceptance Test Orlova Olga, the head of ERP systems of JSC CMD-Soft noted

2016: Version of SAP Business One 9.2

On June 29, 2016 the SAP SE company announced a release of the next version of the application of SAP Business One with additional functionality on profound analytics of data, project management and the interface for access to the main business functions in real time.

The application version for SAP HANA available as in a cloud, and locally, will simplify work of the enterprises of small and medium business and also branches of the large companies. 

Screenshot of a window of the program, (2016)

In this version there was a functionality of project management allowing to trace the course of accomplishment of tasks and stages of implementation, documents and resources relating to the project. Partners can reduce a downtime at customer service, by means of control of the tasks which are carried out using the software of partners and provided by SAP company, from the remote platform of support now.

Representation of changes in SAP Business One 9.2 (2016)

In the version of the application of SAP Business One information on its history will become available to SAP HANA in the course of demand forecasting on products that will help to distribute channels and resources for satisfaction of the growing demand. Support function include now analytical forecasts which are displayed in real time on dashboards that also became possible thanks to SAP HANA.

We simplified use of analytical tools that the small enterprises could take all advantage of work with data in real time. Luis Murguia, senior vice president and head SAP Business One, SAP

SAP application of Business One is available on the platform Microsoft SQL Server and SAP HANA. In addition to it it is possible to buy mobile application SAP Business One Sales.

2014

SAP Business One 9.1

In December, 2014 the SAP SE company announced a release of the next version of the application of SAP Business One intended for the enterprises of small and medium business wishing to integrate completely business processes and to accelerate growth. The new version based on the SAP HANA platform is available to deployment as in a cloud, and locally. It allows to optimize business processes, simplifies user interface customization and also provides ease in work and decrease in total ownership cost.

Advantages to clients:

• The new and improved business processes. The production module supports resource management. Due to the maximum transparency and control over resource consumption still the big profitability of production is reached. The cost of resources can be considered in the general product cost. Inventory cost can be tied to serial numbers or batch numbers that allows to calculate the amount of profit for products with certain numbers or from certain batches.

• Support of several branches or business divisions. Data exchange between business divisions of the company allows to increase transparency by drawing up reports. Branches of retail network can also exchange data on clients to increase quality of their service.

• Ease in work. The updated interface facilitates setup of screens and allows users to add, move or hide fields, without addressing system administrators. Business One SAP application working under control of SAP HANA supports jobs on the basis of roles for departments of finance, sales, purchases and inventory management. For the description of jobs HTML5 language providing high flexibility is used. Employees can select information necessary for them in daily work, and if necessary modify the interface using gallery of widgets.

• Optimization of implementation and updating. Sets of standard parameters and the simplified data loading help to accelerate implementation process. The integrated management of lifecycle also promotes decrease in time and material costs on installation, updating and support

SAP Business One for SAP HANA - in the environment of Amazon Web Services

On November 19, 2014 the SAP SE company announced expansion of a portfolio of the certified SAP solutions deployed in infrastructure of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In AWS the version of the application of SAP Business One will be available to the SAP HANA platform. A system gives an opportunity for the enterprises of medium and small business quickly and without considerable expenses on infrastructure to deploy SAP solutions in the scalable AWS Cloud cloud environment.

Now the SMB enterprises can unroll and start the version of SAP Business One for the SAP HANA platform on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud web service (Amazon EC2). The model of use of AWS on the basis of a subscription with payment after delivery of consumption will help to reduce total ownership cost the solution. In the environment of AWS clients can use current licenses on the software of SAP without additional licensing fees or purchase licenses for applications launch of SAP in this environment.

The partners of SAP using AWS will get access to the version of SAP Business One for developers on the SAP HANA platform. It will help users of SAP of a message to port development of expansion and additions for SAP Business One on the SAP HANA platform.

2013

SAP Business One 9.0 in the version on SAP Hana

The version of SAP Business One for SAP Hana received the functions possible only thanks to technology of calculations in RAM ("in-memory") which considerably accelerates the analysis of the structured and unstructured information: if earlier on such tasks left up to several days, then now — only several seconds.

Having the valuable data received using predictive analytics based on SAP HANA, the small and medium enterprises can optimize business plans, transactions and decision making processes, at the same time collecting information on new trends and a consumer behavior.

SAP Business One 9.0

At the beginning of September, 2013 SAP announced entry into the Russian market of the localized version of the ERP system of SAP Business One 9.0. focused on the enterprises of medium and small business. A system is positioned as "the finished full-function solution allowing to automate all key business processes" such companies.

Average terms of SAP implementation of Business One 9.0. the company designates for 5-10 weeks, and the average cost of the project – 1.5-2 million rubles.

One of new functionality of a system in SAP call accounting and tax accounting, localized in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. At the same time, according to representatives of the company, implementation in SAP Business One of 9.0 changes of the Russian legislation should be made, as well as in a "normal" ERP system of SAP, within "several weeks".

