It turns out that the mid­mar­ket and large-scale busi­ness­es that use SAP tech­nol­o­gy may be more alike than one would think. That’s what we dis­cov­ered after talk­ing with Rain­er Zinow, SVP of prod­uct man­age­ment for small and mid­size enter­pris­es at SAP. Rain­er leads the teams that deliv­er SAP Busi­ness One and SAP Busi­ness by Design to what SAP con­sid­ers small and mid­size orga­ni­za­tions — which fall into the cat­e­go­ry of gen­er­at­ing $1 bil­lion in annu­al rev­enue or less. He also col­lab­o­rates with the SAP S/4HANA teams at SAP, giv­en that these sys­tems fre­quent­ly connect. 

The SAP Busi­ness One Family

The orga­ni­za­tions that use SAP Busi­ness One stray a long way from the con­cept of what many con­sid­er ​“small busi­ness­es” in North Amer­i­ca — they aren’t your local restau­rant or cor­ner shop. What we do know about them is that they are a tight-knit group (Rain­er fre­quent­ly refers to them as ​“a fam­i­ly”) of vocal cus­tomers. They rely both on their val­ue-added resellers (VARs) as their point of con­tact for their SAP solu­tions and on the part­ners who build the add-ons they use to cus­tomize their ERP systems. 

ASUG had the chance to catch up with Rain­er in advance of his pre­sen­ta­tion that will kick off ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP Busi­ness One on Oct. 27. We dis­cussed some of the insights ASUG research gath­ered from SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers this year, as well as the rela­tion­ship between SAP Busi­ness One and SAP S/4HANA, and some of the lat­est inno­va­tions such as the SAP Busi­ness One native web client. We also dis­cussed why inno­va­tion is just as impor­tant to mid­size cus­tomers, as well as what the intel­li­gent enter­prise looks like for them. 

Ann Marie: Can you tell me what you’re respon­si­ble for today at SAP?

Rain­er: I’m respon­si­ble for the prod­uct man­age­ment and road maps for our mid­mar­ket solu­tions, SAP Busi­ness One and SAP Busi­ness by Design. I also cross-coor­di­nate with my col­leagues on the SAP S/4HANA side of the house. 

Ann Marie: ASUG did a study of SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers ear­ly this year and found that only about 17% of the cus­tomers we spoke with are plan­ning to adopt ver­sion 10.0 with­in the next year. For those who are not cur­rent­ly plan­ning to move to the next ver­sion, what ben­e­fits will they miss out on if they wait to upgrade? 

Rain­er: The last thing our cus­tomers need in these dif­fi­cult times is more stress relat­ed to new releas­es. We are doing every­thing we can to make SAP Busi­ness One 10.0 real­ly com­pelling to adopt. 

It starts with the part­ners who need to do the nec­es­sary work to make sure they have test­ed all of their add-ons to work with this new ver­sion — because, if there is a secret sauce in this busi­ness, it is all of the part­ner add-ons. I’m work­ing with the glob­al part­ner exec­u­tive coun­cil to reach the part­ners in this space so they will be pre­pared to help cus­tomers move. 

It is now the job of SAP, togeth­er with its part­ners, to explain the ben­e­fits cus­tomers will get out of ver­sion 10. These include a new web client for SAP Busi­ness One, enhance­ments to the user inter­face, sup­port of SAP HANA 2.0, and inte­gra­tion with Microsoft Office 365, to name just a few. 

Ann Marie: What busi­ness areas will ben­e­fit from the enhance­ments to SAP Busi­ness One 10.0?

Rain­er: I expect a lot of inter­est on the legal and com­pli­ance side. I was on a call with a cus­tomer in Mex­i­co who said the gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing a whole array of reg­u­la­to­ry changes like we are expe­ri­enc­ing in Ger­many these days, where the gov­ern­ment dropped the val­ue added tax (VAT) by 3% ear­li­er this year. And, obvi­ous­ly, I can only do that for the sup­port­ed releas­es, which cur­rent­ly are SAP Busi­ness One 9.3 and 10.0. Cus­tomers will ben­e­fit from hav­ing a good plan for when to move to the lat­est ver­sion before the ver­sion they are on no longer offers maintenance. 

