In early and mid-2000s, our clients and the market we served were all about profit growth. Rapid expansion, increasing sales, and escalating needs of a busy organization easily over powered their outdated systems. Companies who recognized this purchased small to mid-sized ERP systems to support their growing business.
The Step into SAP Business One
During the same period, our customers adopted SAP Business One to address these growing pains. The solution allowed them to streamline key processes, gain insight into their business and make decisions based on real-time information. Our clients were a kaleidoscope of start-ups, owner / operated companies, private equity portfolio and publicly traded firms with different business models, levels of management sophistication and system requirements. In most cases, this small business ERP solution transformed the way our clients were operating by providing them rigor and process to scale growth.
Since 2004, SAP Business One has enabled our clients to better manage their financials, find efficiencies in their daily operations and accelerate growth through sales force automation. However, as time passed, and more success was had, these same clients moved from a pure growth mindset to a professionally managed organization with greater concern for risk mitigation, compliance and margins. These more sophisticated clients, those whom are private equity funded and/or publicly traded, needed a system to enable enterprise value growth.
Some of the functional requirements that became of greater necessity were intercompany transactions, departmental reporting, segregation of duties, traceability of products for recall, auditability and a system to ensure adherence to process and policy. These companies needed a solution better fit for their maturing business.
So, to combat this, our clients did two things:
- They utilized separate systems and managed the data outside of the ERP solution
- They hired more people to administrate and enter data into these different systems
But even then, the volume of work piled up, the data became unmanageable and important details started to go missing, putting the company at greater risk. Greater risk in turn reduced the overall corporate scalability and enterprise value.
Recognizing this change in our clients and general greater sophistication on how smaller businesses were being managed, VistaVu made a conscious decision to find a single fully integrated ERP cloud solution that complimented our SAP Business One practice.
Welcome VistaVu’s Clients to SAP ByDesign!
Although SAP ByDesign was launched in 2007, it has been one SAP’s best kept secrets. Because we did not think about SAP ByDesign initially, we looked at several mid-market ERP Cloud products in the market as the natural migration path from SAP Business One.
Two things lead us to SAP ByDesign.
The first was in July 2016, when Oracle announced its acquisition of NetSuite, this placed a greater focus to create awareness about SAP ByDesign as the direct cloud ERP competitor to this acquisition. When we looked at ByDesign we found that the SAP ByDesign product, was already a great product with deep functionality. Unlike other solutions we had looked at for the mid-market, we felt we would satisfy our clients growing requirements without having to mash together a bunch of add-ons to complete the solution.
The second was SAP itself and their domain expertise in ERP. Beyond being the creator of ERP, SAP is, and continues to be, the ERP of choice for many of the world’s largest companies. I believed in 2003, as I believe today, that to operate at a higher level our clients needed to be exposed to the best practices of those operating already at a higher level. Our review of ByDesign showed these best practices already embedded in the solution.
For SAP Business One customers who do not know about SAP ByDesign, this is SAP’s fully integrated mid-market ERP Cloud solution. This solution has been in the market since 2007 and is used by the subsidiaries of some of SAP’s largest clients as well as many mid-market companies.
Additional functionality that Business One clients can now take advantage of includes:
- Marketing and Campaign Management
- Sourcing (Supplier Relationship Management)
- Product (Engineering)
- SCM (Demand and Supply Planning)
- Logistics
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Corporate Governance and Controls
- As well as a host of self-services and mobility capabilities including:
- Purchasing (Self Service Procurement)
- Time Entry
- Approvals
- And more . . .
SAP Business One has been and continues to be a great solution for growing businesses looking to move from Quick Books® or other simple accounting / ERP solutions. While SAP ByDesign gives our larger clients the rigor they need to manage risk, remain in compliance and scale profitably.
If you are using SAP Business One or another small ERP solution and have moved beyond growing profits to wanting a tool to help you grow enterprise value, you should consider reviewing SAP ByDesign. if this sounds like a solution for you.
Much success,
Jory Lamb, CEO
To learn more about SAP ByDesign and if it’s right for your company click here to review the
For a quick comparison of functional capabilities of SAP Business One and SAP ByDesign, .