It should be noted that the first localized version of SAP Business One appeared in Russia nearly 10 years ago - in 2004, however the functionality regarding accounting and tax accounting according to the Russian standards remained in it poorly provided. With respect thereto widespread practice at system implementation is its integration into solutions of 1C for automation of similar functions.

In the company carry multilevel analytics for accounting to other new opportunities of SAP Business One, advanced functionality of sales management, purchases, a warehouse, a possibility of setup and business process modeling, control panels, analytical reports, etc.

"The output of the localized product for SMB is not some separate project, but a crucial element of strategy of the company in the markets of the CIS and Russia which will allow to close a complete stack of products for any client who will address us", - Ilya Yuryev the Head of Department on work with fast-growing companies SAP CIS says.

He also notes that the company included a product in the global localization program of SAP solutions, and each world updating of SAP Business One will be localized also for Russia at once.

The Russian version of SAP Business One 9.0 is already translated to the SAP HANA platform, and further is also going to make it available of a cloud. According to Ilya Yuryev, the company conducts negotiations with one of the telecom operators, largest in Russia, whenever possible of providing such service. In the company hope to complete successfully them and to begin providing service within "several months".

2011: SAP Business One 8.81

On August 9, 2011 it was announced a release of the SAP solution Business One of version 8.81. In the new version there are improvements which the SAP company enters also to other families of the products. Now the solution supports mobile work and social networks and also simplifies development of partner applications.

The SAP solution Business One 8.81 was improved in the following areas:

• Mobile work. Clients get access to the main applications using the different mobile technologies supported by the new version of the solution. The unrolled information allowing to react timely to change of a working situation is delivered to users.
• Enhanced capabilities for partners. An opportunity it is more productive to cooperate with a partner ecosystem of SAP in the field of creating applications as the new version of the SAP solution Business One provides integration of more difficult applications and specialized products for the vertical markets. Besides, the new version contains the improved set of work benches of development (SDK) – SAP Business One Studio which helps to accelerate the innovation processes performed together with partners. The e-business intelligence of SAP Crystal Reports and SAP Crystal Dashboard Design giving to partners the chance to create more effective remedies of display of industry content is completely integrated into the SAP solution Business One.
• Integration platform. Clients get access to crucial data thanks to integration and interaction between SAP Business One 8.81, applications provided on demand, mobile devices, web services, tools for joint work and social networks. This solution allows to standardize business processes and to automate work on the scale of all organization, and its advanced functions provide fast integration according to ready business scenarios.

2010: SAP Business One для iPhone

In November, 2010 SAP released Business One SAP application for iPhone. It is available to downloading in Apple iTunes Store online store. Mobile application provides continuous access to important data and key tools of the SAP solution Business One. It is provided to the clients free of charge within the agreement on support of SAP Business One using the version of SAP Business One 8.8 with the set patch 12 or above.

Business One SAP application for iPhone allows to check a trade inventory and the information about clients, provides access to reports, notifications and the procedure of statements. With its help users get data access in real time, can initiate remote processes and react to events. Basic functions of the application are listed below.

• Notifications and statements – obtaining notifications on specific events, for example about a deviation from the set discounts, the prices or crediting limits. Request processing on a statement, accomplishment of remote actions and viewing the accompanying data and indicators that helps to guarantee decision making quickly and effectively.
• Reports in real time – access to key business information through the built-in reports developed using the SAP product Crystal Reports. Adding of the customized reports and a simple rasprostaneniye of results of the report on e-mail via iPhone.
• Data on clients and partners – access to contact information and its editing, viewing history of events and the special prices. Make a call to the client or the supplier or to define their location according to their record, to create and fix new events. All changes are automatically updated in Business One SAP application on the server.
• Monitoring of trade inventories – check of the inventory level and access to detailed data on the available products, including purchase and selling prices, free quantity, setsifikation of products and images of goods.

SAP application of Business One works on iPhone or iPod touch devices, with the version of IOS not lower than 3.2.

Overview of the solution

Main Functions

The standard SAP solution Business One includes: functional modules, a user interface, instruments of creation of the reporting, services and additional developments of SAP and also an online help, the specialized user documentation, Internet training for end users and other information materials.

The modules SAP Business One integrate the transactions characteristic of separate activity of the company: purchases, sales, service, assembly, calculations, finance, business partners, stocks, MRP, personnel and administration. Functional modules are integrated among themselves.

The developer states that using SAP Business One it is possible to pass from "scrappy" automation to a single platform for management of key business processes, including – work of warehouses, vendor interaction and partners, development of a branch network. A system should allow to support customer interaction at all stages of a sales cycle, to unify and centralize processes of management accounting and reporting, accounting of purchases, the movement of goods between warehouses, managements of assembly production. The solution provides end-to-end management of key functions of business in a unified integrated environment.

The user interface integrates the software tools allowing to organize a flow of the connected documents and to set up the solution in compliance with management tools business of the kazhy specific client. For example, instruments of control debit / accounts payable and customer relations, the rule for apportionment of costs on the centers of accounting and budgeting, the procedure of a statement and management of exclusive situations, inventory management and resource planning, support of multilingual capability of the interface and data.

