“Small to midsize businesses have more options than ever when it comes to implementing a fully-fledged ERP system like SAP Business One.

In this day and age, there aren’t many good reasons for those growing businesses to continue using disparate systems and manual processes to execute on their business’s operations when they’re able to house all of their critical software under one roof for an affordable price.

Understandably, it can be a daunting endeavor with so many vendors out there and so many considerations to factor in.”

-Forrest Burnson, Market Research Associate at Software Advice

To cut through all of these solutions, following are the top 10 reasons small and mid-sized organizations choose SAP Business One to help transform their businesses.

10. Ecosystem

SAP Business One’s extensive ecosystem of solutions gives users more choices and resources to customize and optimize their solution. More integrative options can mean more flexibility.

9. Localized Solutions, Global Presence

SAP ERP solutions for small businesses and midsize companies meet global and local organizational requirements in 80+ countries. This is thanks to the power of cloud computing, allowing users from various geographic locations to access the same centralized software.

8. Growth

Cloud technology also allows the platform to adapt as your business grows.

• Proven availability to support anywhere from 5 users to more than 1,000 users.
• Functionality that handles from 100 to 1 million transactions.
• Adaptable solutions that provide options for adding new functionality, enabling new business models, or growing internationally.
• Flexible configuration options so you can buy now and add later.

7. Innovation

SAP Business One delivers innovations in mobile, cloud computing, analytics, in-memory computing, rapid-deployment, and big data.

6. Insight

Another reason to choose SAP ERP solutions is that it helps you turn data into actionable insights with improved visibility and tracking of key performance indicators.

5. Time to Value

Make faster, more accurate decisions using built-in analytics tools. SAP helps you start fast and see results quickly.

4. Industry specific

As an SAP Business One partner, Third Wave Business Systems has decades of expertise in working with various industries and aiding them in building an ideal business system setup.

3. Numerous choices

SAP Business One is also flexible in its ability to integrate and play nice with other platforms. Third Wave experts work with your teams to recommend the best choices to fit the way you do business. Our network of technology partners offers a number of solution integrations and additional features to customize solutions and ensure our customers receive all the help they need just from working with a single consultant.

2. Leadership

SAP Business One is recognized as a long-time front-runner by industry experts and trusted by 200,000+ small to mid-sized customers.

1. Complete

SAP Business One delivers a complete, integrated and affordable ERP solution for small to mid-sized businesses.

To find out more on how SAP Business One can benefit your business, contact Third Wave.

Creating a Global Company with SAP Business One

For Rifle Paper Co., the growing pains of building out their new business included a need to unify disparate systems like inventory and shipping. They found their ideal business solution in SAP Business One.

The beginnings of Rifle Paper Co.

The American dream is alive and well, living in Winter Park, Florida. Through hard work and an unwavering belief in what they were doing, the married duo of Anna and Nathan Bond created a successful global business, Rifle Paper Co.

In 2009, the Bonds launched riflepaperco.com out of their garage apartment. Today, this stationery and lifestyle business has grown into an international brand with products in more than 5,000 retail stores around the world.

In 2014 and 2015, Rifle Paper Co. was named to the Inc. 5,000 list of fastest growing companies in the country. How did the Bond’s do it? By focusing on the elements needed for any successful start-up to succeed.

Rifle Paper Co. has always believed that even in the digital age, life’s moments are best shared through a handwritten card or note. Making things personal will always get people’s attention.

From their roots in stationery to their partnership with French illustrator Garance Doré, the Bond’s have continually innovated their product line. They make the effort to create what their customers envision as their perfect medium for interpersonal communication.

Although it started as a two-person company, almost from its inception Rifle Paper Co. sought out team players that possessed an intimate understanding of the nuances of the unique customers for which it was designing products.

Challenges of a growing business

For any business, quick growth invariably brings new challenges. Imagine being a two-person startup that quickly finds itself going international – there are bound to be bumps along the way.

For Rifle Paper Co., the growing pains included a need to unify disparate systems used to manage areas like inventory and shipping. There was also an excessive lag time between order entry and inventory updates, a situation that often created a delay in order fulfillment.

SAP Business One as a solution

The rapidly growing company determined that it needed a solution with customizable enterprise resource planning to manage financials, inventory, customer and supplier accounts, planning, production, and purchasing. The company also knew it needed a user-friendly interface for its employees; a nimble solution that was simple to use.

After some serious due diligence and a lot of comparison shopping, Rifle Paper Co. found what it was looking for in its quest to streamline disparate processes. The company deployed the SAP Business One application and integrated add-ons for e-commerce, credit card processing, and shipping. In the future, Rifle Paper Co. intends on expanding its use of SAP Business One, with plans to leverage functionality like manufacturing requirements planning.

