What is our primary use case?
It's an enterprise resource printing system. I use it for all accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger management, inventory management, services, HR, et cetera.
How has it helped my organization?
We moved from QuickBooks to the SAP product due to the fact that it's more feature-rich, has more integrated capabilities, and SAP is just a giant company that puts billions of dollars into its R&D. You get enhancements coming out every year.
What is most valuable?
We heavily use the accounting, sales and AR, purchasing, and AP modules more than any of the other modules. We like it as it's easy to use, cost-effective, easy to deploy, and easy to get support for.
For us, the financials and general ledger are the most valuable features. It supports fixed assets, cost accounting, and other more complex capabilities out of the box, and I don't have to buy third-party solutions. It's made it easy as we get more complex in our business.
What needs improvement?
They have a web client now. It primarily does sales. They just added purchasing. It'll be far more effective when I have inventory and financials as well into the web client version. That way, I can deploy it to users through the web instead of a remote desktop connection. That's probably the biggest competitive weakness that I run into at the moment.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for a decade, give or take a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
On-premises, the solution is very stable. We use the Microsoft SQL Server database version. They have another version. It runs on the HANA database, which is an SAP proprietary database. We used SQL Server just as we had in-house expertise and we already had a license for it, so it is easy for us to maintain.
The system tends to run pretty well. It's not a whole lot of support, so I don't have to have a dedicated IT team managing it. I just have one person really part-time that makes sure it continues to run. That's about it from a stability standpoint.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I've seen reference customers that can do up to two million transactions a month. I'm not at all worried about scalability. If we hit that level, I will long be retired.
From what I've seen, unless I do one hundred times my current business, I don't see any scalability issues.
We have 12 concurrent users on it. Salespeople, purchasing people, accounting. We also have operations who are doing work for customers that use the service module quite a bit. It's kind of a mixed bag of capabilities that are using the system. Every person has a login. They use a named user license approach. Everyone has their unique ID tied to their unique authorizations of what they can and can't do.
We're using just about every module. We also have a couple of extensions for things that we do outside the system that will automatically update. Any enhancements that we tend to do now are usually web apps that are using a web service connector - for example, collaborative project management through the web. I then update the project details inside the system automatically. Those are really the primary drivers that we tend to run into. I'm using probably 75% of what you get in the box.
How are customer service and support?
The first level of support is really through your value-added resale partner and then they have escalation to SAP and we have the ability to log in with SAP and check their website for support tickets and also documentation updates and training materials since we signed on and bought the solution.
It's usually pretty good support from that standpoint. It really comes down to whatever partner you've decided to work with. If you work well with that partner, you'll get really good support. If that partner tries to sell you something and then runs away, well, you'll get not as good support. Luckily, we made sure to partner with people that have dedicated support staff available to help as needed.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did use QuickBooks.
QuickBooks is great if you're a three-person shop and don't have to scale very quickly. You will outgrow it very quickly, especially if you have inventory or if you have services or other functions that are not inside the QuickBooks application. If you want all of that integrated, you're going to have to go to something bigger. It also doesn't have as many regulatory compliance functions built-in. For example, you can do a non-balanced journal entry in QuickBooks, if you really want to, whereas you can't do that in the SAP product due to the fact that it has to be U.S. GAAP compliant out of the box so it can pass audits.
Usually, once you start having to deal with inventory or more complex operations integrations or things like fixed assets or cost accounting, you're going to upgrade out of QuickBooks into something more robust - and that's what we did.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was very straightforward. We did a migration from QuickBooks, so we worked with a value-added reseller who provided expertise to do the migration. We were able to carry the data over with no major hiccups and it went very fast.
For us, deployment took three months as we really don't have a lot of products. We're primary services, and therefore the migration of master data was limited to financials, customers, vendors, things like that.
Our implementation strategy was to migrate all the QuickBooks functionality as quickly as possible so we could start doing transactions in the new system. We generally followed a provided implementation methodology that was provided by the partner, and that was pretty much it. We just followed the steps.
We don't have any 100% dedicated staff on deployment or maintenance of this. We have an internal IT team. It's really one and a half persons, however, they also maintain all of our IT including emails, websites, and other things. Therefore, no one is full-time just maintaining the ERP system. It's pretty bulletproof and if I need to bring in extra people to help when we're making any major changes, my consulting partner that I did the implementation with can provide resources for things like customizations, special reports, or anything that I don't have the capability to do in-house.
What about the implementation team?
SAP does not sell Business One directly. They always go through a valuated resale partner and those partners provide you with consultants who know how to set it up and how to train you.
What was our ROI?
It's hard to come up with the exact return on investment due to the fact that you have to have an accounting system to operate a company of our size. I'm generating five million-plus in revenue a year, so I've got to have a decent accounting system.
It's hard to say what would I measure my return on investment against. That being said, I haven't had to hire more IT staff or more accounting staff to do this in a more manual way. I probably have saved money on my staff expansion and my overhead costs. I didn't have to buy a whole bunch of new software support so I was able to put it on my same servers, versus having to buy additional servers, which also is usually built into the cost of your software as a service monthly fee, which makes that a little higher.
I probably see some savings there. Also, it is an easy to manage and effectively bulletproof solution once it's up and running, I didn't have to have a dedicated IT staff, so I didn't have to augment my current staff on that. However, it's hard to figure out what your exact return on investment is other than the fact that I'm able to do more business with the same amount of people.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing is flexible. If you buy the license in the CapEx model, then you have an 18% to 20% maintenance fee that covers you for bug support and access to upgrade patches and releases.
If you do the software as a service model, dollars are effectively built into the monthly fee. Therefore, you're not having to pay that on top of it. You're just paying a monthly fee and that's usually it.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at all the major small to mid-size ERP packages available. We went with SAP due to the fact that they are the 800-pound gorilla in the ERP marketplace.
They have about a 65% global market share in ERP systems, so they're not going to go away anytime. Plus, they take what they learn in their big products that cost millions of dollars and put it into the Business One allocation so that you have a lot of pre-designed capabilities out of the box that you just can't get in a smaller solution. Those were our primary decisions on why we went the way we did.
What other advice do I have?
I'm a customer and an end-user.
It's competitive with anything else in its space. We checked that out. No one likes to pay for licenses, so we all complain about the pricing, however, everything costs roughly the same. I know that in newer versions when I was asking about hosted options, they're starting to offer software as a service. That way, instead of doing a CapEx investment, you can do OPEX and just pay a monthly fee per user. We've done some evaluations on that. For us, it was cheaper to do the CapEx and buy the license and not do the software as a service due to the fact that, after two and a half years, you basically paid for your license if you'd bought it, and the other way you're still paying a monthly fee. After three years, you're actually in worse financial investment shape than you were if you've just done the CapEx upfront.
It's just a game of where you want to put the money and either way you're going to buy licenses. All solutions in this space fall within a percentage of each other. None of them are giant. You have to be competitive to get the business, so they all price it pretty close.
I'd advise new users to make sure you got a partner you can work with as it's not going to be a one-time deal. It's a relationship that you're going to want to keep intact, in place, going forward. Every year a new version and new capabilities are going to be available. You'll need additional training. Every time you hire new people, you'll need someone to help get them up to speed and make sure it's working. Therefore, it becomes a relationship, and regardless of what ERP system you go with, the partner you work with, especially in the small to mid-size space, makes all the difference in the world. A good partner makes your life easy. A bad partner makes you hate everything about the ERP system.
I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I would probably take it up to a nine, however, they're not there yet. It's coming. It's in their roadmap. However, I wish I could get it earlier.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.