New additions to the 9.0 version of SAP Business One available now include:

• Greater collaboration through Ariba, an SAP company: The application is now integrated with the Ariba Network. Customers can connect to the Ariba Network to manage more connections, with more buyers, across even more processes in a fully automated manner – all with direct integration to their SAP systems.
• Ease of implementation and upgrade: Customers benefit from a central location for implementation and configuration tools. Designed to support data migration from legacy systems, copying data between companies, this new feature helps speed up implementation and helps further reduce total cost of ownership.

• Simple adaption to company and industry-specific requirements: The application includes newly integrated development environments for partners, consultants and customer IT employees. The enhanced software development kit helps to extend the functionality of SAP Business One and to create industry and company functionality, and interfaces with third-party tools.

The 9.0 version of SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, is planned to include:

• Easier add-on development for partners: SAP Business One offers a dedicated development framework for partners to enable native development and deployment of analytical applications powered by SAP HANA.
• New and enhanced business processes: By integrating operations in high-concurrent usage in real time with other business processes, such as invoice and delivery, SAP Business One speeds key transactions and improves visibility into cash flow. Fixed assets management, bin location management, multiple units of measurement and pricing and discounting reports are included to help customers enhance their business process management and improve bottom line.
• Real-time reporting and analytics: Pervasive analytics have been supplemented by predictive capabilities adding SAP HANA as the data source. Common reporting such as balance sheets, inventory turnover and sales analysis has been further accelerated. Embedded reports support a comparison of suppliers, prices and payment terms to negotiate better deals and realize cost savings.

“Without SAP Business One, MCS Business Solutions as our SAP partner and Boyum-IT as an industry-specific add-on provider, we would not have been able to handle our impressive growth for the last three years as profitably as we have,” said Axel Zimmermann, president, JAR Systems LLC. “The new release again proves that SAP continues to invest in adding necessary new features to help make our company run even more efficiently. We did not find this in any competitors’ offerings at this price point.”

“The new version of SAP Business One is well-suited for our company and the fixed assets functionality has been a major boost for our operations since we deal with lot of high-tech laboratory equipment,” said E.A. Subramaniam, CEO, HLL Biotech Limited. “The multiple units of measurement feature is another added advantage since it ranges from milligram to kilogram. The overall user experience has been wonderful in this new version.”

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @businessonenews.

Media Contact:
Angelika Pfahler, +41 58 871-7216, angelika.pfahler@sap.com, CET

• See SAP’s entry in the 2013 Partner Program Guide.

Three companies – GCC German Computer Company, proaxia consulting group and ameria GmbH – shared their experience in using the SME solutions SAP Business One analytics powered by SAP HANA and SAP Business ByDesign as well as the SAP Mobile Platform.

Speeding Up Business With SAP HANA
The panel discussion was started by GCC German Computer Company, which was founded in 1995 as an IT system vendor. GCC currently has about 2,000 customers from various industries and offers cloud services as well as on-demand video conferencing services hosted in the company’s own data center in Hameln, Germany.

Bernd Schinkel, head of Sales, explained: “As a cloud provider we have sophisticated pricing models and therefore needed a solution with fast analytics and reporting capabilities.”

After conducting a proof of concept, GCC selected SAP Business One analytics powered by SAP HANA in May 2012. The company has been using SAP Business One, a business management solution for SMEs, since 2005. According to Schinkel, this was one of the best decisions the company has ever made – dashboards, analysis and enterprise search functions are now highly accelerated by SAP HANA, resulting in significantly increased productivity.

To illustrate this increase in productivity, he outlined a scenario that was typical before the new solution was implemented: Previously when a customer called us with a request, the service staff took the call, wrote the request down and told the customer that they would call back. Then the staff checked the customer’s data in the system, which with the former enterprise search tools took several minutes, then called the customer back. With SAP Business One analytics powered by SAP HANA, the customer’s data are delivered within fractions of seconds, and the staff can now answer the customer’s questions directly during the call. This results in immensely increased employee productivity and customer satisfaction.