Ann Marie: Why should SAP Busi­ness One Cus­tomers run on SAP HANA? 

Rain­er: Because SAP HANA comes with a whole array of built-in capa­bil­i­ties, espe­cial­ly in the ana­lyt­ics area. The thing that SAP Busi­ness One has suf­fered a bit from is that its ana­lyt­ics were not quite where the cus­tomers want­ed them to be. Obvi­ous­ly, we’ve made a huge step for­ward with the SAP HANA data­base because we are using a lot of its ana­lyt­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties. We also are using advanced capa­bil­i­ties when it comes to the enter­prise search capa­bil­i­ty that is built into SAP Busi­ness One. 

We have dis­cussed this many times with Has­so Plat­tner and said, ​“Has­so, it’s only one part of the sto­ry what our super-large cus­tomers are get­ting out of SAP HANA. They love it. But SAP HANA is equal­ly rel­e­vant for small and mid­size cus­tomers because they need the same capabilities.” 

Ann Marie: What kinds of advan­tages are SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers expe­ri­enc­ing when they run on SAP HANA?

Rain­er: When I talk to my SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers, I ask, ​“What does SAP Busi­ness One do for you?” One cus­tomer once said, jok­ing­ly, two impor­tant things. ​“Num­ber one, it keeps our CEO out of jail.” In all seri­ous­ness, that speaks to what you said ear­li­er about know­ing that your busi­ness is legal­ly com­pli­ant. ​“And, num­ber two, we’ve col­lect­ed data for decades. Now we are at a point where we are start­ing to make smarter deci­sions because the data is so much eas­i­er to get your hands around in an SAP Busi­ness One system.” 

Before they make their deci­sions, they look up the data in SAP Busi­ness One. It may be to find straight­for­ward answers like the 10 most prof­itable prod­ucts over the last quar­ter, or the 10 most prof­itable cus­tomers. Deci­sion-mak­ing based on rock-sol­id ana­lyt­ics is one of the key rea­sons why cus­tomers should be on SAP HANA. 

This does not mean that you will be unable to get reports from SAP Busi­ness One if you are not on SAP HANA. I know that a lot of cus­tomers are doing great things with Microsoft SQL serv­er and Microsoft Pow­er BI in con­text with SAP Busi­ness One. But we have put so much into the ana­lyt­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties from SAP HANA that are avail­able through SAP Busi­ness One.

Ann Marie: How does SAP Busi­ness One work togeth­er with SAP S/4HANA?

Rain­er: We have approx­i­mate­ly 7,000 cus­tomers who use SAP Busi­ness One as a sub­sidiary solu­tion and also have SAP S/4HANA. This is a huge and vocal audi­ence. I always like to say the SAP Busi­ness One Ger­man user group is like a ​“who’s who” of the Ger­man pri­vate stock index. 

We do every­thing to make sure that the cus­tomers who tran­si­tion from SAP ECC 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA enjoy exact­ly the same lev­el of con­nec­tiv­i­ty. This is not a heavy work­load for the SAP Busi­ness One team because we are using stan­dard­ized pro­to­cols when we inte­grate with our SAP S/4HANA environment. 

When a cus­tomer moves from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, they have no appetite to rework the entire ecosys­tem around them. We ben­e­fit from B1if, or the SAP Busi­ness One inte­gra­tion foun­da­tion, which is the inte­gra­tion lay­er into the SAP Busi­ness One world. Where required, we can also do cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic map­ping so that SAP S/4HANA and SAP Busi­ness One will work hand in hand. 

Ann Marie: What can you tell us about the web client for SAP Busi­ness One that was announced at the 2020 SAP Glob­al Part­ner Sum­mit?

Rain­er: This is the sin­gle biggest and most impor­tant ask that I have got­ten from my North Amer­i­can and U.K. part­ners. They tell me that they need a state-of-the-art SAP Fiori user inter­face on top of SAP Busi­ness One. Again, it has a lot to do with SAP S/4HANA because we are har­mo­niz­ing user inter­faces across all of SAP. 

