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SAP Business One Customer Newsletter

Ian Caswell  - Managing Director

Welcome to the latest edition of the SAP Business One customer newsletter. I hope that you enjoyed the sun over the recent Bank Holiday.   The date has now been set for the SAP Business One User Day. The event will be taking place at our London Offices on Thursday 12th June. I do hope that you and your colleagues will be able to join us for what promises to be a useful and informative day with sessions from both Sapphire and SAP on how to get the most from your solution. We will be building on the success of last years event and will be following a similar format – which will include finishing the day with an informal drinks reception on the balcony overlooking the Thames and Tower Bridge. Let’s hope that the good weather holds until then!

I am pleased to report that Sapphire is expanding its horizons to cover the USA. We are setting up an office in Los Angeles this year which will enable us to provide an improved service to international organisations with multiple office locations – and indeed all of our SAP Business One customers as we will be offering Support for 17 continuous hours per day. This is an exciting time and we look forward to continuing our worldwide expansion; in time we aim to offer 24 hours a day of Support as standard, providing you, our customers, with the best service possible.

I am always keen find out what you think of the Sapphire newsletter, as well as any feedback you may have on Sapphire’s service to you as a whole, so please email me your thoughts at ian.caswell@sapphiresystems.co.uk.

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Tony Martin  - Client Service Director

A cornerstone of Sapphire’s success is our commitment to delivering excellent client service. Of course that is easy for us to say. The people best suited to judge whether that is true or not are you, our clients. There are a number of times when we actively seek your feedback, such as when you have attended a training course, when we have closed a support call or when we send out our annual client survey. However, we encourage comment and feedback from you at any time and positively welcome your thoughts. The more responses we get to these requests for feedback the more representative are the statistics produced but more importantly, we get to see where we may be getting things wrong (or right) and we get the chance to react to your changing needs and concerns. For example, the introduction of our serialisation database came about because of client feedback.

So please, when you can, let us know what you think. Complete the surveys, speak to your account manager and always feel free to contact me on 020 7648 2000 or at tony.martin@sapphiresystems.co.uk. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Sapphire Systems plc wins the SAP Business One Channel Partner of the Year Award.

Sapphire’s Managing Director, Ian Caswell, accepted the award from Donal Madden, Channel Director at SAP. Donal commented "Sapphire had another fantastic year in which they achieved double digit growth. They gained a phenomenal amount of new customers including companies as diverse as fund managers and media agencies, audio visual distributors and fabric suppliers to the military." Donal concluded, "Sapphire led the way in the SAP Business One partner community by working closely with SAP and making major investments in their internal SAP Business One customer resources".

On receiving the award, Ian said "We are delighted to have won this prestigious award. The SAP Business One team at Sapphire worked incredibly hard throughout 2007 and this award bears testament to their dedication. We attribute our success to our 'customer-first' ethos which means the provision of a smooth implementation service, followed by a first class support and services offering - and we’ll continue in the same vein throughout 2008 and beyond".

For any more information please call Victoria Park on 020 7648 2000.
 

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As a user of SAP Business One, one of the world’s leading accounting and ERP systems, you have access to a fully integrated and feature rich business solution product that helps you run your business in the way you want. Can you say the same about your Payroll system?

As well as being Europe’s biggest supplier of SAP Business One, Sapphire Systems works with Earnie from Intex Software, one of the UK’s leading payroll software suites. Earnie has been helping employers manage their payroll for over 20 years and is used by more than 20,000 organisations.

Earnie offers full integration facilities with the important business systems that you use, such as:

• SAP Business One for recording payroll information in your accounts and job costing

• Vision, where you can report on information from your payroll system alongside data from your accounts system across multiple periods and companies

• An HR system where you need to store data or indeed transfer data from HR to payroll

Earnie also offers you enough flexibility to allow:

• The filing of end of year figures online

• Payslip distribution

• Bureau service for clients

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Introduction

SAP EarlyWatch Alert is a new service for SAP B1 customers that enables the collection of important hardware and software information (like OS, OS Version, Server Type, Database Type etc) on your SAP Business One installation and analysis of this information on the SAP side to prevent possible hardware and software problems impacting on the smooth running of your SAP B1 application.

Before using the SAP EarlyWatch Alert, a Sapphire consultant will need to perform some customising of your SAP B1 environment by installation of the EarlyWatch add-on module to enable this service to run.

The workflow of the SAP EarlyWatch Alert is as follows:
 

You must have a valid SAP registration number or ‘S-user’ maintained in SAP Business One and a valid license for your SAP Business One Installation to use the SAP EarlyWatch Alert – Sapphire will ensure you receive such a number.