“Running reporting and interactive analyses is now 20 to 40 times faster than before, and there was no disruption or any downtime during the implementation process,” summarized Schinkel.

SAP partner Uniorg was able to implement the solution without disrupting the existing IT landscape or business processes. In 2014, GCC plans the transition from the existing database, Microsoft SQL, to SAP HANA.

Schinkel explained: “We see that small and medium enterprises are questioning whether SAP HANA is applicable to them at all. With the great experience we have made with SAP HANA, we can say that the migration is just a logical step towards embracing the future.”

Creating Added-Value Mobile Apps With SAP Mobile Platform
Founded four years ago in Switzerland and with 115 consultants currently, the proaxia consulting group focuses on sales and services processes as well as mobile solutions for the automotive and discrete manufacturing industries. Also a partner of SAP for mobile solutions, proaxia specializes in developing “value” apps that help its customers generate additional business through up- and cross-selling opportunities, for example, by improving the dialogue between sales or service representatives and their clients .

Dr. Peter Lindtner, CEO of proaxia, demonstrated a mobile app that the company developed based on SAP Mobile Platform. The “Mobile Service Advisor” app enables automobile service consultants to provide superior service to customers who bring their vehicles to dealer workshops. Service employees can access necessary information about customers via iPads, including their vehicle data and open work orders created in the SAP back-end system. In a configurable and guided process, the service advisor app captures data on the condition of each vehicle and presents the data in graphic, three-dimensional models with configurable checklists. Additionally, the app provides information on sales promotions related to the vehicle. With minimal use of the keyboard, the app can generate work orders for customers to sign directly on iPad. The app then transfers the work order to the SAP back-end system.

“With our mobile app developed on the SAP Mobile Platform, we not only mobilize our customers and existent business processes but can also help companies create a new revenue stream,” said Lindtner. “According to a survey by DEKRA, with our app car dealers can generate additional revenue in total of 60 Euro per car per service representative. This means extra revenue of EUR 30,000 per year per sales rep. As a normal service station has about 20 sales reps, it is able to gain additional revenue of one million Euro per year. This shows the great contribution a ‘value’ mobile app can make to a company’s performance.”

Streamlining Business Processes with SAP Business ByDesign
The German IT startup company ameria GmbH, founded in 2001, initially developed its own business applications. Eight years later, the company still used Excel to manage its business processes instead of a dedicated ERP system. As a result, it had to wait two months to get analyses, reporting and company data, which were compiled by an external tax advisor, for example. In 2010, ameria, with 100 employees at that time, needed to focus on its core business and therefore evaluated several ERP vendors. The company eventually selected the professional on-demand ERP solution SAP Business ByDesign because it is easy to use, self-explanatory and has a beautiful design.

The implementation process was completed in seven weeks, and ameria has seen a multitude of benefits.

“SAP Business ByDesign enabled us for further growth, it offered an attractive total cost of ownership (TCO), and helped us to triple our turnover. We can now concentrate on our core business – not on administration or managing different landscapes, as we now have CRM, and accounting as well travel and project management capabilities in one system,” said Albrecht Metter, managing director of ameria.

Previously, the company used many proprietary solutions and needed two employees just for compiling all the data from the various solutions for bookkeeping and invoicing as well as time and project management. ameria was also able to streamline all its business processes by using SAP Business ByDesign. The solution delivers end-to-end processes, enabling startups to run professionally right from the start.

“In Germany, the security aspect of cloud computing is still a hot topic. However, it has never been an issue for us. We believe that a solution hosted by an external provider is more secure than a self-hosted one because providers have the appropriate resources to properly protect a company’s data,” said Meier. “I think to be in the cloud is much safer than not to be – whether you are a big or a small company.”

• Watch the video replay.

