If you receive errors when attempting to view this white paper, please install the latest version of
Adobe Reader.
"SAP Americas is a subsidiary of SAP AG, the world's largest business software company and the third-largest software supplier overall.
SAP Americas' corporate headquarters is located in Newtown Square, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia."
Source : SAP
Giving Service Companies a Fast Start: SAP Business All-in-One Fast-start
Program
Enterprise resource planning is also known as :
ERP Systems,
Business Information Systems,
ERP Software Systems ,
ERP Integration,
ERP Software Solutions,
Enterprise Systems Strategy,
ERP Systems Integration,
ERP Software,
ERP System'S Functionality,
ERP Applications,
SAP Business One Integration,
SAP Business One Solution Package,
Sap Business One,
Implementing SAP Business One,
MRP Systems
As a service provider, you need to provide value to
your clients efficiently and cost-effectively. The SAP® Business All-in-One
solution supports use of the best practices in the services industry, and the
fast-start program helps you to implement it quickly.
Whether you offer IT services or strategic consulting, your success depends
on how well you manage your key accounts to ensure long-term relationships and
the highest possible margins. In the current climate of intense competition and
increasingly well-informed clients, it can be difficult to maintain market share
' let alone grow your business.
Today's clients are buying smarter, fixed-price contracts, which means
greater project and delivery risks for you. Simultaneously, global competition
is forcing prices down and squeezing margins. Services firms must consistently
provide their clients with tangible and differentiated value and at the same
time control costs to deliver projects profitably. To succeed, you need to
reduce your expenses by improving operational efficiency and more tightly
controlling your project-related costs. You may be hampered in these goals,
however, by outdated, nonintegrated systems for managing your resources,
projects, and financials. These legacy systems may well be impeding your
visibility, perpetuating inefficiencies, and limiting your flexibility and
growth.
The SAP® Business All-in-One fast-start program is designed to help you
tailor an SAP Business All-in-One solution to your needs and then get it up and
running quickly. Complete with preconfigured software, the program is easily
adaptable to your changing requirements, growing as your business does.
The SAP Business All-in-One solution supports the service-related business
processes you perform on a daily basis ' from time and expense recording and
contract management to billing for fixed-price, resource-related, or
intercompany contracts. Based on SAP's years of experience in developing
business software, the solution will enable your employees to make decisions
that support your client relationships and improve profitability. You can expect
greater transparency and coordination among business development, resource
management, and service delivery departments, to help you maximize client and
service-line profitability.
Preconfigured to Support Service Companies
The SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program comes with built-in support
for IT services and for consulting-specific business processes. The program
offers a bounded project scope, predictable costs, and low total cost of
ownership. The quick implementation time produces fast time to value for a
solution that supports industry best practices.
Pretested and Preconfigured
The SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program provides everything you need
to get started today and to build for the future. The program provides tools and
methodologies for you to improve software acquisition and shorten implementation
times. It gives you the ability to configure a solution online and get cost
estimates before you start. The program includes complete, pretested software,
including options for lower licensing, installation, and operating costs. Your
implementations will be quicker because the program uses a clearly defined
set of preconfigured industry specific functions.
Functionality for Service Companies
SAP Business All-in-One functionality supports service industry best
practices in the following categories:
- Services
- Accounting
- Controlling
- Forms and reporting
Services
The SAP Business All-in-One solution helps improve your visibility into data
so that you can better manage your financial and operational performance
throughout the client life cycle. Functionality includes contract management and
billing for fixed-price and resource related engagements, as well as time and
expense recording, period-end closing for projects and service orders, external
procurement, and more.
Accounting
The SAP Business All-in-One solution supports the back office of a complex
services environment. The solution enables you to automate accounting processes
and unify financial data across multiple service lines and business units
through support for the general ledger, accounts receivable and payable, and
cash management functions.
Controlling
Closing the books at the end of the fiscal year dependably, accurately, and
consistently is a challenge heightened by organizational restructuring, employee
mobility, and changing local, regional, or national reporting requirements. The
SAP Business All-in-One solution supports best practices for this work.
Forms and Reporting
Reporting financial and operational results can consume too much time and
energy if the infrastructure lacks automation or makes custom reporting
difficult. The SAP Business All-in-One solution allows you to manage all kinds
of reporting, with best practices for forms and reporting built in. Custom
reporting ' both on a recurring as well as an ad hoc basis ' is fully supported.
