With a rich feature set and great customization, SAP Business One is a great candidate for mid-market companies on the hunt for a new ERP system.

For a long time, any conversation about a true ERP would have been limited to the enterprise market. The "E" in ERP stands for Enterprise, after all. Oracle. SAP. JDE. There was resource planning for the Enterprise, and then there was varying levels of business planning for everyone else -- usually at the expense of features, flexibility, and stability. In the mid-2000's that trend started to change as more businesses became comfortable with moving some (or all) aspects of their business to the cloud, and software developers found they could rapidly develop, iterate, and expand their feature sets in ways previously impossible in traditional on-premise deployments. To combat the erosion of their market share, the traditional big names took different strategies. SAP opted to make a version of their product, SAP Business One, specifically focused on, tailored to, and priced for the SMB market.

SAP Business One is marketed by SAP as an ERP for Small Business, but that's a bit of a misnomer. Small business in SAP vernacular tends to be any business doing less than about $250 million per year in revenue, which opens the door to a lot of businesses, both in the US and around the world. SAP Business One feels very much like an SAP product. The user interface will feel familiar, if a bit dated. The vocabulary feels very traditional and enterprise. Most importantly, the feature set is simultaneously broad, deep, and powerful. Business One is a true ERP, with deep features in Finance, Inventory, Procure-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash cycles, Reporting & Analytics. The product has been built with customization in mind, allowing it to be tailored to each business and to effectively meet the unique demands each company will undoubtedly bring to the table.

GRAYBOX has been in the "pro" camp on SAP Business One for a number of years. We've been on both sides of the fence, promoting SAP Business One directly or being on sales teams for Enterprise software that competes against SAP, and learned to give the platform a healthy degree of respect. Flexibility is a big requirement in options recommended by GRAYBOX, and SAP Business One fits the bill. Because there's direct access to the database, and many of the user interface components are populated via queries and other business logic, customizing forms, interface, and functionality is straightforward and versatile. For our clients, we appreciate how much comes out of the box, which means that most common business requirements can be accomplished through configuration, not customization. Finally, we really enjoy the VAR program that's been established by SAP, which provides for uniformity in partners we get to work with on these projects.

SAP Business One is a great fit in a number of categories. GRAYBOX has seen SAP Business One be solid first foray into a true ERP for the growing company with evolving business needs. It's certainly more complex than a Quickbooks, Xero or Fishbowl, and it takes a lot more organizational willpower to engage on an implementation project than one of those early-business systems would. But when a business is reaching that inflection point of growth, and needs a robust and flexible base on which to grow for years to come, SAP Business One can be a great fit. We also really appreciate that there are both cloud and on-premise deployment options, providing flexibility to different levels of IT control. When a pure cloud solution might be ruled out for some organizations, SAP Business One keeps the door open with their on-premise solution. While we've seen the most success with manufacturing, wholesale distribution, and product-focused ecommerce companies, there's no reason SAP Business One can't be an exceptional solution to most business models. The one area we see a lot of room for improvement is in the CRM and Support functionality. However, we see many organizations who choose SAP Business One and pair it with a best of breed CRM, such as Salesforce.com, or a Support tool such as FreshDesk, to augment those aspects without interfering with the core ERP functionality.

GRAYBOX understands that the business embarking on an ERP selection process is at a critical junction in their business development cycle. Replacing (or instituting) an ERP is like performing open heart surgery on your business, and we take seriously the importance of properly vetting options, evaluating the pros and cons, and moving forward with a toolset that will effectively meet your business goals now and in the future. SAP Business One has consistently shown itself to be a platform on which businesses can succeed, so it's frequently in the mix of our conversations. Our consultants can help you evaluate whether or not SAP Business One is a good fit for your business, as well as ensure the execution of that deployment goes smoothly so your operations aren't disrupted by the process.