SAP unveiled the latest progress in targeting the SME (small and medium enterprises) market with its SAP Business One solution. At a specially convened road show attended by FSN in London last week, the German software house, better known for its up market ERP software, demonstrated the strides it has made with E-commerce, CRM and Microsoft integration for businesses with 1 to99 employees.
In the short time since its launch in 2003 SAP Business One has made good progress. The software is sold in around 40 countries, there are approximately 1200 partners and SAP recently claimed its 10,000 th SME customer. Rajiv Plastics Industries, a family owned manufacturer of colour master batches based in Mumbai , India , with 65 employees, 700 customers and 2 production plants it is typical of the SME businesses that SAP is seeking to attract. Together, with mySAP All-in-One, SAP's mid-market ERP solution, the software vendor currently says it has approximately 18,000 SME customers worldwide.
However, SAP still faces a steep uphill climb to achieve its long range goal of 100,000 customers by 2010, a more than fivefold increase from its current level and accordingly has invested considerable sums in its so called partner 'ecosystem', charged with delivering sales, implementation services and specialised industry functionality to the SME community. But, to date, the company has said very little about the SAP Business One software it is using to compete with other vendors in the highly competitive and price sensitive SME space.
SAP's strategy isn't purely SME based in the strict sense of the term. Small divisions and associate companies of large multinationals, SAP's traditional hunting ground, are very much part of the target audience as the software vendor seeks to lock in customers with wall to wall SAP solutions. In fact, around 150 of SAP's large enterprise customers have selected SAP Business One for their subsidiaries, including household names such as Nestle, Cadbury Schweppes and Intel. Although sales of Business One globally have grown by an impressive 38% year to date, the fact that SAP is successfully defending itself in its own back yard is an important trend to watch.
From a software point of view, SAP has placed its bets on the growing need for E-commerce and CRM solutions in the mid-market together with better Microsoft Office integration and support for mobile working.
