Manage & Automate Your Business Process With SAP Business One Modules

SAP Business One is a powerful ERP that’s specifically made for small businesses. And although it is made for small or mid-sized businesses, it is extremely powerful. The ERP has every module necessary for a business to manage its processes and automate the flow of information. SAP Business One has more than 15 modules that remain wrapped around every aspect of a business. These modules enable businesses to streamline their processes, establish cohesion among different departments and establish an unprecedented collaborative atmosphere. Come, let’s find out how SAP Business One modules make all these things possible.

A Quick Brush-up: What an ERP Is and Why Businesses Need It

Enterprise Resource Planning is a software solution that establishes a bridge between all the resources available to an organization – be it human resources or non-human ones. The ERP software makes it possible by harmonising the entire enterprise data and acting as a “single source of truth” for all this data.

Businesses need ERP software because it becomes practically impossible to manage internal processes manually as they scale up. For example, it will be too cumbersome for a sales department to keep asking the warehouse managers whether the company has a specific product to deliver. What an ERP does is, automates the passing of information from the warehouse to the sales department. Now imagine this automated flow of information happening across all the departments of the company. It will be a utopia for the people managing the business process.

Modern ERP goes beyond the traditional role of automating and managing the business process. Today ERP software leverages enterprise data and comes up with actionable insights. For example, modern ERP software can suggest how many products should be available in the warehouse in a given period to fulfil incoming customer orders. Predictive analytics is now a big part of ERP software.

Benefits of Using an ERP System

An ERP system has now become an indispensable tool for businesses. Any business earning a fairly decent revenue needs at least some kind of automation to manage the growing enterprise data that it generates.

Holistic Management of Business Processes

Although there are many such systems – CRM, Accounting Software, or even Excel – they do not provide holistic business management functionality. Only ERP software can provide business management functionality in a wholesome way. ERP modules are made up of a combination of CRM software, accounting functionality, sales and warehouse management functionality, purchasing & vendor management tool, and more… And all these functionalities are tightly integrated with one another.

Single Source of Information

Do you know what the single biggest impediment is faced by companies that are trying to automate their business processes? It’s the fact that a business with multiple departments faces issues with building a single window from where all the departments can access all the information pertaining to the process. When a company implements an ERP system, all the information goes through it and remains saved. As a result, the company is able to build a construct around its data so that the ERP system can act as a single source of information.

Making Business Operation Efficient

Now, because of the benefits mentioned above, ERP software optimises business operations and exponentially improves the operational efficiency of a business.

Happy Customers, Happy Vendors

As operational efficiency improves, so does the efficiency in delivery and maintaining customer relations. This results in happy customers. On the other hand, ERPs also streamline the purchasing process, which enables companies to provide a construct around the purchasing process and vendor management. From paying the vendors on time to maintaining clear, professional relationships with vendors – an ERP system improves the relationship between the company and the vendors in a meaningful way.

All These Benefits, Ultimately, Result in More Revenue and Growth for the Company

When a business process works as it should, when customers and vendors remain happy, and when the company remains aware of its cash flow and accounts receivables – that too effortlessly – it means that it is well on its path to growth and revenue multiplication.

SAP Business One Modules – Empowering Businesses to Take Control of the Processes

The SAP Business One modules are specially crafted so that employees – no matter what their technical background is – can leverage them and make the internal business process work for them.

For a small business, we have often seen that it’s the people who work, keeping the business process in mind. But once SAP Business One is implemented, the modules empower employees to tweak the internal process and automate them. Also, a lot of people think that since SAP Business One is an affordable ERP software, there must be some missing modules. Let us bust that myth – SAP Business One has any and every module necessary for a small and mid-sized business to holistically manage internal processes.

Let’s now delve deeper and find out more about the SAP Business One modules-

The Accounting Module In SAP Business One

The beauty of SAP Business One lies in the fact that every module that pertains to monetary transactions in some way or the other is connected with the accounting module. This means that every transaction is automatically identified by the accounting module.

As you can see from the diagram, each and every module in SAP Business One is connected to the Master Data. And on top of that, the accounting module is connected with every other module associated with monetary transactions.

So, for example, the moment the sales department creates an A/R invoice –

The accounting module automatically posts the revenue and the amount of taxes associated with the sale.
The customer account in the journal is debited with the sale price of the product and the related taxes
Furthermore, the asset and liabilities get adjusted based on the debit transaction

Without this SAP Business One module, it would get really cumbersome for the accounting department to monitor and post the accounting-related transactions and update the GL accounts accordingly. The accounting module in SAP Business One automates most of the accounting tasks enabling the accounting department to focus on more important issues.

The Sales Module in SAP Business One

SAP Business One manages and creates a construct around the entire sales process – from order to cash. Do you remember that we said SAP Business One solutions company provide a single source of information? Let us demonstrate this by explaining how the sales process in SAP Business One works –

Sales Order Creation

Although the first step in the sales process is the sales order creation, let’s skip that and start with the sales order. When you create a sales order- the system remains connected with other SAP Business One. So, for example, if you want to see the available products for which you are creating the sales order, you don’t need to call the warehouse manager. You can see it from the sales order screen itself. Again, SAP Business One will warn you if the customer for whom you are creating a sales order has exceeded their credit limit. On a broader level, the sales module is connected with the master data, which enables the module to grab the price data from the master data itself.

