As someone who loves technology geared toward the SMB, I found an article on the NY Times fascinating. It’s about small businesses who have begun marketing their own software as solutions built specifically for the SMB market. One solution, NetBooks, looks very promising.
Last week, I posted a notes about the release of SAP Business ByDesign. There are only a few vendors that offer an on-demand ERP product that includes everything from your standard accounting functions through inventory and customer management. SAP joins NetSuite and Salesboom in this regard. But even SAP targets businesses with more than 100 employees.
NetBooks is specifically focused on product based (as opposed to service based) businesses under 50 employees. The recorded demo shows a complete “call to cash” process. A sales order is created directly from the customer contact screen, and a shipping request is automatically created. Viewing the shipping request in an open orders view, the user is alerted that there is not enough inventory on hand. You change the request to a partial shipment and the system generates another shipping request for the remaining amount. An invoice is created, and payments are easily applied to receivables when collected.
Two areas lacking include integration with a web store and with point of sale systems. Both are only possible today in a manual fashion, although the company says automated integration is slated for a future release. I also don’t see any mention of payroll on the website. But, if you’ve read any of my prior posts, you’ll probably guess that I favor outsourcing your payroll responsibilities.
Pricing is right at $200/month for 5 users with additional users costing only $20. Your external accountant or bookkeeper gets free access to your data. And all your data is stored securely on the company’s servers so you don’t need to worry about installing and maintaining the software on your own servers.
This looks like a great development for small businesses.
p.s. - The company’s founder, Ridgely Evers, runs a blog. His recent “Where’s Your Weakest Link” post is a great corollary to my “16 Ways to Prepare for Technology Failure”.
Despite my own quest to help companies use technology more effectively, I often fail to do that in my own business. Case in point is writing this blog.
For the past couple weeks, as I came across ideas for potential blog posts, I would create a draft message in Outlook. When I got around to writing the actual post, I’d write the post like I was writing an email. When I was satisfied, I’d copy and paste the content into my WordPress administrator panel and then publish the post. Several times I forgot to add in the title or categorize the post.
Well, in the course of my Stumbling last night, I ran across Windows Live Writer. I had no idea that there was software that was designed specifically for writing blogs! I wrote my earlier post using the tool and it was so slick that I doubt I’ll ever go back to Outlook.
To be fair, there are many applications out there that target this niche. A quick Google search brought me to this list posted by McKenzie.
I wish I’d figured this out earlier. Come to think of it, this must be how my client’s feel when we uncover stuff they own but aren’t using.
Although I’m not a huge SAP follower, I saw the announcement on Tuesday that SAP was going to announce a hosted solution. I believe hosted ERP suites have great potential in the SMB market. SMBs don’t typically have a significant IT staff capable of keeping up with the configuration, maintenance and integration of typical ERP products. But their needs are not that much less complex than much larger organizations.
Currently, NetSuite seems to be the leading the way in the hosted ERP industry. Microsoft has a hosted Dynamics GP option. And SalesBoom has an intriguing solution although I have to admit that my knowledge of it extends only to what I’ve read on their website and found through other Google searches.
So I was eager to learn more about this service which is dubbed SAP Business ByDesign. The SAP website is very sparse. And I hate registering on a site just to receive marketing material, so I haven’t gotten in too deep. But I saw these two questions in the FAQ document:
15. How much does SAP Business ByDesign cost?
SAP Business ByDesign will be offered on a subscription basis, priced per user per month for the specific capabilities being utilized. Pricing starts at US$149 per user per month in the United States and China or €133 per user per month in Germany, the United Kingdom, and France.
16. What is the minimum and maximum number of users for an SAP Business ByDesign installation?
We expect the typical SAP Business ByDesign customer to have between 100 and 500 employees. There is no maximum user limit; however, a minimum of 25 users must be licensed.
The $150/user/month seems like a reasonable base price point. But the 25 license minimum? I have a real hard time picturing a 100 employee company spending $45,000 per year on this software.
