The research paper is centred on a company called Rad-tel and its System. It aims to gives a brief but concise understanding of two proposals that can be considered to replace the current system MYOB, to other integrated system.
About RAD-TRL (radtel.com.au):
Rad-tel is an Australian based Engineering Company which main focused on Automation and Control in the Water and Sewerage. Rad-tel menially interact with customers, It provide offer to customers such as suitable most integrate software and hardware products for each particular application, the systems provide council's with centralized control and reporting. Rad-tel start operations since last 20year, nowadays Rad-tel's control systems to more than 100 local government authorities and water companies around Australia.
Issues occur in Rad-tel:
Since the large areas of Australia has got low rainfall and drought problems with them. Because of that making available the water resources become a major priority for governments around the country. Now Red-tel use MYOB and an In-House development database which not provide data integration such a way if a sales person was on the file work for two week the company not able to start the work on their order until they returned.
Existing systems & over come in Red-tel:
MYOB, and an in-house developed database, with Intel server and database SQL. It is not working properly and not able to link always company requirements lot of manual work to do. The database was also takings lot of time to develop and support and they were keen to replace it.
To overcome of this problem to change the existing system the solution is only implement any kind of ERP, since ERP systems have provide vital strategic tools in today's competitive business environment. Due to MYBO, company has not got better financial control, after completing market research and examining a number of ERP software, company deiced to place all existing applications with SAP Business One. Because the project was not too costly and was coming under the budget .As well as it has provided an affordable and integrated business management solution. It has specifically designed for any kind of businesses. Which means that we will be able to see how to gain more profit for any organization
Recommendation:
RAD-TEL using MYOB system which not working in proper way, RAD-TEL looking for an ERP solution. As our point of view we advise should go with SAP Business One. As SAP claims that small customers consist of more than 60% of their total customers. SAP Business One provides as with instant access to your critical business information - when they need it to run your business. This comprehensive application covers all your core operations, giving you keen insight, so they can confidently make informed business decisions. With SAP Business One, virtually all aspects of your business become more agile, including administration, CRM, Ware house and Production Management, distributions, and financial. So it becomes even more secure to buy. With additional industry-specific functionality, helps manage both traditional and online sales, coordinate loyalty programs, track inventory, monitor customer demand, and view supplier schedules, distributions, and financial - all in a single system.
To get the success in business it required acquiring of new customers, but make the relation with customer relationships is extreme importance. For future success with customers, the SAP Business 1 application provides the tools to, which help to grow customer quality sales, and increase customer satisfaction. Discover how SAP Business One helps your business optimize sales process - from tracking leads and opportunities to managing sales orders and customer data to administering after-sales support.
Streamlined and optimized for inventory and cost control it is important to customer satisfaction with distribution processes. If organization's way of production is expectation and complex, the SAP Business One provide comprehensive inventory and production management functionality for business needs. SAP Business One manage detailed item, inventory, and warehouse data; track and record inbound, outbound, and inter warehouse. The material requirements planning it automatic release production orders based on requirement.
Financial accounting - Handle all your financial transactions, SAP Business One provide a single tool for maintenance general ledger, budgeting, and account setup and maintenance. Budgeting - Manage budget creation, allocation, and distribution. Provide budget tracking, reporting, and alerts that notify the responsible users whenever a transaction exceeds a monthly or annual budget limit.
Banking - For all record organization track all processes such as credit card payments cash, cheque writing, deposits, account reconciliation, and advance payments.
Financial Reporting - Provide easy-to-use financial reports, including balance sheets, profit and loss statements, cash flow analysis, transaction reports, multipurpose comparisons, and budget reports.
References: available on 01/02/2010
http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/index.epx
http://www.sap.com/sme/whysap/index.epx
http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/en/us/products/nav-overview.aspx
http://inciarco.com/foros/archive/index.php?t-4768.html
http://www.businessevolution.co.nz/Solutions_Business-Management-Software.aspx
http://www.businessevolution.co.nz/Solutions_Business-Management-Software.aspx
http://www.keybusinesssolutions.com.au/sap-business-one-detail.aspx
SAP Business One
Introduction
SAP Business One is an integrated business solution that is specially designed to serve the needs of small medium enterprises (SMEs) with revenue range between $5 million to $100 million. Developed by an Israeli software company, TopManage Financial Solutions Ltd, it has since been acquired by SAP in 2002.