Delivery

Generally, the sales department does not take care of the delivery. It’s the delivery team that takes care of the process. So, once the sales order is created, the system creates an open delivery order which would be fulfilled by the delivery team. The list of open delivery items can be easily found in the system. This means that the sales team does not need to manually tell the delivery team about new open delivery items – the delivery team is already aware of that.

A/R Invoice

Once the product is delivered, the system enables you to close the open delivery by creating an A/R invoice from the delivery screen. One thing to note here – while creating the invoice, the user does need to manually enter the information of the sale – the ‘copy to’ function helps the user to automatically include all the information related to the sale.

As we said earlier in the accounting section – once the A/R invoice is created, the system automatically creates journal entries for all the related GL accounts and keeps a note of the revenue and taxes, debit and credit – in short, the entire transaction gets recorded by the accounting module.

Incoming Payment

Now, once the customer releases the payment, the user can now close the A/R invoice. Since the payment is received, the accounting module triggers another set of journal entriesis. So you see, this connected experience in SAP Business One facilitates the automated execution of business process activities.

The Purchasing Module

Just like the sales module, this SAP Business One module has multiple processes involved, and during each of these processes, the purchasing module and all the other modules share data with each other.

During the purchase order creation, the user can leverage the module’s automation technology to make it predict the quantity of the items for which the purchase order was created.
Since the purchasing module is directly connected to the master data, it can easily access the list of vendors and the price of the item quoted by a particular vendor.
If the company has multiple warehouses, the user can choose the address of the warehouse where the product needs to be delivered – right from the purchasing screen.
The inventory has clear visibility into all the open purchase orders.
Once the receiving team receives the items purchased, they can use the information from the purchase order to create the Good Receipts PO.
As soon as the GRPO is created, the system automatically updates the inventory level and triggers all the necessary journal entries in the accounting module.

The CRM Module In SAP Business One

SAP Business One is not just ERP software- it is also fully functional CRM software. The CRM functionality is also connected with other Business One SAP modules. Let’s briefly see how the CRM module in SAP Business One works.

Through the CRM module in SAP Business One, the user can add data about a new customer or new information about an existing customer. This is the most basic functionality that every CRM software has.
Among many SAP Business One functionalities, the calendar functionality in this ERP system enables the organization to plan systematically for customer outreach activities.
Now, while creating activities, each activity can be tied to a specific document. Maybe you want an outreach activity to be tied to a specific sales order or a specific set of sales orders. SAP Business One makes that possible.
From phone calls to email marketing – the campaign generation wizard enables the user to create many types of campaigns and send emails directly from the system.

But the CRM module in SAP Business actually shines when we see the smart reports being generated by it. For example, the CRM module shows you all the open sales quotations that are yet to receive a response. The system calls it sales opportunities.

This SAP Business One ERP module further enables the user to segregate customers based on revenue and profit generated by them. Thus, the system empowers businesses to focus on what really matters.

The Manufacturing Module In SAP Business One

Most ERP software systems that are meant for small businesses ignore the manufacturing aspect. This is why SAP is different from the rest. It’s a flagship ERP software for small businesses that has everything needed for a manufacturing company to streamline its processes.

The single most important aspect of any manufacturing process is the Bill of Materials. SAP Business One 10.0 features include the creation of BoM, which allows the company to create a Bill of Materials necessary for an item to be manufactured. The BoM also takes into account labour and machinery.

Next comes production planning. Once again, we witness the awesome collaboration among various modules in SAP Business One. The production order or production planning screen allows you to see the quantity of raw materials needed to manufacture an item. In fact, if any raw material is not available in adequate quantity, you can order it from the production order screen itself.

As usual, the production order triggers the updation of necessary GL accounts.

But that’s not it. Releasing the finished goods to a specific warehouse, assigning batches to the finished goods etc., can also be done with SAP Business One.

The Human Resource Module In SAP Business One

SAP Business One does not need any third-party integration to manage and streamline ore human resource processes. The employee master data platform offered by the ERP system can be leveraged to enter each and every minute detail about an employee – including which branch and department a certain employee works in. The system allows you to store documents pertaining to employees.

This SAP Business One ERP module has the timesheet feature to organise the work process and create a productive environment. Reports like Absentee reports can be generated using the module.

While project management isn’t a core HR functionality, SAP Business One has a fully functional project management feature as well.

Conclusion

So you think that’s all the features and modules that SAP Business One has? No! This awesome ERP software has endless functionalities. For example, we haven’t elaborated on –

Smart Reporting Module that enables businesses to see what they should see! For instance, the reporting module can be configured to display right in the cockpit the amount of A/R due to be closed.
SAP Business One service module – Apart from manufacturing and retail-related modules, SAP Business One, allows service professionals to take advantage of the system and streamline their workload.

If your business is gradually outgrowing traditional tools – that were once enough – you really need to try SAP Business One. Although this ERP software is targeted towards small and midsize businesses, the HANA database technology makes sure that SAP Business One remains ready to be scaled whenever you feel the need for scaling up.