Press contacts:
Angelika Pfahler, SAP AG, +49 (0) 62 27-76 35 96, angelika.pfahler@sap.com, CET
Carolin Nillert, Burson-Marsteller, +49 (0) 69-2 38 09-67, carolin.nillert@bm.com, CET

WALLDORF —

The transaction will broaden the SAP solution portfolio in the insurance space, providing insurers with powerful software tools to streamline the management and creation of new products. It also will give insurance brokers and underwriters — those who deal directly with customers — simple, modern tools that speed up transactions. Together, these components could help insurers grow their businesses and reduce costs.

Many insurers today struggle with outdated core insurance systems that are not agile enough to meet rapidly changing consumer needs and the latest technology trends. Insurers seek to modernize these core systems in order to increase the quality of their business and deliver new products to the market more quickly. At the same time, they need software tools that provide instant analysis and simulation across huge volumes of data — all while protecting the value of past IT investments.

The move adds significant value to the integrated SAP for Insurance solution portfolio and prominently positions SAP in the rapidly emerging market for integrated core insurance platforms, the industry’s first “Super Suite.” Traditional solution suites for the insurance industry have been limited to policy, billing and claims. SAP, together with Camilion, plans to provide an integrated yet modular end-to-end insurance offering: the SAP® Business All-in-One solution for Insurance. This will include comprehensive integrated capabilities from strategy through finance to operations powered by leading-edge in-memory and mobile technologies, available both in the cloud or on premise.

“With this acquisition, SAP is able to meet the needs of insurers that face a challenging new business environment and that need to make significant product and strategy changes quickly at low risk,” said Simon Paris, global head of Financial Services, SAP. “Camilion brings deep expertise and trusted relationships in the new age of insurance applications, well recognized by customers and analysts.”

“We are convinced this is a ‘win-win-win,” said Ross Orrett, president and CEO, Camilion. “It’s a win for SAP and Camilion, for our joint customers and for an industry that is modernizing at a staggering pace. We intend to deliver best-in-class products and services from a combined team with unmatched depth in the insurance industry.”

Global Underwriting
Leading insurers use Camilion’s capabilities to perform sophisticated underwriting of some of the most complex global risks. These capabilities integrate seamlessly with back-end systems to support the entire product life cycle, including the development of new business across the world.

Product Development and Management
Camilion’s ProductAuthority helps customers manage everything about insurance products into re-usable components that can be rapidly adapted to form new products or enhancements. Camilion and SAP have uniquely built their respective solutions from the ground up to externalize product information and agnostically integrate with any core system.

Full Solution for ISO
Camilion helps insurers address the requirements of the Insurance Services Office (ISO) and state policies and regulations in the U.S. Using an advanced automated process for importing and testing content, Camilion builds complete, functional insurance product definitions as interpreted by ISO. The combination of Camilion and SAP solutions will provide a complete platform for insurers with operations in the U.S.

Mobile and “Big Data”
Camilion intends to expand its mobility capabilities for quoting and underwriting, which is critical as brokers and underwriters increasingly work remotely and rely on the latest applications on iPad, iPhone and other mobile devices. One Camilion customer already has more than 10,000 brokers using this capability.

For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom.

About Camilion
Camilion was founded in 2001 and is an innovative software company that leading insurers use to gain enterprise-wide agility with their products and underwriting. It is privately held, with offices in Canada and the United States. SAP and Camilion have collaborated since 2008.

For more information, press only:
Andy Kendzie, +1 (202) 312-3919 andy.kendzie@sap.com, EST
Crystal Lu, +1 (925) 236-6431, crystal.lu@sap.com, PST
Daniel Reinhardt, +49 6227 7-40201, daniel.reinhardt@sap.com, CET
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EST; press@sap.com

• Read the newsbyte.
• Read what partners have to say.
• Read what customers have to say.
• See screenshots.

Antarc, Kenya (currently implementing)
“It was a simple decision – the future has knocked your door and Antarc simply grabbed the opportunity to go with the innovation of SAP. We have already seen how SAP Business One has assisted Antarc to grow and create better management and control systems hence we decided to take the opportunity towards succession.”

