With Partners, SAP Singapore Delivers Affordable, Easy-to-Install and Easy- to-Use Solution for Growing Businesses
Singapore — SAP Singapore, together with its business partners, today launched SAP Business One, extending the company’s expertise to a new segment of the small and midsize business (SMB) market. SAP® Business One offers growing SMBs a simple yet powerful integrated solution that is affordable, easy to install and easy to use. Importantly, the solution incorporates CRM functionality as an intrinsic and fundamental part of core business automation for growing businesses and offers SMBs a scalable solution to support the growth of their business. SAP remains committed to helping emerging businesses in Singapore that have the potential to become market leaders in their respective segments. To reinforce this commitment, SAP Business One will be made available at a special price of SGD39,800 to a select group of customers. The special price for a 5-user system includes hardware, software, implementation and training services.
To date, there are 10 SAP Business One customers in Singapore, including Mitsuiwa, an electronics component distributor; Golden Spring Export, an auto parts distributor; JCS Automation, which fabricates clean room facilities; Hwee Seng, a distributor of audio equipment; and PICO Electronics, an electronics component manufacturer. SABRE Information Services, one of SAP’s business partners, is the integration partner for these customers.
“SAP Business One is a simple yet powerful business solution that helps emerging enterprises streamline their operations and provides them with access to critical real-time information”, said Dr. Huin Seng-Fatt, the newly appointed SMB director at SAP Singapore. “SAP Business One enables companies to maximize efficiency and strategic advantage across their entire business for growth and profitability today and in the future. We aim to be the number one SMB player in Asia Pacific by 2005 and the introduction of SAP Business One completes our strategy.
SAP Business One completes SAP’s two-tiered offering of solutions for SMBs and further builds on the significant momentum SAP is already experiencing in the SMB space in Asia Pacific, with an increasing number of new customers. Of the 100 new mid-market customers acquired in Asia Pacific in Q1 2004, over 60 were growing enterprises. mySAP™ All-in-One solution helps SMBs with more complex by providing preconfigured, micro-vertical capabilities to manage industry-specific business processes.
Collaboration with Strong Business Partners
SAP’s business partners provide customers with dedicated support and expertise, as well as implementation and training services for SAP Business One.
To provide customers with one face and a single point of contact, SAP Business One is sold exclusively through certified SAP business partners with a strong understanding of SMB needs. SAP’s partners in Singapore are SABRE Information Services, Inecom Business Solutions, and HeadStart Systems. In total, SAP has more than 30 SAP Business One partners in Asia Pacific and 420 partners worldwide. The partners are put through rigorous training to ensure that they are able to provide customer service that meet SAP’s stringent requirements.
“At SABRE, we believe that it is important to select a business partner that is a global leader,” said SimYew Meng, director, SABRE Information Services. “We chose SAP due to its industry leadership and technology expertise. More importantly, we share a common vision with SAP to help our customers improve operational efficiency and take advantage of growth opportunities. Together, we have achieved the right synergy to translate customers’ business strategies into results.”
SAP Solutions for Growing Enterprises
SAP Business One is an affordable and easy-to-use business management solution for companies that have ten to several hundred employees. Encompassing CRM capabilities as an intrinsic part of core business automation, SAP Business One supports standard business processes covering financial management, warehouse management, purchasing, inventory, and banking. Further, the solution enables corporate subsidiaries, partners and suppliers to easily integrate into the existing SAP environment of their customers, partners, suppliers or global parent corporations. Through streamlining operations and providing access to critical data, SAP Business One allows businesses to be managed in real-time to enhance growth and ensure quick return on investment (ROI).
Industry Leading Technology Partnerships
SAP has also teamed up with technology partners, HP and IBM, who can leverage their industry and technology expertise, and long-standing business relationships in each Asia Pacific country. HP and IBM will combine their local domain expertise and high touch services with SAP’s solutions, to provide a compelling offering to growing businesses. The financing arms of HP and IBM will also help customers finance the SAP Business One implementation.
“Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) like SAP take center stage in IBM’s multi-billion dollar commitment to help customers integrate, automate, and transform their businesses to become on demand enterprises, industry-by-industry,” said Han Chung Heng, general manager, Systems Technology Group, IBM Singapore. “IBM is pleased to partner with SAP, combining leading solutions, technology and services to provide businesses with a unique advantage across small and midsize businesses in Singapore.”
“Following the successful launch of the SMB OneSource Center in May last year, HP and SAP were able to provide our solution partners with a resource to present SMB customers with industry specific SAP solution demos and best practices. We will continue to leverage on the successes of our joint partnership with the launch of SAP Business One. At HP, our mission is clear, to enable SMB customers to get more business results from their technology investments,” said Leong Say Haur, general manager and director, Customer Solutions Group, HP Singapore.
SAP Business One was launched previously in China late last year and already, SAP’s contribution to the SMB arena has been accorded recognition. In China, SAP Business One has received the “Channel Choice Award 2003” and “Most Valuable Product/Solution Editor’s Recommendation Award 2003” by Computer Product and Circulation and Smartpartner magazines, respectively.
SMB Growth in Singapore and Asia Pacific
Highlighting the fact that SMBs in Singapore are growing at unprecedented rates, IDC recently reported that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore are set to spend US$1.17 billion on their infotech (IT) needs this year, up some 5.5 per cent over last year. IDC stated that SME spending on IT will be about a third of Singapore’s overall IT spending of US$3.37 billion this year. According to New York-based AMI-Partners Inc (Access Markets International), SMEs in Asia Pacific are likely to spend as much as US$100 billion on IT and telecoms infrastructure and applications this year. The report projects that infocomm spending by Asia Pacific SMEs (excluding Japan) will grow 19 per cent this year.
