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SAP Business One for Retail & Trading A foundation to digitally innovate

Written by Abbas Khan | June 2023

It’s true! Customer changing lifestyles, buying behaviors, and volatile market dynamics have profoundly disrupted the global economy — the traditional retail and trading models are shattered. At the same time, investments in digital transformation have accelerated. Online purchases, flexible supply chain models, and tsunamis of consumer data have created opportunities for next-gen retail and trading enterprises in many ways. Enterprises that are enabled to transform their operations through technology, such as ERPs, among other retail solutions, can thrive and experience new growth potentials in the digital-first world.

For small and midsize (SMBs) retail and trading companies, digital transformation investments often come as a complex financial and technical decision. But what is the opportunity cost here? Think about being unable to integrate your financial processes with your sales, inventory, and procurement; unable to make informed decisions while optimizing your operational costs; and unable to boost sales and customer loyalty because your online store is not tightly integrated with your back-end system. For SMBs, SAP Business One (SAP B1) is a practical step towards digital transformation, enabling them with an ERP software for retail and trading to respond more quickly and effectively to shifting trends and market conditions — ultimately resulting in better sales, customer loyalty, and business agility.

What does SAP Business One offer to improve business agility and customer loyalty?

Today, running a retail business requires all your business functions to run like a well-lubricated machine. All your stores, departments, warehouses, retail software, POS systems, and databases should be tightly integrated to operate seamlessly. SAP Business One for retail comes with integrated modules and intelligent features that allow retail and trading businesses to become intelligent enterprises at a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). In this section, we cover the key modules that help you reshape your enterprise

 

Sales

SAP Business One offers complete sales and service functionality, aiding businesses to take control of customer acquisition, retention, and profitability. The solution offers a 360-degree view of the entire customer lifecycle with tightly integrated features across marketing, sales, and services.

Order: Simplify your sales order entry using an obtainable report to retrieve item availability information across various warehouses. When a shortage occurs, you have the option of ordering from a list of alternate items or allowing the item quantity to be supplied in parts. Orders can include several delivery dates and ship-to locations for each line item, and you can construct purchase orders (PO) automatically from sales orders and drop-ship the items to the customer's location.

Sales Quotation: Create sales quotes for your prospects and clients. You can easily determine gross profit for each quotation, analyze the sales price history, and export a quotation to Microsoft Word once it's been created.

Delivery: Generate packing documentation for all items sent to a customer. When creating a delivery, the built-in packaging mechanism allows for the "virtual input" of items into distinct parcels. With a single click, you may save the delivery tracking number and check the shipping status within the delivery note. When you make a delivery, the software automatically upgrades warehouse quantities.

Backorder processing: Orders that can't be delivered to consumers attributable to inventory shortages can be tracked, similarly outstanding orders are automatically fulfilled as items are received in inventory.

Returns processing: Returns can be processed promptly, alter your inventory and AP balance with the corresponding vendor.

Document generation wizard: Automate the creation of documents used in the sales and fulfillment activities by using information from one or more other documents as a starting point. You can choose to create target documents such as delivery notes or invoices automatically using sales orders, deliveries, refunds, or AR invoices as a basis with the wizard's help. For example, you can combine all existing sales-related documentation into a single invoice for any given customer, or generate summary bills for every specific customer based on a month's worth of orders and delivery notes.

 

Inventory control

Manage item master data, serial numbers, pricing lists, and alternative goods, as well as inventory adjustments, cycle counts, and pick lists for open sales orders.

Item master data: Define production items, purchase items, and noninventory items, for example, labor and travel, while cultivating default information such as purchasing supplier, purchasing and selling unit of measure, and tax status for each item. You can keep inventory in numerous warehouses with different fees associated with each location. Standard cost, weighted moving average, and first-in-first-out (FIFO) methodologies are all supported by SAP Business One. You can choose a procurement technique, such as make or buy, and order intervals for purchasing an item. You can also specify the lot sizes in which you want to buy things, as well as the minimum order quantity and average lead time. This data can then be used in conjunction with MRP functionality.

Lots: Assign lots to products and classify them by any freely definable attribute, for example shelf life, then define the lots for these products in sales orders, delivery notes, and inventory movements.

Inventory transfer: Move inventory among warehouses.

Inventory revaluation: Reassess the costs of your items and inventory value without changing quantity levels.

Inventory posting: Revise warehouse data and enter opening balances for inventory items.

Cycle inventory counting: Identify when each item in inventory is due to be counted to streamline inventory counting. The alerts and reports generated assist in ensuring that items of varying levels of importance are tallied as frequently as necessary.

 

Abacus: Your trusted SAP Business One Partner

Customizable: Although the SAP Business One is outstanding as it is, the team of Abacus experts personalize the system to meet your specific business requirements. Whatever the requirement or scenario, Abacus will customize the system to meet it. We make the solution so adaptable for you that you'll think you're operating a completely new system designed specifically for your company.

Implementation & integration support: We deploy approaches that give our customers an excellent implementation experience. Abacus enables your systems for a better experience by implementing in defined deadlines. Above all, we effortlessly migrate your data and interfaces while integrating SAP Business One ERP into your system.

Support & Training: Each of our customers receive personal assistance. We also provide training to your staff members to assist them to use the SAP Business One ERP system in their businesses. We have a devoted team of professionals who will provide you with the required support and training to easily operate the system.

Abacus Add-ons

SAP Business One has been designed to fulfill the basic business functionality for retail companies. Add-ons developed by Abacus experts tend to be industry-focused to meet your unique industry requirements. SAP Business One combined with Abacus add-ons provides retailers better visibility into business data, improved data integration, and enhanced business efficiency.

Abacus S-connect: Abacus S-Connect is an automatic connectivity platform for Shopify and SAP Business One that allows you to easily manage inventory, sales, and payments.

Sales App: Mobile solution for Salesforce (Order booking, Delivery confirmation, Invoices, Payment)

Retail Pro Connector: Integration with the retail pro solution.

Material Management: Manage all of your supplies and procurement operations with overall project visibility of committed and actual costs.

SAP ERP integrated E-Commerce Solution: This solution provides real-time integration between your e-commerce stores and SAP ERP. Furthermore, it combines all marketplaces into one core system offering order fulfillment, customized product listings, and automated courier and delivery management, with built-in analytics and customer services.