Several instruments of creation of the reporting from simple operational listing (the adapted interface of the SQL query) to difficult analytical reports (the integrated Crystal Reports) are provided in the solution.

The standard delivery package includes the following services: SBO Mailer (mail, the fax), SBO Backup (backup), SBO DI Service (data access), SBO EarlyWatch Alert (early warning of system problems), Support Desk (sending messages to support), SBO Integration Service (integration with NetWeaver) and others.

Additional developments of SAP are applied to expansion of standard functionality, for example Microsoft Outlook Integration for integration with Outlook, Data Transfer Workbench for import of data, Copy Express for copying of the configurations SAP Business One, Screen Painter for development of screen forms and others.

SAP Business One contains a number of tools for the analysis and decision making. First of all, it is tools of the operational analysis: a standard set of reports, including on Crystal Reports, key indicators of activity of company (KPI). Use of HANA technology in the solution gives opportunities for the interactive analysis based on up-to-date data, OLAP cubes. The analysis result can be built in a tabular style or in charts with a possibility of detailing of values before initial transactions (drill-down).

For those who got used to work with analytical data in Microsoft Excel SAP Business One offers additional tools which allow to be connected to tables and cubes of the SAP HANA database and to configure reports of any structure, applying rules of signals of "traffic lights" of key indicators.

Each head can configure a personal panel of monitoring of indicators, charts with different measurements. For example, for the chief financial officer the main tool will be the panel of the forecast of cash flow (cash flow forecast) and also "traffic lights" of key financial indicators; for the commercial director - the operational analysis of sales with a broad set of changes, etc.

A large number of previously configured tools already are in standard functionality. Big visualization and presentableness of analytical data tools ‪‎ give SAP Lumira.

Features of implementation

The methodology of the accelerated implementation (The SAP Business One Accelerated Implementation Program) developed by SAP is applied to the successful implementing solution SAP Business One. It comprehensively covers implementation process: from step-by-step accomplishment of process to recommendations about separate subprocesses (for example, testing, the organization of communications, etc.), defining tasks, the purposes, cast, spheres of responsibility and documentation.

Who suits SAP Business One

The SAP solution Business One is guided by the small business aiming to optimize the business processes and to accelerate growth and profitability in the future. According to SAP Business One 'Sweet Spot' Overview. A Positioning Guide, the most preferable characteristics for implementation at the enterprise are:

• 10-100 employees, no more than 30 professional users of a system;
• to €50 million an annual income and 100.000 transactions a year;
• only the accounting system of accounting suffices not, it is necessary to integrate all business information in integrated solution;
• primary branches of implementations: wholesale and retail, rendering services, discrete production;
• independent small business or branches of the large companies and auxiliary divisions for which integration with head division is necessary (which SAP or other large company has the environment of the software) for periodic approval of data.

Characteristics reflect above the general directions of assessment of the companies in which the acceptability of SAP Business One is estimated. So income and the number of employees are only a part of the characteristics involved in selection process of an optimal solution of SAP for the company. The final conclusion is drawn by group of specialists.

Industry solutions based on SAP Business One

"Based on SAP Business One the whole series of industry solutions – them already more than 30 is created today. Any company can quickly and with the minimum costs to create the information system corresponding to scales of the business and industry specifics on their basis", - the deputy CEO of SAP CIS Yuryev Ilya noted.

The large volume of the preconfigured processes and reports in SAP Business One allows the medium-sized and small companies to reduce costs for implementation, to simplify contractor interaction and to reduce the risks connected with the incomplete or not conforming to statutory requirements reporting. So, the solution Trace One created by the Portuguese partners of SAP for the companies of the food industry and discrete production – a reliable full-function basis for consolidation of business processes. Trace One helps to provide compliance to statutory requirements and industry standards – in the field of the food industry they very tough and also to optimize interactions of divisions of the company, to reduce production losses and defects.

Other example – the solution Aero One developed in France and intended for the TO organization and repairs of the equipment including – in the defense and space enterprises. Aero One helps to make production process continuous and transparent and also in advance to be going and to make repairs and prevention of the equipment in time, to plan purchases of materials necessary for this purpose.

The Polish solution CompuTec is focused on the industries with complex structure of production processes – building and chemical industry, FMCG. It helps to observe strictly a compounding in production, to plan purchases of necessary ingredients on the basis of process charts, to consider a consumption of raw materials and an exit of finished goods. Such solution allows to reduce production losses and not to accumulate surplus warehouse stocks.

The cross-industry solution of Boyum IT is developed in Germany and allows to organize joint work effectively. Whether it be divisions in different regions or the distributed project team – Boyum IT helps to integrate all participants in the general information space, to exchange documents, to jointly plan meetings, to work more quickly and harmoniously.

In the Russian market solutions based on SAP Business One in the field of distribution, insurance are also already available, to metallurgy, tanning production, automotive industry and other industries.