Businesses today want to be operationally agile with efficient processes and effective reporting structure – this ask is pretty much universal, irrespective of size. Like all businesses, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are also constantly facing new challenges and opportunities as they continuously strive to grow in the modern digital economy.

In order to stay competitive in such dynamic times, small businesses have to adopt new technologies that will enable them to make decisions faster and provide better services to their customers.  What makes small businesses different is the fact that while they may have processes that are somewhat similar in nature and complexity to large businesses, the budgets available to them to upgrade from dated technologies are significantly smaller. Thus, they are usually under tremendous pressure to upgrade to or adopt latest technologies with minimum resource outlay. This is one of the key reasons why small and medium businesses are turning to SAP system integration to transform their business and automate tasks that are currently manual.

What makes SAP the right solution for SMEs?

SAP is for large enterprises – if this is what you thought, think again.  SAP supports companies of all sizes irrespective of the type of business. This means you can benefit from using SAP for a small business. More than 250,000 SMEs and 70% of businesses all over the world use SAP solutions.^[1]What’s more, SAP’s Business One contributes at least half of all new customer acquisitions for SAP in the SMEspace with over 1,000 new customers added each quarter.In fact, over 1 million end-users from more than 60,000 SMEs across 170 countries use the solution every day to transform the way they work![2]

SAP’s small and midsize business management software empowers businesses to replace manual tasks with intelligent, data-driven processes across functions. The portfolio of SME solutions, which include SAP Business One, SAP Business By Design, SAP Predictive Analytics Integrator, SAP Analytics Cloud, has specifically been designed keeping in mind what small businesses need in order to grow successfully.

Take for example the case of a wholesale distributor who used QuickBooks for managing his accounting, and Excel for analytics and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). As the business grew and evolved, chances of errors creeping into manually recorded data multiplied. He chose SAP Business One to help him streamline and assimilate the core business functions including sales, CRM, inventory, finance, and operations. By implementing SAP Business One, he was able to get a 360^o view of the business, enabling him to control costs and improve efficiencies.

As seen from the example, when you work with SAP solutions, you realize that the complexities that face you in the day-to-day operations just tend to fade away. This lets you focus on work that is critical for your success, be it acquiring new customers, improving revenue growth, building customer and employee loyalty, and improving cash flow, all while increasing efficiency and productivity in your business. In fact, it would not be wrong to say that with SAP solutions, every function and department of your business can work in tandem to connect processes from across the business, allocate resources appropriately and simplify work.

So, what are these technologies and solutions that have the potential to make such a significant difference to your business?

• ERP Solutions – If the challenge that you are facing is related to manual processing of accounting, inventory management, procurement, or reporting, then SAP has various on premise and cloud ERP solutions to consider. SAP’s ERP applications enable you to automate key processes that deal with financials, customer relationship management, supply chain, and procurement, allowing you to control costs and scale efficiently as you grow
• Analytics – SAP has various analytics solutions, ranging from data management all the way to predictive analytics, all of which can be implemented in very digestible bites, especially with the cost-effective cloud versions
• HR and People Engagement – This solution takes care of all your recruiting and onboarding requirements, staff processes automation, payroll and performance management, as well as employee benefits management. This means that your people can concentrate on growing the business and their own careers, rather than chasing support processes
• SAP’s Digital Platform helps you increase the pace of innovation in your business by making your processes more efficient in the cloud. This is done by helping you decide the timeline and scale they should be run at optimally 
• Procurement and Expense Management with Concur makes it easy for you to automate and manage your travel, expense and invoice management processes in the cloud.

SAP’s intelligent ERP solutions are the Digital Core that enable businesses to integrate end-to-end cross functional next generation business processes so that companies can become intelligent. Some of these solutions include eCommerce ERP software, ERP software for small manufacturers, and retail ERP solutions.

If this wide range of solutions is not enough for you, don’t worry, there is more! SAP offers its solutions both on premises and on the cloud, which means you can choose to host it on your own servers, if you are concerned with security or privacy; or you can use SAP cloud platform services that let you manage timelines and scale as per your requirement. The added advantage is that the cloud option also takes away the need for heavy capex costs for installation.

This is why we say that no matter where your business takes you, with SAP, you will always be ready for challenges and opportunities ahead. Contact us today if you are interested in a SAP assessment.

[1]https://www.sap.com/products/sme-business-software.html#pdf-asset=d458fbeb-dc7c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa&page=1

[2]https://news.sap.com/2018/05/sap-business-one-surpasses-60000th-customer-milestone/