We have one prod­uct stan­dard that we all need to meet by the mid­dle of next year, which is the user expe­ri­ence (UX) con­sis­ten­cy stan­dard. SAP Busi­ness One will be among the first prod­ucts to meet that stan­dard. We built the SAP Busi­ness One web client, which is an alter­nate user inter­face that looks quite dif­fer­ent, though the con­tent is sim­i­lar to what cus­tomers are famil­iar with using. 

The val­ue propo­si­tion is that if you have a brows­er and inter­net access, then you have access to your SAP Busi­ness One sys­tem. This is obvi­ous­ly a jour­ney because it is a huge sys­tem. We worked close­ly with the part­ner coun­cil and said, ​“Here is a long list of all the SAP Busi­ness One capa­bil­i­ties. In which sequence do you need these in the web client?” I’m real­ly grate­ful for all the work that the part­ners put in on this. That’s the great thing about the SAP Busi­ness One fam­i­ly. You can reach out to them and say, ​“Are you will­ing to help me with the deci­sion-mak­ing process?”

Ann Marie: What fea­tures are avail­able in the web client today? 

Rain­er: From a sequenc­ing stand­point, we start­ed the web client for those peo­ple who are pre­dom­i­nant­ly on the road. We start­ed with the sales capa­bil­i­ties. We will con­tin­ue with pur­chas­ing capa­bil­i­ties, and we will pro­vide enhanced ana­lyt­ics for both pur­chas­ing and sales. And then we have an exe­cu­tion plan with our part­ners. I don’t plan to tran­si­tion the entire UI, espe­cial­ly the areas that are less used. 

It’s mis­sion crit­i­cal now that the part­ners tran­si­tion their add-ons to the SAP Busi­ness One web client. So, I would say, ladies and gen­tle­men — thanks a lot for push­ing me hard. I’ve put the web client for­ward. Please join me in adopt­ing the web client. I would like to see your plans to make the most pop­u­lar add-ons avail­able on the SAP Busi­ness One web client. 

Ann Marie: We also learned in our research that about a third of SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers are explor­ing a move to the cloud. What is SAP doing to help cus­tomers move to the cloud with SAP Busi­ness One? 

Rain­er: When­ev­er I meet SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers, they typ­i­cal­ly ask me, ​“Hey Rain­er, what’s your plan with the cloud?” And then I ask them, ​“Well, what does the cloud mean for you?” I come from a very tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment back­ground and I think of things like ser­vice-ori­ent­ed archi­tec­ture and mul­ti­te­nan­cy, for exam­ple. My cus­tomers have a dif­fer­ent view of the cloud. When I ask this, they typ­i­cal­ly describe, ​“It’s the cloud if I can get it on a sub­scrip­tion basis. I don’t want an upfront pay­ment. I want a month­ly rental fee.” The sec­ond thing they say is, ​“It is cloud when I don’t see the box.” The third thing they say is, ​“Cloud is if I nev­er hear the word upgrade again.” 

When I ask cus­tomers who are run­ning SAP Busi­ness One on-premise today what they want to do, about 90% say they have no appetite to stop using it They like their SAP Busi­ness One, and it does what it’s sup­posed to do. But they want a future-proof plat­form, and they want to go with the cloud trend. Many of our part­ners have put pack­ages togeth­er for cus­tomers that offer SAP Busi­ness One as a ser­vice at a sub­scrip­tion rate. That is typ­i­cal­ly a reflec­tion of the license por­tion, the main­te­nance por­tion, and the oper­a­tions por­tion. They may even bun­dle in cer­tain oth­er ser­vices — all to offer SAP Busi­ness One as a full ser­vice to customers. 

Where we are not yet exact­ly where I would like to be is that the part­ners are not bundling in upgrades. At the moment, a good 70% of all new SAP Busi­ness One deals are cloud deals, either oper­at­ed by SAP or by the part­ner. That trend is hap­pen­ing and has accel­er­at­ed quite a bit because of SAP HANA. The cus­tomer is say­ing that they would not want to have an SAP HANA box in their data cen­ter or on-premise. They would rather leave that to the partner.

Ann Marie: You men­tioned that net-new SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers are lean­ing toward cloud imple­men­ta­tions. What are some oth­er fac­tors that either encour­age cus­tomers to adopt the cloud or that act as bar­ri­ers to the cloud? 