“We see SAP Business One as an ally at Rifle Paper Company,” said Bobby Morrison, Director of Enterprise Systems and Services, Rifle Paper Company.

“Not only does the software keep everyone on the same page, it also gives us valuable information that we can use to grow the business and meet our goals”.

As founders and co-owners of a successful international brand, Ann and Nathan Bond have enjoyed a synergy that reminds us all that the American Dream is indeed alive and well.

They found success in combining Anna’s passion for illustration and design with Nathan’s knack for creating relationships and business development. It’s no surprise that Rifle Paper Co.’s loyal customers include major media powerhouses as well as thousands of everyday people around the world.

Undoubtedly, what they’ve created will continue to inspire even more people to share special moments with others – the old-fashioned, handwritten way.

Find out how you can transform your business. Contact the experts at Third Wave.

Operate more efficiently with SAP business management tools, designed specifically for small to mid-sized organizations that wish to simplify business management by integrate their processes and increase profitably.

Developed through strong co-innovation with SAP partners, the new release helps speed time to value, gain up-to-the-minute insight, and increase ease of use and affordability.

Align your business objectives with a simplified management solution like SAP Business One.

SAP Business Management Objectives

• Deliver a completely integrated solution tailored to fit small to mid-sized organizational needs.
• Accommodate changing needs with on-premise and SAP Business One cloud deployment models and mobile access
• Integrate software with a partner and other applications, such as the Ariba Network
• Shorten application installation and upgrade

SAP Business One Solution

• Improved support for supply chain organizational processes for faster order processing and enhanced stock movement
• SAP Business One studio to simplify customization and integration with third-party tools
• A centralized implementation framework for ease of installation and upgrade
• Flexible reporting and analytics, including the exchange of reports and dashboards over the Web

Learn More: SAP Business One Implementation By Third Wave

Benefits

• Heightened business insight with integrated reports and dashboards
• Quicker time to value with streamline upgrading and implementing an ERP solution
• Rapid integration enterprise-wide and with third parties

How do you accommodate unique order and fulfillment processes, inventory allocation needs, and integration challenges for each channel? With SAP Business One, your business can effectively manage purchase-to-pay requirements.

Talk to our SAP Business One experts to learn how to:

• Manage complex purchasing requirements and workflows, including blanket purchase agreements, drop shipments, multi-warehouse shipments, multiple release dates, and back orders
• Ensure that your purchase prices are accurate by easily maintaining vendor contract pricing
• Maintain product shipment and estimated receipt dates, providing up to date information to available to promise and MRP tools
• Manage the purchase side of the supply chain, including in-transit inventory, receipts, and other logistics operations
• Gain accurate inventory valuation by capturing and allocating landed costs

Join Third Wave for two exciting sessions at the ASUG SAP Business One Summit!

Better Planning. Better Budgeting. How BOARD Cube Changes the Game

August 31 – 10:00AM – 12:00PM CT
September 2, 2015 – 1:30PM – 3:30PM CT
Session ID: 3680

Gain better insight and improve budgeting using data in SAP. Learn how BOARD Cube’s pre-packaged solutions in budgeting, finance, sales and purchasing, and inventory enable you to take advantage of the data stored in SAP. And explore BOARD Cube’s full complement of Business Intelligence functions, including reporting, multi-dimensional analysis, ad hoc querying and dashboards.

Discover the critical things you need to consider in order to choose the right product. Then view a demo of the latest version of BOARD Cube and hear how companies are using it to achieve better planning, better budgeting, and better business. This is a must-attend session if you want to get more out of your data in SAP!?

• Explore the leading products and the business advantages of BOARD Cube
• Hear customer case studies on how BOARD Cube is transforming business
• Learn how BOARD Cube is used for budgeting, forecasting, financials and predictive analysis

Portals, Portals and More Portals

September 1, 2015 – 2:00PM – 3:00PM CT
Session ID: 3690

Need a robust portal? Don’t want to deal with programming? This is clearly the right session for you. Easily launch portals that include Web forms for data capture, real-time dashboards, charts, reports, and performance indicators. Learn how to quickly do it using Versago. Tailor each portal to the needs of a specific audience. Customer, sales team, vendor, and employee self-service portals are just the start. With Versago the portal possibilities are endless!

Find out why Sue Hagen, FloorFolio EVP, said, “Versago has freed up our time, enabling our sales team to become even more productive. We’ve only scratched the surface of what this solution can do so we’re looking forward to building more portals for other departments as well.” What will you build next with Versago?

• Create portals with Web forms to enter new sales orders, register products, submit leads, and much more
• Quickly and easily set up real-time reports and dashboards
• Start with pre-packaged content and add unique functionality without programming

Featured below is a blog post that was written by Laurie McCabe, co-founder and partner at SMB Group. Her interview examines how SAP Business One fits into SMB’s overall strategy.

