SAP extends Business ByDesign and Business One solutions

That’s the news from the Systems 2008 conference, in Munich, and Hans-Peter Klaey, president of SAP’s SME group, says it demonstrates its partners’ abilities to build on the year-old product, which is aimed at fast-growing mid size organisations that want to minimise upfront costs. “SAP and its extensive partner ecosystem are dedicated to creating and integrating complementary and innovative solutions for our SAP Business ByDesign customers,” he says. “Therefore, we continue to enrich the solution, based on customer and market feedback, with partner-developed capabilities.” The add-ons have been developed by Automatic Data Processing, CB.Net, Crossgate and Vertex – all providers of business content. CB.Net, for example, is providing a continuously updated payment reference data service in order to give accurate and critical data for validation and verification. Meanwhile, SAPs’ more conventional Business One ERP offering has also been expanded, also with partner solutions – in this case offering additional industry-specific functionality based on SAP quality standards and tightly integrated into the main application. SAP says that the new ‘Enabled by SAP Business One’ systems include: ProjectManagement, developed by Maringo Computers in Germany; Variatec BX for industrial machinery, developed by Variatec, also in Germany; and FourthShift Edition for the food and beverage manufacturing industry, developed by SoftBrands in the US. “Since we piloted the industry solution programme in early 2008, building on SAP’s experience in providing its customers with solutions that fit their specific needs, we have seen a tremendous demand for such solutions around the world – not only from our solution partners, but our resellers and customers alike,” says Niels Stenfeldt, senior vice president, SAP Business One.