Getting Started
Your first step in using the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program is to
access the online solution configurator for SAP Business All-in-One. With this
tool, you choose the functional building blocks that will determine your
estimated solution scope and cost. This process also connects you with an SAP
consultant or a local partner who has corresponding industry expertise to
counsel you on next steps.
Next, your SAP consultant or partner will create a personalized demo, using
your data and the demo assistant tool for SAP Business All-in-One. The demo,
which can run on a laptop, will show you end-to-end scenarios ' for example, a
day in the life of a service company.
Once you have committed to purchase, your SAP consultant or partner will use
the solution builder for SAP Business All-in-One to further scope, adapt, and
activate your functional implementation. This tool, which uses standard
templates based on industry and local best practices, simplifies your path to
run SAP Business All-in-One.
Finally, your SAP consultant or partner will use the solution builder's
installation wizard to install the implementation specific to your needs on your
chosen hardware configuration.
You'll gain the agility and support you need to grow, while staying well
within your budget. In addition, you'll benefit from a global partner that can
support and extend your solution.
Building Best Practices into Your Business ' Quickly
The SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program provides a way to incorporate
best practices in services into your operations. Implementation is rapid,
resulting in a quick return on your investment, and also predictable, both in
benefits and in cost. (Price and implementation time vary based on the depth of
functionality implemented.) The solution's flexibility allows you to tailor it
to suit your business's current circumstances and to expand it as your business
grows.
Fast and Flexible
Using the fast-start program, you can implement an SAP Business All-in-One
solution within a predefined scope and with minimal risk. Because the relevant
software for service business processes is pretested and preconfigured for you,
choosing and configuring those processes can be quick ' accelerating your time
to value. The program provides not just the functionality you need, but the
detailed guides and documentation that allow for quick deployment.
As an option prior to implementation, you or your implementation service
provider can use the configuration tool in SAP Business All-in-One to select
only the precise subset of business processes you need, helping to facilitate a
rapid, straightforward implementation.
Whether you offer IT services or strategic consulting, your success depends
on how well you manage your key accounts to ensure long-term relationships and
the highest possible margins.
Predictable and Proven
Using decades of experience with midsize service companies, SAP has
preconfigured and preinstalled the functionality most relevant to your
operations. The result is a more predictable and cost-effective implementation.
The SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program also works with hardware
options from various partners and with software options that incorporate the SAP
MaxDB&8482; database and SUSE Linux operating system to reduce your total cost of
ownership. With this program, you can eliminate the guesswork and implement an
affordable solution for your company.
Thanks to the extensive network of SAP partners, you have access to local
implementation support wherever you are in the world. SAP partners can help you
use the fast-start program to rapidly implement the SAP Business All-in- One
solution that meets your specific needs.
Safe and Scalable
You can adapt the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program to your changing
business needs, making it a safe investment now, yet supporting aggressive
growth goals. You can begin with the preconfigured fast-start offering and later
incorporate other SAP solutions.
When you use the SAP Business All-in- One fast-start program, you gain
built-in support for the best business practices in your industry.
Want to Learn More?
For more information on what the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program
can do for your company, contact your SAP representative today or visit us on
the Web at www.sap.com.
Summary
The SAP® Business All-in-One fast-start program delivers rich functionality
in a pretested, preconfigured package that reflects SAP's years of experience in
developing business applications. Whether your company is small or midsize, the
program will enable you to implement proven best practices in services while
smoothly adapting to changing business requirements. In addition, you'll benefit
from a global partner ecosystem that can support and extend your solution.
Challenges
- Create more efficient business processes
- Speed up response to changing markets, consumer demands, and government
regulations
- Control costs
Supported Business Processes and Software Functions
- Services ' Manage service-related business processes, including
contracts and billing
- Accounting ' Automate accounting processes and unify financial data
- Controlling ' Manage financial accounting for period-end closings
- Forms and reporting ' Obtain standard and custom reports easily
Business Benefits
- Quick return on investment, due to rapid implementation of a predictable
and proven solution incorporating best practices in services
- Faster response to changes in markets, customer demands, and government
regulations
- Lower cost of operations, due to greater efficiency and better control
of project costs
For More Information
Call your SAP representative, or visit us today at www.sap.com