The hottest sapbusinessbydesign is suitable for

Is SAP Business bydesign right for your company

in September 2007, sap, an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software giant, launched its business bydesign product. At the same time, it also made a big publicity for the product, which many analysts and bloggers are very skeptical about

business bydesign represents SAP's first attempt (small and medium-sized enterprises) to promote ERP and CRM to SMB (small and medium-sized enterprise market) through SaaS (software as a service) mode. The solution emphasizes low TCO (total cost of ownership) and ease of use. These efforts are European style in order to open up a new business area

now, it is 8 months since business bydesign, and it is still difficult to see how successful business bydesign will be. "Business bydesign has not officially released the universal availability statement of its products, and has not experienced a critical stage for customers or suppliers," said gorinbaum, head of enterprise applications consulting, an enterprise software research and consulting company headquartered in Berkeley, California

according to the previous statement issued by SAP, the goal of business bydesign is "medium-sized enterprises, mainly focusing on improving their common cross industry processes, while minimizing their it costs and resources." In other words, compared with similar enterprises, the ERP system that companies with 100 to 500 employees want to deploy will be relatively cheaper and simpler. In SAP's ERP product family, business bydesign is a product between business one and business all in one. Business one's target customers are enterprises with fewer than 100 employees, while business all in one focuses on enterprises with 500 to 1000 employees

sap's product plan for business bydesign can be described as "ambitious". SAP plans to expand its customer base to 40000 by 2010, and business bydesign is regarded by SAP as the key to this plan. The reason why SAP values business bydesign so much is that the company estimates that the number of potential customers of business bydesign worldwide is up to 6000000

although business bydesign wants to compete with managed CRM solutions, for example, the two products are very different. The CRM products of SugarCRM and are pure CRM products, while the CRM products of business bydesign belong to one module of a complete ERP suite. Business bydesign focuses on finance, human resources, supply chain, objectives, customer relations, projects, supplier relations, and compliance

"the functions of business bydesign are perfect, including administrative dashboard, finance, product lifecycle management, supply chain management and other functions," said Martin margal, vice president and general manager of business bydesign at SAP america1, the correct clamping of samples is very important for the experiment s (headquartered in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania). This actually does not fully describe the essential characteristics of business bydesign. Like all ERP products, business bydesign is designed to run all aspects of the business through a single application. Although the CRM module is powerful, it is not designed for decentralized deployment

business bydesign is priced on a per user basis at $150 per user per month. Greenbaum said that compared with ERP products used by other small and medium-sized enterprises, this solution has a cost advantage

powerful integration

the great strength of the CRM module of business bydesign is that it is closely integrated with the rest of the enterprise software

"because CRM is integrated into the enterprise's background management system at the module level, it also has the ability to be closely integrated at the process level," Greenbaum said. "What you do in CRM will affect order management, logistics, etc. if you have independent applications, all these things can be better integrated, run more smoothly and cost less."

greenbaum continued, "one of the reasons SAP developed business bydesign is to have a complete set of interrelated programs, which are easy to deploy without complex integration infrastructure. People trust SAAS and gradually go beyond the old vision of application development and integration in the 20th century. Sap has begun to start research and development in this area to show people that ERP deployment is easy to implement and practical."

"because CRM is integrated into the enterprise's background management system at the module level, it also has the ability to be closely integrated at the process level," said AUM, who usually has high requirements on the tensile properties of materials, such as heat shrinkable film and tensile film. "What you do in CRM will affect order management, logistics, etc. if you have independent applications, all these things can be better integrated, run more smoothly and cost less."

greenbaum continued, "one of the reasons SAP developed business bydesign is to have a complete set of interrelated programs, which are easy to deploy without complex integration infrastructure. People trust SAAS and gradually go beyond the old vision of application development and integration in the 20th century. Sap has begun to start research and development in this area to show people that ERP deployment is easy to implement and practical."

flexibility and ease of use

although in the traditional sense, integration is a huge function of ERP based CRM system, it also has shortcomings, that is, difficult deployment and lack of flexibility, which makes ERP system "notorious"

enterprise is a very complex thing, and it is not easy to automate and integrate all enterprise applications. ERP system is a much larger enterprise application than CRM. ERP system is difficult to adjust because all its functions are interrelated. This is also one of the main obstacles to the popularization of ERP system, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises

greenbaum said that SAP spent four years developing business bydesign products, so SAP also spent a lot of time and energy to make business bydesign easier to use

according to the analysis of observers, one of the most powerful features of business bydesign is its user interface. Sap has made great efforts to make this product not only easy to install, but also easier for small business executives to understand

"we have spent a lot of time on research and working with customers and potential customers to really figure out what the solutions of small and medium-sized enterprises need," margal said. "Obviously, they want a product that is easy to deploy and use."

"we have added a business configuration tool in business bydesign, which can ask users some questions. After the user gives an answer, it automatically configures business bydesign according to the user's answer. The purpose of this is to ensure that this product is easy to deploy," margal said. "For example, it will ask users' does your enterprise produce according to inventory or order? 'users can click a radio button to answer. It will ask users a series of questions. After users answer these questions, the tool configures business bydesign at the bottom."

gorinbaum said that the user interface of business bydesign is a big selling point. "There is no doubt that after using business bydesign, users are likely to say 'this easy-to-use user interface allows me to easily complete the development and deployment of a powerful ERP system step by step', which is a great advantage of this product. Traditional software does not do this. Business bydesign may become an inflection point of software design. Just like the stage when the car was just invented, people If you want to drive, you don't need to know the machine architecture like a mechanic. "

"obviously, in the process of developing business bydesign, the complexity and cost of enterprise software are the first factors to be considered," Goering was able to insert it into a key point, Baum said. "Business bydesign adheres to the principles of model driven and easy deployment. The goal is to achieve a low TCO." low "mainly refers to the length of deployment time and the ability to make changes at the business process level, and can respond quickly."

but when it comes to ERP systems, these metrics are relative. Because of the inherent complexity of ERP system, it is still a huge project to deploy it - no matter how much time and effort SAP spends to make its own solution easy to use

there is also a balance between standardization and customization of products. Sap has chosen to emphasize the standardization process and strive to make products easier to use. Although most business bydesign - especially the user interface - is highly customizable, there is an assumption that the standardization process will be used as much as possible

"there will always be such a question: 'how much customization does my business need to maintain the competitive advantage of the enterprise?" Gorinbaum said. " Questions like this cannot be answered unless you see specific examples. There will be such companies. For them, some business processes are absolutely in the lead, which cannot be produced in a magical modeling environment. But most of the work of almost all enterprises can be covered by general processes

"you will never cover the needs of all industries, but you can get more functions at a lower cost than using other methods," gorinbaum added. When z=0, Hall potential =0; C system has high sensitivity, and the measurement range is less than 1mm

business bydesign will be successful

although the SME managed ERP solution of business bydesign represents a different direction of ERP, it is still in the very early stage of release

the real question is how many target users of business bydesign will receive this product. This question will not be answered until business bydesign becomes universally available. It may be later in 2008. "This is a $1billion problem." Gorinbaum said. (end)