SAP Gears Itself Up for SME Market
Times have changed now. SAP, one of the most popular business vendors has successfully come out with business management systems. These systems are specifically designed for SMEs. SMEs can now look forward to deploy the most sophisticated business software solutions, that would offer them more than just financial & accounting updates. The newest technology introduced by SAP would offer extensive capabilities to manage the entire business, covering all specific & crucial areas. These solutions would efficiently offer great profits to an SME.
While SAP takes a step back to review the cost models and functionality behind Business ByDesign, its two successful mid-market ERP products, SAP Business All-in-One and SAP Business One, continue to gain momentum.
All-in-One software. The software features services such as customer relationship management, supply chain management and supplier relationship management and the Fast Start program aims to enable SMEs in the manufacturing, services and trade industries to utilise industry-specific features.
Donal Madden, SAP’s SME channel manager, said: “We have tried to reposition ourselves as SME friendly. There has been a huge push of company marketing activities to raise awareness of SAP.
“I think the most obvious barrier is that SAP is famous for selling into multi-nationals. If I am honest, when an SME is putting together a shortlist (of companies to work with), SAP might not be at the top. But we are doing a lot to be more relevant to the SMEs.”
When we consider about SMEs, it is clear SAP Business One is a good start. Vendors that have previously tried to take ‘big iron’ applications into the lower parts of the market have met with limited success, despite creative repackaging and hosting. SAP Business One is therefore not a derivative of the traditional R/3 product line. It was specifically designed from the outset with small business use in mind.
Indeed, the SAP strategy for bridging the market from the high end to the low end has a degree of credibility. At the top, there is the mySAP Business Suite for large enterprises. In the mid-market, SAP has a very partner-centric program known as All-in-One, in which value added resellers (VARs) pre-build specific ‘micro-vertical’ solutions around a core mySAP system. Architecture-wise, the solutions at these two levels are the same. There is then the SAP Business One solution for the low end
In the meantime, there is probably some exciting news SAP can go after. In the Quocirca study, 32 per cent of Enterprise SAP customers said they had looked at SAP Business One. Of these, 85 per cent said they could see a place for it in their smaller subsidiaries. This is a sizeable market in its own right.
Source: Slicon.com
Filed under ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning, Enterprise Software