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We continue the series of publications about SAP Business One - ERP for small and medium businesses. This time we will consider a new version of the product.
According to , along with quarterly updates to the current version, every 1,5 years SAP releases a new version of SAP Business One.
Prior to the launch of SAP Business One 9.3, SAP Business One partners piloted the version with a limited number of customers. As part of the pilots, customers had the opportunity to use new functionality and share feedback on the quality of the product. At that time, more than 240 clients around the world managed to take part in this program, 108 of them were put into productive operation. One of the first clients in the world was a company from Russia - Telecom Exchange. A video with comments from the Managing Director can be .
In March 2018 was first public release. Today, any of the existing and potential customers of SAP Business One can migrate and use this version.
Let's see what has changed. In the new version of the product, special attention is paid to ease of use and the addition of existing functionality. By expanding the core, new business processes have been implemented: simple production routing and material returns management. Notable changes have affected the project management functionality, customer relationship management (CRM) processes have been simplified and optimized, new opportunities have been added to regulate access rights, etc.
Using the capabilities of the SAP HANA platform and semantic layers, new templates for the control panel (user's desktop) have been implemented. With the new analytics portal, end users can plan and use reports without logging into SAP Business One using real-time ERP data.
It's no secret that add-ons play a key role for customers. Therefore, the new version has simplified the development of add-ons for partners and added support for XML methods for custom tables and Visual Studio 2017. For extreme applications (Extreme Applications or SAP HANA XS applications) uses the SSO login algorithm, eliminating the need to re-authenticate the user.
To simplify the deployment and management of the SAP Business One landscape, a centralized approach has been implemented with a single console for on-premises and cloud options.
Personal Data Protection Authority (GDPR)
To comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), SAP Business One 9.3 introduces a privacy management functionality.
Data protection tools are located in the new menu along the path "Administration" - "Utilities". Access to personal data is regulated by the powers of users, and changes in personal data are recorded in the change log.
The Personal Data Management window is used to define and classify personal data.
The new Personal Information Assistant allows you to define users, employees, business partners and contacts as individuals. With this assistant, you can create a personal data report that companies are required to provide at the request of an individual. The assistant is also used for the purpose of blocking, cleaning (at the request of an individual or upon expiration of the data storage period), unlocking personal data.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM Menu
A CRM item has been added to the main menu to quickly navigate to all business objects related to customer relationship management: business partner directory, campaign generation assistant, Sales Opportunity documents, CRM Reports, etc.
When working with a centralized CRM module, the ease of use of the program increases and the productivity of employees increases.
Assigning activities
Now an activity can be assigned to multiple users or employees by adding a list of recipients. The activity overview screen will list the recipients (one or more).
Project management
The Project Management module has been significantly improved in SAP Business One 9.3 in order to increase transparency, work efficiency and ease of use of the product.
- Added a new functionality "Project Overview", which allows you to filter and view all project or subproject data and hierarchical structure on one screen
- A new functionality for project visualization in the form of a Gantt chart has been developed
- Added the "Stage ID" field to optimize the association of projects with marketing documents and employee timesheets
- On the Milestones tab, a new column called "Date of Completion" is available, where users can determine the actual completion date of each stage to compare with the planned date
- In the "Documents" and production orders section, the new "Payable" checkbox indicates whether the associated document item is paid for by the customer
- Additional project-related information has been added to the Activity form. Users can also specify project activity relevant for the "Invoicing Assistant"
- The new "Invoicing Assistant" collects data from open documents related to the project and generates sales documents
- 8. New timesheet report shows the relationship between a project and the time an employee spends on a project
Sales and Purchasing Management
Contract
The possibilities of conducting contracts have been expanded. You can now define a fixed exchange rate in the contract if the business partner uses a foreign currency. This fixed exchange rate overrides the exchange rate used in the document on a particular date.
Now it is possible to update contract parameters (amount, quantity, price) after assigning a contract in a marketing document. Added the ability to update the start date of the contract in the absence of linked documents.
To strengthen control over the contract, you can now track all deviations from the planned amount and planned quantity specified in the contract in the document settings. Additionally, you can configure blocking the operation or displaying a warning when the quantity/amount exceeds the planned value of these parameters in documents. Also, for contracts, the setting of the approval procedure has become available.
Return request
SAP Business One 9.3 now supports the ability to capture a return intent.
Before actually returning the material, the user can agree on the return conditions (quantities, prices, reason).
For these purposes, two new options have been added: "Request for return" in the "Sale" business process and "Request for return" in the "Purchase" business process. "Request for return" is also available in the "Service" business process.
The following options are available for new documents:
- Create a return requisition based on the original operation of a sales business process (Shipping or Sales) or a purchasing business process (Receipt or Purchasing)
- Specifying the reason for the return and the operation of the return
- Changing ordered (sales) and confirmed (buying) quantities of goods in stock before actually returning goods
- Create a return request from a service request
- Managing Serial and Lot Numbers in Documents
- Additional reporting and analytics options
New documents provide more flexible management of the return process and additional control.
Price with VAT
In practice, depending on industry specifics, both methods of price calculation are used: gross price (including VAT) and net price (excluding VAT).
As a rule, companies engaged in wholesale trade use the net price, because they interact with large clients. At the same time, retail companies use the gross price, because are interacting with individuals and need to specify prices more precisely (especially decimal values).
