Likelihood to Recommend For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.
Read full review SAP Business One would be more useful if it contained tools to acommodate the growing need of online sales. A more complete shipping module which handles tracking numbers with the common couriers would be great. A built in warehouse management system would be great designed to be used with barcode scanners
Read full review Pros Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing. Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL. Read full review SAP Business One is more suitable for small and medium scale enterprises SAP Business One is : analytics, mobile technologies, cloud technologies SAP Business One has exceptional performance in handling business functions such as purchasing and operations and customer relationship management An important key features of SAP Business One is Reporting and Analytics. Read full review Cons Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good. I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports. Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer. Read full review Following a bench mark process - this seems contradicting to flexibility however we have wished we could follow more of an industry benchmark. Our challenge as a small company has been knowing how to properly use the system. We have discovered that we have set up the system wrong based and are using it improperly which has cause a lot work to correct. Better live reporting options - current we are on prem SQL. Yes SAP is moving to HANA however smaller companies like ourselves are not ready for that. We need to be able to maintain our existing SQL DB. We also have a demand for live BI Reporting. It has been difficult to do this with our current set up. Error handling - have found it very difficult to troubleshoot. Errors are not always clear and answers are hard to find. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.
Read full review As I said before, it is a first level tool, well developed, and with very strong development support, although the learning curve, its implementation, the cost-benefit ratio, the price and the user experience is not the most suitable for small and medium-sized companies. It is a company with extensive experience, market positioning, technical support and expanded use
Read full review Usability I rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.
Read full review I would like to give 8 out of 10 rating for SAP Business One because SAP Business One is a good choice for the mostly used business management solutions for the small and medium-sized companies. SAP Business One can help in optimizing the existing business process and enables streamline business processes for the daily activities for all users across the entire organization. The importance realization of SAP Business One implementation is based on the selection of the good reputation partner and its approach for the entire implementation. SAP Business One is a user-friendly and easy to use Enterprise system that the organization can benefit its features and functionalities by utilizing it.
Read full review Reliability and Availability We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.
Read full review The SAP Business One software is up and running every time you need it as it was planned. In more than 6 years that we have been using the product, it has never been unavailable and if it ever was, it was because of a planned maintenance window scheduled in the company.
Read full review Performance SAP Business One performance depends mostly on the speed of your internal servers, should you have the solution on premise as we do. Sometimes the system tends to be a little slower for some users when others are executing really big reports of performing some batch loads, but generally, the performance is acceptable to all the users.
Read full review Support Rating Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.
Read full review I rate my experience with SAP Business One's support team as excellent (10). They are easy to contact and effortless to work with on any issue or concern. I like the support SAP provides for any of their products. SAP has a great backing and I would recommend them to any of my colleagues.
Read full review In-Person Training The training I get was a consultant level training, so it's basically a 6 weeks training covering every aspect and every module of the system. It covered most common use cases and exercise training so you can get along with the software, as well as examples so there culd be a better understanding.
Read full review Online Training Over the past two years SAP has added a great deal of new SAP Business One on-line training for version 9.0 and 9.1. Most of the training is very strong, but some is difficult to understand and follow. Additionally, SAP still has a few holes in their on-line training around Production, Bill-of-Materials, MRP and Service.
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Read full review Implementation Rating Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!
Read full review These implementations are not easy. Even a standard implementation can be difficult. With a never-been-done-before implementation, the implementation team and the user team need to be thorough with planning, make a decision on key points, and stick to them before any design happens. Our biggest challenge was not from StellarOne, rather it was from the mid-implementation decisions from our internal team. StellarOne did a great job warning us, implementing our decision, and then helping us adjust our SAP to handle the new direction we took.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.
Read full review SAP provides the most robust solution, with modules available for all department managers and even options for customization according to the company's special needs. We especially used the Crystal reports options to provide reports for each module. Overall, even if it's not the least expensive option, it has the best value for money.
Read full review Scalability Since the backbone of the database is MS SQLServer, the database can be easily scaled.
Read full review For most small businesses, the only way you outgrow SAP Business One is if the nature of your business changes radically. Going from 1 to 50 users is quite easy with SAP B1. Going beyond 50 may require moving to the Hana SAP B1 platform to maintain or improve performance, but the path is there. Add-ons to SAP B1 can also be added as specific needs are encountered that are not closely met by the standard product. These may be required early in the product life because of the nature of your business, or as you expand the use of SAP B1.
Read full review Return on Investment More time is spent on manipulating reports which can and should be automated. Lack of electronic invoicing process and other green technology features creates more cost on printing and storage costs. The lack of a user friendly interface requires more training and a bigger learning curve for staff. Read full review Employee efficiency has definitely increased with SAP Business One. This is attributed in a lot of ways to information visibility. Our employees are able to gather the data they need, quickly, and effectively. Identifying inconsistencies in pricing has also been accomplished through use of reporting off individual tables. Previously, we weren't able to access our data in such a way as to enable us to write custom reports in-house. We have also benefited greatly from having a single source of all business information. We utilize SAP Business One exclusively in-house. All documentation is attached to specific orders and Business Partners, as well as serialized equipment that has been sold. Read full review ScreenShots