SAP EarlyWatch Alert

The SAP EarlyWatch Alert can add many benefits such as:
 

The SAP EarlyWatch Report is jointly analysed and interpreted by Sapphire and yourselves. It is divided into several chapters and for each chapter an overall rating in the form of a traffic light is given. In each chapter you can then find more detailed ratings to single topics. There the rating is given by a small icon.
 

For any more information on what the EarlyWatch Alert for SAP Business One can do for you, please contact your account manager Greig Codd – on either greig.codd@sapphiresystems.co.uk or 020 7648 2000 who will be happy to arrange further information and for the service to be set up for you.

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Latest Course Schedule Now Available! We are pleased to announce that the latest training courses are now available from the Sapphire Training team. Please click here to request your copy. Alternatively you can Please call our Training Advisor Sharon Stevenson on 020 7684 2000 or email training@sapphiresystems.co.uk for more information.

SAP Business One	Duration	Cost	Training Centre
Accounting for New Starters	1 day	£345.00	London & Manchester
Accounting & HR	2 days	£690.00	London & Manchester
Logistics	3 days	£1,035.00	London & Manchester
User Query	1 day	£345.00	London & Manchester
System Administration	1 day	£345.00	London & Manchester
Vision XL Reporting	1 day	£345.00	London & Manchester

Design your own SAP Business One training session: As well as our solution specific training courses, you can now use Sapphire’s training facilities for a Consultant to deliver a course on topics of your choice. Group Discount rate available for up to 6 people. £1500 + VAT. Ideal if they want to educate staff on new areas of business one or for refresher sessions for existing staff!

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These webinars are free of charge to all our SAP Business One Customers and all that's required to participate is a phone line and an internet connection. To enrol on any of the webinars listed below please visit: www.sapphiresystems.co.uk/training_events/customer.htm We look forward to welcoming you!

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Extend the capabilities of SAP Business One using iBOLT SE from Magic Software

iBOLT™ is an easy-to-use and cost-effective, GUI-based business integration suite. iBOLT Special Edition (SE) for SAP® Business One extends SAP’s software development kit, while providing all required interfaces for SAP Business One.

Using an intuitive, wizard-based interface with SAP Business One, you can respond to a wide range of business process automation requirements that cannot be satisfied with the stand-alone ERP package.

As an end-to-end business integration solution, iBOLT SE assures seamless connection between SAP Business One and your clients’ customers and partners, legacy systems, CRM, ERP, and SCM systems. It can also be used to connect geographically separated trading partners.

With Magic Software’s iBOLT SE you can:

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Enhance the way you use SAP Business One with the new Data Import Tool from Sapphire

The Data Import Tool has been specifically designed and written so you can quickly and efficiently import lists containing contact and business details of your customers in to SAP Business One. The tool is Microsoft excel based and with information arranged in a certain way you simply upload the data into SAP Business One. SAP Business One automatically matches any duplicate records and you are able to quickly choose which new customers you want to upload into the system. Alternatively, you also have the option of updating contact information so if a customer on the list comes up as a duplicate you can upload the record as an ‘update’ to the record already in the system. This means that you can add an alternative contact for the business partner or an alternative address.

One of the key advantages of this tool is that you can quickly and efficiently without the use of complicated codes, import large lists used by your departments to roll out campaigns. Follow ups done by the sales team on each of the contacts can then be seamlessly connected via the activities section in SAP Business One. Furthermore, its gives one the ability to keep a close tab on the progress of the campaign as each list has a unique campaign code, which is imported into Business One.

To find out more, reserve your place on our website for the free webinar on Monday 2nd June, where this will be explored in greater depth. The Webinar will also include an in depth presentation on the SAP Business One Usability Package, an add on that makes Business One a smoother and easier to configure platform. With this package you can:

The B1 Usability Package is very user-friendly and lets your team carry out a range of configuration tasks that were previously only possible for experienced developers. It consists of a number of modules that can be turned on and off manually. With the B1 Usability Package you can make your configuration efforts both faster and more efficient.

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As our general awareness of the importance and potentially lethal outcomes of environmental impacts has grown, the task of investment appraisal has become complicated by the need to recognise and account for environmentally induced future costs. Total Cost Assessment or TCA is one technique that provides long term and comprehensive financial analysis of the full range of internal or private costs and savings of an investment. This includes less tangible costs, into the financial evaluation of projects and programmes so that environmental considerations are fully accounted for. Niki Leahy, FSN senior writer explains the technique.

Total cost assessment expands traditional financial analysis by including a consideration of:-
 

Developments in TCA have been led by the chemicals industry, with other sectors including utilities and pharmaceuticals also active in applying the technique. Other industries where uncertainty in the potential and / or future costs of environmental remediation and clean up is increasing are also using the assessment process.

