SAP Australia records 42 per cent year-on-year increase in SME revenues;
Sydney, Australia — More and more small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) in Australia are choosing SAP Business One and mySAP All-in-One as the platform for integrated business management and organisational growth.
SAP Australia recorded a 42 per cent increase in revenue from the SME segment in the first half of 2006, compared to the same period last year. More than 50 companies signed up as new names in Q2 taking the total number of Australian SMEs on the SAP platform to more than 650 since 2004.
SAP Business One customers include Huon Aquaculture, Inflight Logistics, CogState, Concise Business Technology, Troy Laboratories, Chandru International and Acromet. SAP Business One is an integrated business management solution, which is designed to meet the specific requirements of companies with between 10 and 250 employees.
mySAP All-in-One customers include General Pants Company, PlayCorp Group of Companies and Roadhound. mySAP All-in-One packages are configured for best practice, enabling the implementation of processes that are an exact fit with specific industry requirements. The packages are designed to meet the needs of organisations with between 250 and 2000 employees.
“SAP today offers a compelling range of business solutions to small and mid-size enterprises. These organisations have typically been served by niche or micro-software vendors,” said Geraldine McBride, CEO and managing director, SAP Australia New Zealand. “SAP has made a strategic commitment to the SME community, which includes considerable investment in product research and development; this should be a primary consideration for small enterprises when evaluating options in a consolidating software market.”
“More than 10,000 customers have selected SAP Business One since the launch of the product three years ago. The technology is designed to meet the needs of small enterprises today and to provide a platform for their growth and expansion in the future.”
SAP Business One replacing point solutions within small enterprises
The majority of SAP’s small enterprise customers are reaping the benefits of an integrated business management solution for the first time. SAP Business One is typically selected to replace legacy point solutions, green screen and custom built applications.
Troy Laboratories, a Sydney based manufacturer of veterinary products, selected SAP Business One to replace a Sage accounting package and a range of stand alone and manual systems. The SAP solution, which was implemented by Evolution Software Services, has ended the company’s reliance on manual processes to enable significant efficiency improvements in a highly competitive industry sector.
“We are competing with aggressive overseas players and domestic competitors and so our processes have to be as efficient as possible,” said Ian Saunders, general manager, Troy Laboratories. “We have streamlined our production planning and can track sales and orders virtually in real time with SAP Business One. These improvements have enabled us to reduce backorders of $300,000 by 95 per cent. Sales have increased and the company is on track to continue its expansion into new markets.”
The Tasmanian based fishery, Huon Aquaculture, selected SAP Business One as its platform for business management, following a period of rapid growth and acquisition, which had seen the company expand from 2 people in 1987 to more than 220 in 2005.
“It became clear that we needed to replace our existing Attaché systems as they were unable to meet our reporting requirements and could not keep pace with our growth,” said Frances Bender, director, Huon Aquaculture. “A demonstration of the SAP solution by our implementation partner Axsys changed our opinion of SAP as a supplier to small companies. The resulting implementation has provided visibility into our ongoing operations, removed the need for manual re-keying of data and dramatically improved our ability to service customers.”
Providing organisational insights via integrated business systems for mid-size enterprises
General Pants identified transparent finance and accounting systems and efficient analytics as key enablers for its future business strategy. The company required a software solution which would provide the performance insights it required to make strategic decisions necessary for future expansion.
“We achieved a 30 percent increase in overall operational efficiency as a result of implementing the mySAP All-in-One solution,” said Mark McRae, financial controller, General Pants. “These gains have come from a reduction in man hours needed for manual reporting, easier identification of errors and a reduction in the time it takes to turnaround reports. Overall, the SAP has delivered improvements in the availability of accurate data at a faster rate which provides a platform for organisational decision making.”
Rapid business growth at the consumer electronics importer and wholesaler, Centrex Australia, had lead to unacceptable pressure on the company’s information systems. The management team considered alternative solutions from several vendors, including Microsoft and Sage, before selecting mySAP All-in-One. Centrex worked with implementation partner, REALTECH, to map out a solution incorporating financials, sales and distribution, materials management, purchasing, service functionality, reporting, inventory management and warehousing.
“The continued expansion of the company put a lot of pressure on project timeframes,” said Bing Wang, managers of sales and planning operations, Centrex. “We worked closely with our partner to deliver an integrated, best practice solution that fit with our current and future requirements and went live in just eight weeks. The success of the project is testament to the importance of a thorough market evaluation, ensuring a good fit with business requirements and in-depth project planning.”
SAP Business One and mySAP All-in-One address the highly specified demands of various industries through a growing portfolio of integrated solution extensions developed by a worldwide network of ISV partners.
