When it comes to business management and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, SAP often isn’t on the radar for small and medium businesses (SMBs). But, while the ERP giant is best known for its large enterprise solutions, SAP Business One is aimed squarely at providing small businesses with a unified business management solution.
In this three-part series, I interview Luis Murguia, who was recently appointed Senior VP and general manager for SAP Business One to discuss how the solution fits into SAP’s strategy, what makes it a good fit for SMBs, and how the vendor plans to move Business One from being one of SAP’s best kept secret onto SMB short lists for ERP solutions.
In this second post, we talk about the triggers that motivate small businesses to move from entry-level accounting to SAP Business One, and how SAP and its partners help them take the leap.
Laurie: So, SAP Business One provides small businesses with more of their industry-specific needs already configured right out of the gate, and getting it in a cloud model means they don’t have to worry about installing hardware and software. But just the thought of moving from an entry-level or lower end accounting to a more robust ERP system can be very intimidating for smaller companies. So what triggers do you see motivating them to finally take the plunge and move up?
Luis: I think a lot of us in most aspects of life; we tend to keep putting Band-Aids on pain. But finally someone says I can’t keep putting on the Band-Aids on this, I need something more comprehensive to manage my business with? I remember the story of the largest manufacturer of white boxes, white label PCs in Brazil. They were very successful in selling to schools, and any place that needed a large number of PCs because they were very price competitive. What triggered ERP adoption for them was the day they delivered the wrong PC configuration to a big customer. They lost a fortune scrambling to produce another batch, and they also realized that they almost lost one of their most important customers because of contractual requirements and remedial penalties.
Laurie: Ouch.
Luis: They were trying to do all this with manual processes and Excel files. But when you are using a lot of Excel files that need to be aligned and synchronized. In this case, they only needed one disconnect to get massive mistakes with the customer’s configuration. So they realized they had to bite the bullet and get their house in order to be much more operationally efficient.
Laurie: Okay, so how do SAP and its partners help small businesses avoid pitfalls when they’re ready to take this leap and implement Business One?
Luis: Well, some of our most successful US partners insist new customers pass a week of product training before they implement Business Because when end-users feel comfortable with the application, this helps guide the implementation and ensures users get value from it right away. So attention to end-user training is really making the difference when it comes to successful implementation.
This post is the second of a three-part series. In the third, we’ll explore SAP’s Business One strategy and goals for the future.
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