As an investment appraisal technique, total cost assessment comes into its own when it is used to assess with greater accuracy, which environmental investment is the most economically favourable. As a methodology, it can also evaluate the potential health impacts and costs that may result from exposure to environmental pollutants. However, its primary role lies in including the costs and benefits derived from the environmental initiatives and policies on the balance sheet and in decision making. It does this by identifying, analysing and improving cost estimates in key areas such as energy, waste and pollution prevention, both internally and externally, as the case studies below illustrate.

Evaluating environmental projects using TCA means that projects that may appear to be financial weaker using conventional analysis look stronger and more competitive once their true return has been identified. For example, an investment in a process change that considers only direct labour and material costs over a three year period will appear a poor investment option until the full environmental costs of the existing process – including disposal costs, regulatory permits, worker health, liabilities for spills or leaks are included in the analysis which is considered over a longer period. This may well yield an impressive rate of return and a shorter than expected discounted payback.

The table below illustrates a conventional & TCA approach to financial analysis for a pollution prevention alternative. This process modification would require a capital investment of approximately £1.7m, and changes to operating costs.

The American Institute of Chemical Engineers' (Centre for Waste Reduction Technologies) TCA programme identifies five types of costs; type 1 are direct costs; type2, potentially hidden costs; type 3, future & contingent liability costs; type 4, internal intangible costs; type 5, external costs. Potential costs are identified first using company specific information. The analysis is stream lined by considering only those costs deemed potentially high. Probability is also assessed. Type 3 future and contingent liability costs considered include data drawn from past data and future estimates for spending on pollution control equipment, remedial costs of plant contamination, natural resource damage costs, potential liabilities for offsite contamination, industrial process risk, including cost data for past industrial accidents.

A similar TCA model to the CWRT one has been developed by the US Tellus Institute. This stratifies costs into four tiers, omitting the external costs which are accounted for under a full cost assessment process.

The Tellus Institute have also developed a spreadsheet software application, P2/FINANCE, which is designed to capture a broad range of potential environmental costs and savings, including internal indirect and less tangible environmental costs, using profitability indicators and time horizons that capture long term characteristics of environmental investments, over appropriate timeframes. As well as the additional costs and savings that a TCA can reveal, anticipated changes in annual revenues can also be calculated. A TCA analysis can help identify where improved customer service can be made, or where additional services or product types can be developed, as well as quantifying improved overall process controls, increased capabilities, and faster turnaround.

In summary TCA can be used as a model for making procedural changes and operational changes, as well as for decisions related to capital equipment purchases. Traditional business financial decision tools focus on the financial impact of a purchase or operational change without considering the environmental aspects. Main considerations were capital cost, operational cost, interest cost, and return on investment. This approach ignores key changes that every business must be concerned with, including the impact of investment decisions on employees, on energy requirements, on permits, on plant layout and so on. By considering environmental impacts upfront, a company can anticipate future environmental impact – making sure that there are no costly surprises later.

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Introduction

While all organisations – whether in the private or public sector – have some sort of annual planning and budgeting process, it’s typically not tied to the strategic planning process. As a result, many organisations fail to have the appropriate resources (capital, human resources, raw materials, etc.) at their disposal to successfully execute strategy.

CorPlanning enables organisations to plan and budget in the context of strategic objectives and initiatives. An integrated component of the CorVu 5 Strategic Management System, CorPlanning links the planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes to business strategy.

Key Benefits:

LINK PLANNING TO STRATEGY
Translate strategy into operational targets and initiatives

IMPROVE ABILITY TO ACT AND REACT
Quickly react to market, competitive, and organisational changes

ACCELERATE THE BUDGETING AND PLANNING CYCLE
Maximise participation, collaboration, and ownership in a centralised process

REDUCE OPERATIONAL COSTS
Reduce cost to manage planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes

IMPROVE OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY
Reverse the typical 80/20 input/analysis ratio for the budgeting and planning process

DRIVE PROFITABLE GROWTH
Analyse the business impact of hypothetical scenarios in real time

What sets Corplanning 5 apart:

COMPREHENSIVE CAPABILITIES

FLEXIBILITY
 

LOW TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP
 

SCALABILITY
 

EASE OF USE
 

Key Features:

PLANNING TEMPLATES
 

PLANNING METHODS
 

VISUALISATION
 

DATA COLLECTION AND CONSOLIDATION
 

COMMUNICATION & COLLABORATION
 

WORKFLOW
 

ACCOUNTABILITY
 

FINANCIALS INTEGRATION