Neha Malde, financial manager, Antarc

Tian’An Agriculture Development, China
“By moving today’s time consuming user defined query to SAP HANA, about selecting open sales order lines from the table containing millions records, the time for pick and pack process can be reduced from 20 minutes to 2 seconds. In addition, by leveraging the super scalability and parallel computing power from SAP Business One on SAP HANA, those traditional long running operational and analytical reports will no longer be interfering or blocking other users’ operations, this will dramatically increase our productivity and business efficiency. It appears SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, will address most of our today’s pain points, and we foresee  big return of investment out of this project and look forward to become the early adopter of SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, in China.”

Sun Rui, IT director, Beijing Tian’An Agriculture Development Co., Ltd

Glooobal GmbH, Germany
“SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, provides stability and ease of use beyond our expectations. Due to the pre-configuration we were able to go live within one week. Glooobal is among our first customers to benefit from a SAP HANA empowered SAP Business One installation. SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, is very easy to use, it took us less than one week from installing the hardware to running our business in parallel on SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA. We are able to run transactions and analytics on a single SAP HANA platform and performance is excellent. We especially love the beautiful analytics and Google like enterprise search which makes all relevant information ready in seconds.”

Stefan Schaffer, CEO, Glooobal

Star Dental, India
“As a retail chain, finance and logistics are key components of our business. In both these domains we need to have control and effective reporting. Hence, we chose SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA.”

Saurabh Singh, manager, Corporate Strategy, Star Dental

Goldfarb, Uruguay
“Our key business is to lead in distribution and trade of hardware, china and home ware products and services in Uruguay and our range of goods is critical to our customers and their chances to get business opportunities. With SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA we will be in a position to analyze our goods in real-time and to have a closer control of our commercial transactions.”

Ingeniero Jorge Tocar, IT manager, Goldfarb

Sforza International B.V., Netherlands
“To manage our growing European organization, to handle the processes over all offices in multiple countries and get fast and good detailed reports without struggling with the restriction of SQL, we need a super scalable database. Only SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA and the mobile solutions can help us out in our flexible running business. On the other hand using SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA internally gives us the opportunity to get experience with these SAP-innovations and gives us new opportunities for our Healthcare OnDemand-products with SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA as OEM-solution.”

Harrie van Groenendeal, CFO, Sforza International B.V.

For more information, press only:
Angelika Pfahler, +49 6227 7-63596, angelika.pfahler@sap.com, CET
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EST; press@sap.com
Torrey Fazen, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (617) 912-5401, torrey.fazen@bm.com, EST

Asia Pacific and Japan
“SAP Business One just got better with SAP HANA. Over the years we avoided certain industries or customer types as we were unable to fulfill their needs with SAP Business One. Be it large volume of transactions or real time analytics all in the same box, with the launch of SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA we are now able to exceed customer expectations. Having acquired and implemented the first SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA customer we have been able to see the power of SAP HANA and the way it can benefit the SME segment. SAP HANA has opened new avenues and markets for us and we look forward to bringing this exciting technology for the benefit of more SMEs.”

Prashant Kulshrestha, CEO WMS

Europe
“Our partnerships with SAP have enabled thousands of customers to gain from the exciting benefits SUSE Linux Enterprise has to offer, including decreased operating costs and improved performance SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has been recognized by SAP as an operating system for use with SAP HANA based on its technical capabilities and ease-of-use. With SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, we look forward to the ongoing upward trend of customer success as they continue to see the value of implementing Linux within their IT environments.”

Michael Miller, vice president of global marketing and alliances, SUSE

“Asecom build over the years a very successful partnership with SAP based on SAP Business One. With SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA we can offer our customers revolutionary technology. It allows customers to grow and to make faster and easier important business decisions. If our customers are operating more successful, it means Asecom can also operate more successful. It is also a proof to our customers that an investment in SAP is a smart and safe choice for now and in the future.”

