Released on: 15, August 2009
, Author: Andrew Karasev
, Audience: Software related
SB1 local presence is important in initial ERP sales cycle, executive demo. If your organization is located in Georgia, Southern California, Illinois, we are happy to help your with SAP BO. If you already have your SAP Business One ERP implemented in your organization and you are looking for second opinion, feel free to call our office
This is relatively new ERP, MRP, CRM and Accounting package in USA, however this application is very popular Internationally: Latin America, Brazil, Europe, Asia, Africa. As it is ERP from SAP, we recommend you to consider it in the case if you have high-end SAP ERP domestically and need Accounting for your overseas branch. It is localized in the sense of translation to local language and tuning to local fiscal requirement. If you work for Internal Audit department in US, and you would like to make internal audit in overseas branch, all you need to do is switch SAP B1 interface from Brazilian Portuguese to English and all the data is in your disposition
1. Intuitive User Interface. SB1 is exceptionally user friendly, you should recognize navigation and simple switch from adding new document to document inquiry in the same form and this basic navigation skill allows you to make system discovery on your own
2. CRM. It is named here as Sales Opportunities. With reduced CRM only user licenses you can automate all your sales people directly in your ERP, MRP and Accounting system
3. Production and MRP. If you have to automate discrete manufacturing or light assembly - it is included. One of the cool features in our opinion is disassembly bill of material, where you can disassemble returned product and put parts back to the shelves in their appropriate bins. MRP wizard allows you to replenish your inventory, based on various rules
4. Logistics and Warehouse Management. You can organize your picking and packing process and trace your boxes of merchandize.
5. Service Management, Contracts and Rentals. Here you have pretty robust Field Service or Items sold under support contracts with or without warranty, with simple procedures you can extend the logic to cover Rental Contracts with Transferring rented items to Technician and returning it back from technician upon the rental contract expiration or preliminary termination. It allows you to service your items under contract with parts, labor, expenses - billable or free of charge (covered by warranty). Plus for your service you can build up and maintain Knowledge Base
6. Human Resources (please note that it doesn't have Payroll module in core functionality, however you can add Payroll Add-Ons from SAP B1 ISV Partners). It is pretty basic, however it is very useful to have it organized in SBO
7. Sales Order Processing. As you should expect, it has Quote, Sales Order, Return, Credit Memo, and some cool features, such as Invoice with Down Payment and even simple Collection Management: Dunning Wizard
8. Purchase Order Processing: PO, Goods Receipt, Goods Return, AP Invoice, AP Down Payment Invoice, Landed Cost should be mentioned, however you will find a lot more
9. Drag and Relate. Here you have online data analysis, comparisons, if you are familiar with OLAP, Excel Pivot tables, you should enjoy this feature
10. Financials. Besides required GL logics: Balance Sheets, P&L, you also have 1099 Editing, good multicurrency support
11. Customizability. You can add fields to existing tables, plus you can create custom tables and their hierarchies, user defined fields and tables automatically have Interface to add, modify and delete data. In the forms, such as AR Invoice, you can add fields to the scrolling windows, including newly created user defined fields. If you are still not happy - you can always extend SBO interface with SB1 SDK (Software Development Kit), which requires certification, but in our opinion is pretty open to VB or C# programmer
12. Integrations. It has Data Transfer Workbench with CSV templates. However, if you need advanced integration, consider using ODBC SQL Views to replicate the same data format as CSV templates and you could easily cover such cool routines as EDI, ongoing ecommerce integrations, price list updates. SB1 SDK is also very powerful if you prefer real time integration or web services type of interface
13. Data Export. If you are accountant, you probably like Excel, and yes, all the reports are exportable to MS Excel with the clicks of the mouse
14. Upstream Data Consolidation. If you are working for large corporation, which deploys Microsoft Dynamics GP, AX, Accpac, Epicor, PeopleSoft, Oracle eBusiness Suite, or SAP R3/mySAP, you can easily consolidate GL or even transactions from SAP Business One on the SQL Export level. In the case of Dynamics GP - consider using Integration Manager module to import GP or Sales data extracts in CSV or Tab Delimited file formats into dedicated GP company. If your concern in GP is FRx consolidated reporting, consider exporting SB1 Financial Statement to Excel and consolidating your GP Headquarters company with Excel worksheet of the overseas subsidiary
15. SAP B1 in International Business. Taking into consideration its simplicity to be consolidated with USA based corporate ERP, we recommend this system for small, mid-size and even large production, distribution, wholesale facilities of large publicly traded corporations in such countries as Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Caribbean, Central America, East Europe, South East Asia. SAP B1 supports UNICODE and such languages as Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese
16. SB1 Licensing. Initially it had all-in-one license per named user, however currently you can pick CRM only and other specific employee role only license at the reasonable (often up to 50%) discount. Plus you should expect annual support fee, which is percentage or your SAP Business One Price List
17. If you need additional help, executive or technical presentation, please feel free to call us: 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com. We speak your language: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Latvian, French
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum, subdivision of M2-D2, help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577 http://www.albaspectrum.com Serving ERP and MRP community since 1994, local service in Chicago, Houston, San Diego, Atlanta. Information portal: http://www.pegasplanet.com We serve you USA and Canada nationwide from our SAP Business One call center: California, Illinois, New York, Florida, Minnesota, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Ontario, Quebec, Washington, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Oregon, New York, New England. International clients welcome from Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South Africa, UK, Brazil, Caribbean, Russia, Central America
