If this sounds familiar, you’re far from alone. Most of our clients have been there.
Take Triple S Sporting Supply. This fishing and outdoor goods wholesaler has seen considerable growth during its over 50-year history. Much of that growth came since the rise in B2B eCommerce. As they grew, their inventory and operational scale badly outpaced their warehouse management tools and their dated ERP system for inventory management.
With over 18,000 items in inventory and ongoing seasonal market opportunities (ice fishing, for example), they needed a better way to gain visibility and to allocate inventory.
Let’s make a long story short (though you can read the longer story, too): They needed (and ultimately chose) a modern ERP system for inventory management, and they chose SAP Business One in the Cloud.
Organizations look to an ERP system for better inventory management, but that’s just one slice of the pie. Most growing small businesses on the verge of making the change from accounting software to ERP are struggling with other functional and operational challenges too, including:
To resolve the growing pains common at thriving small businesses, a holistic solution is a must. At Third Wave, we build such solutions for each customer, using SAP Business One or SAP Business One in the Cloud as a centerpiece — but not typically as the sole solution.
Central to our approach is our commitment to the 3 Vs.
These three markers comprise a sequence or framework that help your organization achieve higher productivity and efficiency — regardless of the size of your business. The 3 Vs are Validation, Visibility and Velocity.
Flexible solutions like SAP Business One ERP system inventory management along with other tools like our custom Bizweaver and Versago applications give you a powerful holistic approach. We help you automate data collection and Validation. Doing so makes your operation more Visible, and you gain data-driven insights that improve your overall Velocity.
SAP Business One touches your inventory process in numerous ways across these areas.
We’ll take a look at what SAP Business One can do in four crucial areas:
As a single location, your business didn’t encounter show-stopping problems involving integration across departments. But as you grow, the lack of synchronicity between various departments and even physical locations (multiple warehouses, multiple retail stores, etc.) becomes painfully clear.
Managing multiple locations with SAP Business One also means you’ll be connecting multiple departments — delivering both validation and visibility across business units and locations.
We’ve found that this interconnecting of departments is another compelling reason businesses move to an ERP. With a single system integrating accounting, warehouses, inventory management, production management, and more, your business gains visibility that didn’t seem possible before.
SAP Business One’s ability to integrate data across locations and departments demonstrates the first V: Validation.
SAP Business One (along with SAP Business One in the Cloud, if a cloud deployment is right for you) delivers powerful visibility into the movement of goods into, within, and out of your organization. The Goods Movement function can tell you when goods move internally and when they arrive at a destination (vendor or customer), feeding your data capabilities surrounding supply chain.
In addition to at-a-glance or high-level goods movement information, SAP Business One delivers detailed reports, such as goods receipts, transfer postings, and return delivery notices.
Consider these four ways that SAP Business One, a leading ERP system inventory management solution, improves materials management and MRP:
With superior materials management capabilities that extend across your organization, SAP Business One delivers on the second V: Visibility.
Talk to an SAP Business One Inventory Expert
Businesses that are feeling the limitations of basic accounting systems or standalone inventory management software are usually struggling under the weight of too many manual processes. These processes cannot scale in any way (short of hiring an unworkable number of new staff), and they can quickly become a bottleneck that limits growth.
The sales order entry process is one example (along with all the behind-the-scenes steps it requires).
Remember our friends at Triple S Sporting Supply? Before SAP Business One, they were stuck verifying inventory levels manually. They had just two employees trying to do it all (and one of them had another full-time job!). It just wasn’t working.
Of course, selling items you don’t actually have is just as much of a problem.
Here’s where the SAP Business One ERP really shines.
SAP Business One automates the order process, start to finish. Sales orders are automatically and instantly linked to inventory data, so your inventory stays current in real time. Even when you receive a quick influx of orders, your inventory data keeps up. This automation continues through the packaging and shipping stages, too, so your team will always know (with a high degree of confidence) where orders are in process and that the listed inventory levels are reliable.
Third Wave’s powerful web app Versago makes it easy to check inventory levels and statuses from any device, even without a deep understanding of the SAP Business One platform.
And if you’re selling via eCommerce, Third Wave’s Bizweaver application provides crucial integrations between your eCommerce platform(s) and your ERP environment.
Business One’s powerful automations, including in sales order entries, deliver on the third V: Velocity. With fewer manual processes and greatly increased accuracy, your business can move faster and accomplish more, especially with Bizweaver and Versago.
Basic accounting systems have their place, but once a business reaches a certain level of growth or complexity, those systems can become a liability, stifling progress, limiting opportunities, and creating information silos.
That accounting suite tells you where your dollars are, but it doesn’t know where your stuff is. (Or where it needs to go. Or when you need to order more. You get the idea.)
An ERP absorbs those accounting and finance functions, placing them into a broader context and suite of tools that do track inventory levels, sales, materials, and much more.
Of the ERP solutions we’ve seen, SAP Business One is the ideal choice for small businesses ready for more. Its comprehensive and integrated approach is the catalyst that supercharges growth.
Proper inventory management is vitally important for businesses ready to thrive, for those who want to take their operations to the next level. Manual processes, accounting software, and standalone inventory tools don’t deliver proper inventory management at scale. The right ERP does.
That’s where we come in.
Third Wave Business Systems is an ERP partner. We’re independent, which means we take the time to learn your business and your needs. SAP Business One is usually at least a part of the solution we recommend. But we select from multiple vendors to create the perfect customized solution for your business.
We’re also more than just SAP Business One. We’ve created powerful applications and integrations other vendors cannot offer, like Bizweaver, Versago, and ShipEasy.
Ready to start supercharging your growth by switching to an ERP system for your inventory management? Schedule a demo now.