Mick de Valk, CEO of Asecom

“SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA gives us and SAP the opportunity to serve more complex and even bigger growing customers and get away from the restrictions of a SQL-database. With the SAP HANA In-Memory database innovation the customer business processing will go faster, new smart functionalities are reality now and real-time reports can be more complex without hinder the end-users. In our internal international organization SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA gives us new opportunities by using it as OEM-product for OnDemand products.”

Luc van Alphen, CCO, Domani Business Solutions

Germany, Austria and Switzerland
“As software solution partner we develop and market SAP Business One-based certified industry solutions for discrete and process manufacturing. Why to decide to invest and provide beas industry solutions for SAP HANA? We started as small German-based software company to develop industry solutions based on SAP Business One already end of 2002 and could join this fascinating growth path to 38.000 customers these days. Today beas group is globally present and represented by 80 SAP Business/beas partners. Our strategy is 100 percent focused on SAP Business One. Therefore no doubt, we simply have to be part of the community to support this game-changing new technology. Selling our solutions via indirect channel we permanently screen the needs of customers to enable our partners to sell very competitive products. With SAP HANA especially also medium-sized companies can obtain advantages, e.g. accelerated planning, simulation and calculation processes, quick and comprehensive overviews about a work order with status and all documents from customer order to invoice, real-time reports, etc. The result is an upward spiral: Very motivated partners to sell our solution – more won deals – a satisfied customer base. With beas industry solutions for SAP HANA we expect an increased demand of innovative customers, estimating the added value caused by this technology.”

Willi Jost, chairman/CEO, beas group AG

“We are convinced that by combining our innovative coresuite mobile solution with SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA we can bring even more value to our customer base. Through the combination of mobility and real-time reports we will further increase the efficiency of coresystems’ global customers. The innovative technology of SAP HANA helps us and coresystems customers to gain further business value.”

Manuel Grenacher, CEO, coresystems ag

“EGR energy Systems GmbH is a new player in the SAP Business One area and has developed a new and exciting add-on focused on the small and medium energy market segment. We have bed our business solely on the SAP HANA technology as we have to manage big data in this market segment. With SAP HANA we enabled super-fast real-time analytics, in-time processing of big data and have overcome all our bottlenecks so far. In addition we detect new innovative and revolutionize capabilities to drive our solution to a leading edge solution to set SAP as the standard also for this segment.”

Joachim Rake, managing partner, EGR energy systems GmbH

“As one of the global leading SAP Business One software solution partners, Maringo believes in SAP technology. So far we use the SAP Business One Software Development Kit for the development of our Project Management solution based on SAP Business One. We appreciate to get the chance adopting that industry solution for professional services and engineering, construction and operation companies to SAP HANA too. That gives us the chance to improve our project reporting in a second phase. Thanks to the great support of SAP development project management is ready for SAP HANA just in time for CeBIT.”

Peter Sauermann, general manager, MARINGO Computers GmbH

“UNIORG decided to go the ‘SAP HANA way’ because SAP HANA delivers game changing advantages in performance and real-time computing and will be in our eyes the core for future business applications. Our customers and we will gain profit from faster and better information to be at the top of the business. Big data will become more and more a theme for SAP ERP as well as SAP Business One customers. Furthermore SAP HANA redefines the user experience for mobile applications. UNIORG believes in SAP HANA, we took part in the SAP HANA Partner Race successfully and got a lot of SAP HANA knowledge. UNIORG and SAP – this will be our focus for the next years.”

Hans-Peter Kreft, managing director, UNIORG Services GmbH

North America
“Here at ECS, we view SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA as a real game changer for small to midsized businesses. SAP has put business intelligence at the Customer touch point with speed that’s simply amazing. At the same time, SAP has given business analysis tools to non IT users at a price point never before available to companies this size. The business value our customers are seeing is huge.”