Rain­er: The small­er SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers were very hes­i­tant in the begin­ning about the cloud. They would say, ​“The box is safe in my base­ment.” But the SAP base­ment or the part­ner base­ment is prob­a­bly bet­ter than their base­ment. Also, it’s not about the lock on the door, but rather about how good you are at defend­ing a piece of net­work cable. Many SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers aren’t equipped to fend off a cyber­at­tack. That has accel­er­at­ed the trend toward the cloud quite a bit. 

Ann Marie: How does the SAP Part­ner Deliv­ery Qual­i­ty Frame­work apply to add-ons from the VARs for SAP Busi­ness One? How are you work­ing with the VARs to make sure they’re deliv­er­ing the high­est qual­i­ty ser­vice to SAP Busi­ness One customers?

Rain­er: I hear close to no com­plaints from cus­tomers about the qual­i­ty of the add-ons. From time to time, some­thing does not work — but it’s the excep­tion. Why is it the excep­tion? What we see for SAP Busi­ness One is a high lev­el of spe­cial­iza­tion in the part­ner ecosys­tem. For exam­ple, you have approx­i­mate­ly 200 com­pa­nies called soft­ware solu­tion part­ners, or SSPs. They inten­tion­al­ly decid­ed not to sell or imple­ment SAP Busi­ness One, but only to build exten­sions at the high­est pos­si­ble qual­i­ty because they sell their add-ons to oth­er SAP Busi­ness One partners. 

So, the major­i­ty of the VARs are weav­ing togeth­er solu­tions com­pris­ing an aver­age of sev­en add-ons from dif­fer­ent SSPs. That whole mod­el only works if the add-ons are built to the high­est qual­i­ty stan­dards. These SSPs put a lot of test­ing into their solu­tions to meet the qual­i­ty stan­dards SAP has estab­lished for this program. 

Ann Marie: How do cus­tomers and part­ners know they are get­ting the best SAP Busi­ness One add-ons? 

Rain­er: Let’s say a cus­tomer has a burn­ing need for a new hand­held scan­ning capa­bil­i­ty to sup­port the new gen­er­a­tion of hand­held scan­ners in their ware­house. Typ­i­cal­ly, that cus­tomer would call up their trust­ed SAP Busi­ness One part­ner and say, ​“Hey, what should I do?” 

In the SAP Busi­ness One world, the ecosys­tem is so high­ly spe­cial­ized. They know each oth­er, they trust each oth­er. And if some­body does not deliv­er high-qual­i­ty soft­ware, then they would be out of that fam­i­ly one release later. 

Ann Marie: In your opin­ion, what does the intel­li­gent enter­prise look like for small and medi­um size busi­ness­es? How is it the same or dif­fer­ent than it is for big­ger enterprises?

Rain­er: The intel­li­gent enter­prise is at least as rel­e­vant for small enter­pris­es as it is for large enter­pris­es. The SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers real­ly push the enve­lope because they need to com­pete against big com­pa­nies in the mar­ket. When it comes to their areas of exper­tise, they are real­ly leading. 

You can real­ly see that in the book we’ve pub­lished on intel­li­gent sce­nar­ios. We went to the SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers and found those who are doing machine learn­ing projects, Inter­net of Things (IoT) projects, or advanced sta­tis­tics. And we have gath­ered 150 cus­tomer sto­ries about these sce­nar­ios. Yes, we have more work to do when it comes to pric­ing. Some of the SAP intel­li­gent enter­prise offer­ings are not exact­ly priced for mid­mar­ket cus­tomers. But we have more than enough evi­dence that the intel­li­gent enter­prise sto­ry is as rel­e­vant for small enter­pris­es as it is for large enterprises. 

Ann Marie: I appre­ci­ate you catch­ing us up on all that’s avail­able for SAP cus­tomers in the midmarket.

Reg­is­ter today for the com­pli­men­ta­ry ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP Busi­ness One, Oct. 27 – 29. You’ll hear Rainier present at this vir­tu­al event on the out­look for small and mid­size busi­ness­es. You’ll also hear sto­ries from SAP Busi­ness One cus­tomers and part­ners, who will share tips, tricks, and recent innovations.