SAP Business One application can reside on a single server on Microsoft Windows and its architecture supports both Microsoft SQL Server and IBM DB2 databases. The Business One SDK (software development kit) allows easy interface with external applications for custom add-on functionality. (SAP.com, 2008, Streamline Your Business, Accelerate Your Growth .pdf)
Average time for an SAP Business One implementation takes about 6 to 8 weeks. Pricing will be based on traditional licensing per user and the average cost for an implementation is between USD $50,000 and $75,000 which include licence and services. (1)
SAP has a strong commitment in making SAP Business One a success for the SMEs. Although a different solution to the mySAP solution, SAP Business One has an upgrading path to SAP Business Suite solution should the company outgrows its business requirements.
Functionalities
· Financial Management
- manage and simplify all financial and accounting processes such as journal entries, accounts receivable, and accounts payable in automated and integrated manner with full set of tools provided. Key functions include accounting, controlling, banking and reconciliation with multicurrency support as well as financial reporting and analysis.
· Warehouse and Production Management
- inventory management across multiple warehouses, stock movements tracking and production management based on MRP, based on history and manual entry for Demand Planning. . Manage inventories using various costing models, maintain item master data, and use multiple units of measure and pricing. Production and MRP allows creation and maintenance of multilevel BOMs, production orders manually or backflush, and maintain prices for BOMs.
· Customer Relationship Management
- includes contact management, salesforce automation and a well-developed service management system that includes contract management, dispatching, warranty tracking, knowledge management for problem resolution and billing for services, integration with MS outlook for customer contact and reporting and analysis. Web-based access feature enable distributed sales and service teams to stay connected and focused.
· Service Management
- track services and provide support for service operations, service contract management, service planning, customer interaction activities, customer support, and management of sales opportunities. This include knowledge database to solve various problems and cases, and streamline service. With web-based customer relationship management, it allows external sources to view questions and solutions regarding the organization's products and receive customer issues through ticketing system.
· Purchasing Management
- automate whole procurement cycle from purchase order creation to vendor invoice payment. Supported functions covered procurement, item and vendor master data management, warehouse management and accounting integration with easy up-to-date reporting feature.
· Reporting
- produce real-time reports with complete detailed information with features to select a subset of information based on many criteria with good drill-down capability. Key features are report creation and customization, interactive report viewing with integrated tools and, publishing and distribution into electronic format suitable for business requirement. The user-defined fields feature is very suitable for analytical management reports.
· Administration
- workflow allows to route transactions such as requisitions to the appropriate person for approval. Workflow-based alerts trigger auto-response when important business events occur. Great import feature of Data Transfer Workbench with tool to migrate master and transaction data from legacy systems. The single-server architecture includes security, backup, and network access protocols. With standard database backup procedure, it eliminates the need for saving and transferring the database from one machine to another. (2)
Benefits
Higher efficiency with a stronger bottom line
- one integrated system removes data redundancy and errors; increases process efficiency and save costs and time delays. Centralise entire business across sales, inventory, purchasing, operations and financials.
Strategic focus on business growth
- streamlined operations help to make business more profitable with access to the right customer-related information to make the strategic business decisions. Provide better and intelligent service to customers with good contact management thereby installing their loyalty for repeat business. (SAP.com 2008)
Smarter and faster decision making
· - respond effectively to customer needs and be more empowered to make decisions with instant access to complete information with drill down facilities.
Faster turn-around time for return
· - intuitive user interface reduces need for user training and ongoing IT support costs with quick implementation time of about average 6 to 8 weeks.
Support change requirements
- can be tailored to meet specific business needs with easy integration to other industry-specific applications using customisation tools and over 550 add-on solutions provided by solution partners.
