Installing a Business Management Software system can be a major step for a company. It can help alleviate many of the growth problems that businesses face and greatly improve your productivity. It can also be a time consuming and expensive process so you need to make the right choice of systems. Here are a few factors to consider when purchasing a Business Management Software system:
- Pick a solid vendor: Your technology vendor will be responsible for implementing the system, training your staff, and supporting your company. Make sure they are of reasonable size, have done this before with companies in your industry, and that they will still be here years down the road to support you. Ask for references from previous clients and determine what their reputation is in the industry. It may be cheaper to go with a startup but if they are new to the game or are not around in six months when you need help, it will be far costlier to your business.
- Choose the right features: What features do you need from your Business Management Software? What are the major inefficiencies in your business that can be solved by having the right tools in place? Identify the areas where technology can help you improve your productivity and work with your vendor to look at which features you should consider adding. Because a Business Management Software system is a long term investment, look at adding features that will help you immediately as well as those that can benefit you as you continue to grow your business.
- Look at integration: Identify what data you will need from your existing programs to integrate into your new Business Management Software system. Some Business Management Software integrates better with applications than others and it should be considered because your data integration can be a major stumbling block for your new rollout.
- Examine the costs: Obviously the cost of licensing and implementing the Business Management Software should be a major consideration. What features do you need and which vendor has the best fit with your business challenges? Also consider how easy the software is to learn. If your staff can quickly understand how to use the new software it will be a major boost for your productivity while if it is complex and takes months of training to master then it can hamper your efforts to improve efficiency.
We recommend SAP Business One as the best solution for small business owners when considering a Business Management Software system. Some of the capabilities include:
- Bookkeeping: Enables reporting to handle all critical financial transactions, including general ledgers, journal entries, budgets, accounts payable, and accounts receivable.
- Tax Tracking: Handles tax-relevant transactions, including sales tax, VAT, and withholding tax.
- Banking: Manages payment processing, including checks, cash, credit cards, and bank transfers.
- Financial Reporting: Instant, comprehensive, and accurate insight into data from many sources, including general ledgers, accounts receivable, accounts payable, sales, purchasing, and inventory.
- Order Booking: Provides full integration with key business functions such as inventory and production.
- Purchasing: Supports procurement, integrating the entire purchasing process from order creation to goods receipt and invoice payment.
- Inventory Tracking: Tracks goods receipts, issues, and inventory movement.
- Production Planning: Lets you create resource scenarios that specify planning horizons, items, and data sources.
- Production Management: Integrates and automates the management of production, assembly, sales, and bill-of-materials (BOM) templates. You can store a BOM number, description, warehouse, and item composition; per-item quantities; production issue methods; and prices at each level.
- Sales Activity Management: Includes a highly configurable scheduling that tool shows activity types, workdays, hours, and holidays, allowing multiple users to access the same calendar.
- Sales Opportunities Management: Provides an up-to-the-minute view of your latest sales pipeline data.
- Customer Service Management: Allows you to track customer issues, measure the utilization and response time of your service department, and get a real-time overview of customer support operations.
- Contact Management: Lets you synchronize calendars and tasks and to import customer data from SAP Business One into your Microsoft Outlook contacts list.
- Employee Data Management: Captures pertinent information about each employee and makes it centrally available to users with the correct level of authority.
- Monitoring: Enables you to "manage by exception" by monitoring, notifying, and taking action via your system when specific business events occur.
- Reporting: Lets you create, manage, and distribute powerful reports that use familiar and intuitive Microsoft Excel templates.
- Querying: Makes reports easy to create and change and lets you "drill down" into all query results with just a few clicks.
- Customization: Supports user-defined fields, letting users quickly customize the application based on their needs.
- Personalization: Enables users to easily change the view, layout, and content based on their preferences or create dashboards that are specific to their jobs.
- Extension: Includes an industry-standard software development kit that supports quick customization and integration.
To learn more about SAP Business One visit www.sap.com/smallbusiness . If you'd like to see a free demo, click here: https://businessone.webex.com/businessone/mywebex/default.php?Rnd1250=0.23478496323039083.
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