SAP Business One 9.3 introduces a completely new gross pricing engine. The handling of gross price values ββin marketing documents has been revised to address existing issues:
- no separation between net and gross price modes
- simulation of gross pricing for specific scenarios
Applying the gross price or net price also affects how the discount is calculated in the marketing document:
Managing the build process
Assembly Routing
The new routing feature simplifies the processing of a production order through a definable sequence of assembly steps. It also makes it easier to manage items requiring assembly and resource components. Added the ability to define multiple assembly steps to the Bill of Materials and Production Order documents. To determine the date of the need for components and resources, the function of managing the dates of the beginning and end of the stage is implemented.
With the new Calculate Routing Date field, you can control the start and end dates of a stage by specifying the values ββTo Start Date, To End Date, From Start Date Ahead, or From End Date Back. In doing so, you can automatically calculate date dependencies between route legs in a production order.
The Build Time, Additional Time, and Execution Time fields in the Route Stage row show the longest execution time of all the resources that belong to that stage. The resource that is used for the longest time determines the duration of the route leg.
A new Status column has been added to the Production Order, which allows you to set a route step, position, or resource to Planned, In Progress, or Complete. The Status column is editable on all production order lines. In this case, the status for all components of the stage is updated in accordance with the status of the "Route stage". When the status changes to "Full", all items are checked and a system message appears suggesting that the planned quantity be reduced to match the issued quantity. The answer will be valid for all components.
Picking, packing and assembly assistant
The Pick and Pack Assistant has been renamed to Pick, Pack and Assemble Assistant. New fields in the Opened, Released, Picked sections allow you to use the assistant as a simple production manager console with control over parameters such as Route Stage, Route Sequence, Product Number, and Build Priority. You can define the selection criteria for a production order by a number of attributes, such as start date, route stage, route sequence, and assembly priority.
Improvements in the assembly management process will benefit all companies with an uncomplicated manufacturing process. In the standard functionality of SAP Business One 9.3, planning and execution of production with simple routing, an assessment of the possible time of occurrence of a need for a component, are available. These changes provide management and increased control over production-related components and resources.
Business Intelligence (version for SAP HANA)
Control panel template
The control panel or user's desktop allows you to organize access to the necessary information by placing links to documents, dashboards, key performance indicators (KPIs) on the SAP Business One main screen.
In version 9.3, new pre-configured templates for Finance, Sales, Purchasing and Inventory are available in the Control Desk. With the appropriate permissions, users can create their own dashboard templates and publish them for use, including by other employees in the company. For example, you can create user desktops by subject: finance, purchasing, sales, warehouse, and others. Dashboard templates can be assigned to a group of users.
You can switch between templates in the interface using the "Select template" button.
Analytical portal
With the release of the new version, the ability to publish and share MS Excel and Crystal Reports reports using the analytical portal has become available. Reports can be downloaded from the portal in different formats or configured to generate and send scheduled reports to e-mail. For MS Excel, PDF, Excel or HTML options are available, for Crystal Reports - PDF.
For the portal to work, there is no need to install the SAP Business One client or MS Excel on the user's computer, reports can be opened on various devices, for example, in a web client or on a mobile device. The analytics portal is available for both on-premises and cloud installations of SAP Business One 9.3 version for SAP HANA.
Platform, System Administration and Lifecycle Management
Loading data from MS Excel
The Data Import Assistant from MS Excel has been improved and can now import documents into SAP Business One from the Accounting Transaction, Incoming Balance Serial Numbers, and Lots sections.
Workflow
The workflow service in SAP Business One allows you to automate the process of document movement and the assignment of responsible users and tasks.
In addition to improving the stability and capabilities of the workflow service, support for the 64-bit DI API has been implemented, and workflow service configuration and workflow templates are now managed in the "Administration" web console.
System Landscape Directory (SLD) Control Center
SAP Business One components can now be installed via the SLD Control Center on remote computers.
A new tab "Logical Machines" has been added to register remote computers and install SAP Business One components. SLD automatically installs the SLD agent components on remote computers. The SLD Agent can perform installation and upgrade tasks for SAP Business One and DI API.
An overview of all installed SAP Business One components in the SAP Business One landscape (the component must support SLD registration) is available on the Components tab.
Built-in incident reporting
This new feature allows you to instantly log an issue in the SAP Business One client, document all steps with screenshots with description, system information, and report the issue (in a single ZIP file) to colleagues or a partner.
SAP Business One Service app mobile app (version for SAP HANA)
SAP continues to develop information access capabilities for mobile workers. In June 2018, a new mobile application for iOS was released. SAP Business One. Service app simplifies the processing of service requests for service department employees working out of the office.
The functionality of the mobile application includes access to customer information, a barcode scanner, voice-to-text translation, and allows you to process assigned service requests. From the application, a service employee can place a purchase order, close a service request with the customer's signature, and print a confirmation document on a Bluetooth printer.
The application allows you to work with data both in real time and when there is no connection to the company's server.
Conclusion
This article does not cover all the innovations in SAP Business One 9.3. The company's plans for this version include the implementation of very interesting scenarios for the use of the Internet of things and machine learning. In the meantime, while you are reading the article, the developers are already testing the new version of SAP Business One 9.4 ... Or maybe not 9.4 Next year will show!
Videos with SAP Business One 9.3 feature overviews are available at .
You can get acquainted with the examples of implementations of SAP Business One on the website
Comment, share your impressions and ask questions.
Thank you all for reading and feedback!
Source: habr.com