Limitations
· - user has to perform data entry in different areas depending on the situation whether in the GL as a journal or the Banking module. (4)
· - Report Designer (known as Document Editing) maybe useful for designing Invoices, Purchase Orders or Delivery Orders but would not be excellent for Management Reports, may still require other report tools like for that purpose. (4)
· - not so sophisticated enough for manufacturing functionality such as tracking labour on the shop floor. (1)
· - for Data Transfer Workbench, currently SAP does not support batch file and data integration scheduling except with using CSV files. (5)
Customer Testimonials
Vintage Nurseries LLC, of Wasco California, an SME of about US $10 million in revenue and staff strength of 25 was able to resolve their problem they faced with data integrity problem on the interface between the inventory system and the accounting system. With higher level of data accuracy, it gave them better insights into their business. The managers particularly liked the automated reporting capabilities where it gives them more time to manage the business. (SAP.com, 2008 - Vintage Nurseries.pdf)
EMPR Australia Pty Ltd, an Australian computer parts reseller with revenue of US$12.9 million and employee strength of 35, through its SAP B1 implementation enabled them to develop a single source of financial and parts inventory data with quick timely access to accurate data. Their entire purchasing functions is fully automated for processing quotes and purchase orders. They have achieved 50% reduction in sales and purchase order administration time and a savings of 40 man-hours per month in financial reporting. "Now, we will have all the data in one place, which means our sales representatives no longer have to switch applications when talking with customers. As an added benefit, we know the data will be 100% accurate", said Ben Holmes, the IT Director. (SAP.com, 2008 - EMPR Australia.pdf).
References:
1) Michael Burns, CAmagazine 2004, 'Shattering the SAP myth ', Online, viewed on 26th January 2010, <http://www.180systems.com/sapbusinessone.php>
2) SAP.com 2009, Online, viewed on 1st February 2010, <http://www.sap.com/sme/solutions/businessmanagement/businessone>
3) SAP.com 2009, Online, viewed on 2nd February 2010, <http://www.sap.com/asia/sme/solutions/businessmanagement/businessone/index.epx>
4) YG Lim 2004, 'Can anyone tell me the Pros and Cons of SAP Business One?', Online, viewed on 29th January 2010,<http://sap.ittoolbox.com/documents/sap-business-one-proscons-16683>
5) Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum LLC, M2-D2 subdivision, 2009, 'SAP Business One Data Import: Items and Prices overview for Consultant', Online, viewed on 6th February 2010, <http://www.articlealley.com/article_767835_11.html>
Other Solution:
Background:
Since 1984, Navision product was developed in Denmark and become a popular complete ERP solution for SME market in Europe. In 2002, Microsoft acquired the company and now this product is named as Microsoft Dynamic NAV now (5). It is a integrated system with one database that provides instant information to the enterprise, enabling prompt and correct decision making. Typically, it is fast to implement, easy to configure and simple to use. It is available in 42 countries version and industry specific functionality is available(Microsoft 2010).
Functionalities:
NAV provides below capabilities (Microsoft 2010):
1. Financial Management - Comprehensive, up-to-date financial information so to get oversights of business status and identify new opportunities
2. Business Intelligence - Innovative and user-friendly too to produce prompt business-critical information for better decision making with confidence.
3. HR Management - Basic HR administration functionalities to organize and control the human resources in enterprise
4. Manufacturing - Improve operation effectiveness and efficiency. Flexibility in process and integrated information help to respond quickly to customer requests and changes.
5. Mobility - Windows Mobile-based devices support off site employees to retrieve information and process transactions without delay, drive increased productivity.
6. Multi-site and International - Implement a business solution with the flexibility to support multi-site and international organizations.
7. Sales and Marketing - Consistent process to manage leads, opportunities and campaign efficiently improve customer relationship and increase sales.
8. Service Management - Understand the pattern of customer response, improve customer services and better monitoring on cost, inventories, workload and efficiency in service operation.
9. Supply Change Management - Improve profitability with trade partners with better management in distribution process, matching supply with demand, and inventory control.
