SAP A1S No More

Recently, SAP announced that its software as a service (SaaS) ERP A1S is now called SAP Business ByDesign along with encouraging small and mid sized company to jump into the ERP bandwagon.

The SAP Business ByDesign is an ERP software has been meant to be marketed as a very affordable business solution for midsized companies with 100 - 500 employees. This solution has a starting price of $149 per month per user and the package already include the software, services and support, for companies with a minimum of 25 licensed users. Since this catered to smaller companies with limited financial resources, not everything is packaged for compulsory purchase. A company has a choice to avail of a $54 per month option for "efficiency users" who may want only a limited access and the company can choose also to buy the business solution for a set of five users only.

Says SAP CEO Henning Kagermann: "It is the most important announcement of my career I'm making today. We designed this product to create a new market for us."

Very true indeed what Kagermann is saying. The SAP Business ByDesign is by subscription model so that small and medium sized companies will not be burdened or overwhelmed with one time high price. This solution joins the like of Business One and All-in-One in SAP's small and midsized business (SMB) portfolio.

The Business One solution is an easy-to-use business management software application which has the capability of having a single system spanning all cores of business operations including e-commerce and web based customer relations manager. It designed for a company of about 100 employees or less to help it with wholesale distribution, discrete manufacturing, retail, and professional services operations.

On the other hand, the SAP All-in-One is a complete business solution with a slashed down price for smaller companies 2,500 employees. Like the SAP Business One solution, this is also an on-premise product. The SAP All-in-One is based on both SAP ERP 6.0 and SAP CRM so companies can have a fully integrated ERP software providing support for key business processes from human resource management to financials and purchasing to inventory and production. It also comes with business analytics and high end reporting tools to manage an integrated sales, marketing and service processes.
As trend would show, it is not just SAP which is targeting small to mid sized businesses. Its toughest competitors Oracle and Microsoft, along with smaller others and other business solutions company mergers are into this market area. This is a wonder move as smaller companies no longer get trampled in the competition by giant companies and multinational corporations.
Also, as SAP revealed in their website, there are more than 65% of all customers SAP coming from small- and midsize companies. This spells into a bright sales prospect for ERP software vendors.
As for the SAP Business ByDesign, the company is today in pilot phase in countries from Germany and the United States and has on going validation in France, China and the United Kingdom.