SAP Ships Business One Upgrade For Small Manufacturers

SAP AG on Wednesday launched an upgrade of its software for small and medium-sized businesses, saying it has added material-requirements-planning capabilities to the all-in-one product for small manufacturers.

The MRP functionality ties into the Business One upgrade's components for managing sales and customer data, giving manufacturers a better link between inventory and actual demand, the German software maker said.

"The No. 1 thing we hear from our customers is they want a single solution from a single vendor that works on an integrated basis," Dan Kraus, vice president for Business One at SAP, said. "(In Business One), we have the financial, CRM (customer-relationship management) and line of business applications -- all from one vendor."

MRP systems are used to determine what assemblies must be built and what materials must be procured in order to build a unit of equipment by a certain date. It queries the bill of materials and inventory databases to derive the necessary elements.

In Business One, SAP has added business intelligence capabilities to the MRP system, enabling companies to perform "what if" analyses by selecting a combination of planning variables, such as forecasts, open sales or production orders and stock levels.For small manufacturers, the new MRP capabilities in Business One gives them an alternative to using complex spreadsheet models that are less efficient and accurate, Kraus said.

SAP, in general, has focused on providing better business intelligence for its customers. At its TechEd conference in San Diego last week, the company demonstrated a prototype of new BI technology. In Business One, the company "will continue to expand the ability for people to get at information in better ways," Kraus said.

Other enhancements to the product include integrated calendaring to the CRM component to schedule sales and service activities, reducing the need for third-party groupware, SAP said. In addition, the calendar component can be integrated with Outlook, Microsoft Corp.'s popular personal information manager, so users can synchronize scheduling, contacts and tasks; and can access customer and partner communications.

The upgrade supports more databases than previous versions. In addition to Microsoft SQL Server, the latest version supports Sybase Inc.'s Adaptive Server Enterprise and IBM's DB2 Universal Database Express edition, which targets SMBs.

Within the SMB market, SAP's chief rival is Microsoft, which offers its own line of business applications. SAP's major enterprise competitors, Oracle Corp. and PeopleSoft Inc., however, have also started to move into smaller markets.Oracle has launched a $7.7 billion hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft, which has drawn a lot of resources from both companies and has worked, SAP claims, to its advantage.

"It has definitely worked to SAP's favor," Kraus said. "Without a doubt, we've become the safe harbor for companies."

Business One has a starting price in the U.S. of $3,750 per named user.