10.Project Management - A tool to support project management, where proper project scheduling, costing, resources, tasks tracking, billing and predicting availability.
Benefits:
NAV makes the way to fit the business process to stay the unique competitive process rather than changing the process to fit the system. It is highly and easily customizable. Normally, it takes shorter time to complete the customization. It gives flexibility to fit the business rule of the company such as different payment terms for customers, multiple currency and etc. Drill down features are given for users to view in details of a calculated total value on screen. This features using flowfield technology which the system continually update the flow field figure. NAV provide enterprise design the way they wish to view their financial statement. Dimension features are user-defined and tag into the general ledger and budget entries. Use Analysis View to investigate or monitor the performance or current status of the company's balance sheet and income statement. It provides user to post inter-company transaction in the same or different database. All transaction entries in general ledger are traceable. The system links every entry to the sub-edgers and original documents (Microsoft 2010).
Limitations:
In General Ledger, NAV gives too much details on reconciliation accounts i.e. AR Control Account, AP Control Account and Inventory Account. The number entries created in G/L are similar to the respective sub ledgers. Users have no function to post a summary figure to this control accounts. The real time transaction figure can only be presented after user post the transaction. Any mistake in posting, it causes trouble for users to make reverse entry in system manually. User complaints that they won't able to re-open the closed entries in bank sub-ledger entries. This forces user to perform manual bank reconciliation.
NAV starts from financial module and progressively provides vertical add-on solutions in Manufacturing, Warehouse Management, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management and so on. Relatively, the production and warehouse modules which NAV has bundled as part of the core package are not comprehensive enough. NAV does not have a very good reporting tools for customized report. Either NAV developers or users are restricted to produce comprehensive report. In all times, a third party reporting tools are required (Andrew Karasev 2010).
In view of easy customization to fix business process, from another perspective it posts more risk in quality of works which commonly found as issue in project implementation. It impacts business production and possibly incur unmeasurable business costs. Last but not least, the database design and transaction processing method in NAV creates performance issues when number of con-current users are using the same tables. This issue is very obvious at the phase of data migration where hours are taken and block other users to use the system.
Consumers Experience:
Best Denki in Singapore implemented Navision in year 2002 successfully and managed to streamline their process, enables instant view on sales order and delivery planning. Integrated POS with the back end Financial system provides effeciency and accuracy in their business process (Accenovate 2010). "With Navision, we found a solution that provides a user-friendly screen and architecture that are manageable and flexible-and most of all, one that can grow with NACCRRA" quoted by Don Valentine, Director of Finance and Administration. They managed to achieve reduced audit time, faster month end closing from, accurate and faster financial reporting and etc (AVF Consulting 2010).
Bibliography:
1. 'Microsoft Dynamics NAV - Financial Management Overiew', Online, viewed on 26th January 2010 <http://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/dynamics/products/nav/Overview/NavisionFinancialMgmt.pdf>
2. 'Accenovate - Case Study', Online, viewed on 26th January 2010
<http://www.accenovate.biz/IKEA.pdf>
3. 'AVF Consulting - Case Study', Online, viewed on 26th January 2010. <http://www.avfconsulting.com/nonprofit/NACCRRA%20case%20study.pdf
4. 'Navision Overview', Online, viewed on 26 January 2010 <http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/en/us/Products/nav-overview.aspx>
5. http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3851_1038841
6. 'Microsoft Dynamics NAV - Capabilities', Online, viewed on 5th February 2010
<http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/en/us/products/nav-capabilities.aspx>
7.Andrew Karasev 2010, 'Reporting For Microsoft Dynamics GP, Sl, Nav, Crm Notes', Online, viewed on 7th February 2010
<http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Reporting-For-Microsoft-Dynamics-Gp--Sl--Nav--Crm-Notes/580822>
Conclusion:
The Motivation for implementing SAP Business One system in the case of RAD-TEL impression to be to reduce legacy systems, increase integration, provide better information for decisionâ€making, increase competition, and reduce total cost of ownership.