“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.”

Laurie McCabe, lauriemccabe.com

In this three-part series, I interviewed Luis Murguia, who was recently appointed Senior VP and general manager for SAP Business One to discuss how the solution fits into SMB’s strategy, what makes it a good fit for them, and how the vendor plans to move Business One from being one of SAP’s best-kept secret onto SMB shortlist for ERP solutions.

In this first post, we discuss Luis’ background, Business One history, and some of the key differentiators it has in the SMB ERP market.

Laurie:  Hi this is Laurie McCabe from SMB Group and today I’m talking to Luis Murguia, Senior VP and general manager for SAP Business One. Business One is SAP’s flagship ERP solution for small and medium businesses. So Luis you’re relatively new in this role, can you tell us a little bit about where you come from, and why you decided to become part of the Business One team at SAP.

Luis: Thank you Laurie, and great to catch up. I’ve been with SAP for 9 years, in the enterprise division as well as the partner organization. For the past 6 years, I ran SAP’s European partner organization.

Throughout my career, I have been involved with the ERP market. I started my career in providing ERP solutions for small wholesale food distributors, working with solutions like Peachtree, QuickBooks. Then I moved into selling HP3000 servers pre-loaded with business management software. So I’ve been involved in helping small business find new ways better ways to run the business and be more successful throughout my career.

Read the full interview on Laurie McCabe’s site

Versago is a game changer because it enables anyone to quickly create portals that include Web forms for data capture, real-time dashboards, charts, reports, and performance indicators. All of this is accomplished using a codeless development platform so you don’t need to know any programming.

Join us for a demo of the solution on the dates below and encourage you to join me. Just click on the day to register:

July 7, 2015 2:00PM – 3:00PM ET

July 9, 2015 11:00AM – 12:00PM ET

July 14, 2015 2:00PM – 3:00PM ET 

By attending this special demo, I’ll show you how you can use Versago to:

• Create Web forms to enter new sales orders, register products, submit leads, and much more
• Quickly and easily set up real-time reports and dashboards for your executive team
• Build a sales portal to provide your sales team with their individual metrics and access to leads
• Enable your customers to enter orders, track order status, and view shipping information
• Allow your vendors to enter product ship dates

If you are still relying heavily on spreadsheets for communication and decision-making, you can’t have a high level of trust in the data quality. Improve data accuracy and organization with a comprehensive data management strategy for better decision making and reliable reporting.

Anyone that uses spreadsheets regularly knows just how easy it is to make a simple mistake with devastating consequences. Everyone has experienced that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize you have placed a decimal point in the wrong position, miswrote a formula, or any other human mistake.

Lack of Trust in Data

Lack of trust in data results lowers the confidence in the decisions you make, both on a daily basis as well as those more strategic decisions. If you don’t trust the data in making simple decisions, will you ever be able to answer the tough questions like:

• What are my “top 20” customers worldwide?
• How much of my business can I count on from these “top 20”?
• What is my historical budgeting forecasting accuracy by region?
• Which products have the best net margin?
• What is my GAAP revenue or non-IFRS operating margin projected for quarters end?

These are tough because they are not questions that can be answered by looking at a simple list – like total revenue, total bookings, inventory, orders, etc. These are all composite type of metrics, combining different data elements. This type of metric might vary in definition and also start to involve some of that “other” data that doesn’t even reside in your enterprise applications.

How much do you trust your data today?

If you can honestly reply that you trust it implicitly, that data is updated in (near) real-time and always accurate, then read no further. You have a solid data management strategy and have executed it well.

Combine Technology and Data Management Strategy

Chances are few will exude that level of confidence. Too often the response will be, “It’s close enough (I hope)” or “I don’t trust it” or “I know it isn’t accurate, but it is the best I have.” So instead of making good data-driven decisions, you make decisions based on a combination of data and gut feel.

Achieving the goal of having all the data you need, where you can readily and easily access it and can trust it implicitly takes careful planning. But it also takes technology.

If you don’t understand all the underlying technology needed to make this happen, seek assistance. In fact, if you have a data problem today, it is probably best to seek assistance in developing a data management strategy. If you don’t understand the technology then it is likely that you don’t understand what is possible today.

You might seek help from an independent consultant, a systems integrator or from the technology vendors with which you will need to engage in order to effectively define and execute your data management strategy. The technology vendors that will be of most assistance will be those that can see beyond the technology, those who understand business and business needs.

Look for a technology vendor that does more than just try to sell you software. Look for a “solution” provider in the truest sense of the word – one that can help you formulate a data management strategy in order to solve your data problem today and into the future.

Learn more about Third Wave business management solutions and how we can restore confidence in your data management strategy.