Darran Vayhinger, president, Effective Computer Solutions

“Small and medium businesses today are running into the same challenges that large companies face with analyzing their data in real-time. Building on our enterprise portfolio, HP has recently announced SMB Solutions for SAP HANA leveraging the HP ProLiant ML350p Gen8 Server series that offers powerful simplicity and built-in intelligence to deliver faster insights into their business operations, regardless of size.”

Manoj Suvarna, director, Product Management, Converged Application Systems, Hewlett-Packard

For more information, press only:
Angelika Pfahler, +49 6227 7-63596, angelika.pfahler@sap.com, CET
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EST; press@sap.com
Torrey Fazen, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (617) 912-5401, torrey.fazen@bm.com, EST

Click images to view full size.

HANOVER

The version of SAP Business One for SAP HANA, in restricted shipment today, will offer the complete small business essentials in one single user interface, helping users operate their businesses from end to end — from operational to strategic level and with improved visibility and control. SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, will help companies dramatically reduce reporting response times, enabling employees to be both more productive and more effective in their decision-making. The speed offered by in-memory computing will help small businesses to answer previously unsolvable problems, and will allow all users to become more efficient by leveraging out-of-the-box features of the application for enhanced user experience. These include enterprise search and powerful interactive operational analysis, which enable business workers to deal with information in their daily work more effectively.

The ability to gain deeper insight into operational analytics will enable SMEs to accelerate business processes through a platform designed for scalability and better system performance in a highly concurrent environment. The new application powered by SAP HANA will integrate the capabilities of an in-memory platform with the company’s existing SAP Business One application. The version of SAP Business One for SAP HANA offers real-time business insights from the same system that runs the transactional processing, eliminating the need for a separate data warehouse and thus helping lower costs and reduce IT landscape complexity. SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, will empower small enterprises to cope with the unprecedented growth and “big data” of the convergence of social, device, equipment and corporate data.

Partners can create a new breed of innovative add-on solutions in their dedicated industry or geographic markets through the integration of SAP HANA with SAP Business One. The offering is planned for sale worldwide by value-added resellers in the SAP® PartnerEdge™ program. SAP and Portugal Telecom recently announced their plans to make available a developer edition of SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA. It is planned to provide developers with a fully configured environment for SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, to help accelerate development of extensions and add-ons built on the SAP HANA Cloud platform available on SmartCloudPT.

“As SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, becomes available, this version, together with speed and the ability to better handle the growing data challenge, should be a no-brainer for those just starting out,” said Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras. “Existing customers will need to carefully review the business case for making the transition. For these customers, don’t assume SME means small data and don’t overlook the need for speed.”

“Our key business is to lead in distribution and trade of hardware, china and homeware products and services in Uruguay, and our range of goods is critical to our customers and their chances to get business opportunities,” said Ingeniero Jorge Tocar, IT manager, Goldfarb. “With SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, we will be in a position to analyze our goods in real time and to have a closer control of our commercial transactions.”

For more information, including additional news from SAP at CeBIT, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

Media Contacts:
Angelika Pfahler, +49 (6227) 7-63596, angelika.pfahler@sap.com, CET
Torrey Fazen, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (617) 912-5401, torrey.fazen@bm.com, EST

For more information:

• Read the SAP.info article: “Defining SME Success“
• Read the press release from the EIU: “Despite uncertain times, small and midsized companies worldwide are preparing for growth, says the Economist Intelligence Unit” [PDF]

Learn more about the research in “Scaling SMEs: Building a platform for flexible growth,” including:

Executive summary

1. An operational strategy for scaling
Box: In-house or outsourced?
Box: Aston Carter—Processes and disciplines around cash

2. Leveraging technology to scale the SME
Box: Special purpose technologies—A cautionary tale
Box: Financial preparation for scaling

3. Critical factors in scaling headcount
Box: Retaining the Hyperion culture
Box: Does growth become easier with scale?

Conclusions

More information is available at
www.managementthinking.eiu.com/scaling-smes.