I-BN Blog

Biz.One is the annual and largest gathering of SAP Business One customers and partners in North America. This year's event was held in Indianapolis and was full of informative sessions, networking and social events. The best part of the event for I-BN is often networking with SAP executives and getting exclusive insights into the future of SAP Business One.

If SAP Business One is part of what makes your business run, you need to visit Biz.ONE, the largest gathering of SAP Business One customers and partners in North America. Run by the America's SAP User Group (ASUG), Biz.ONE is a conference run for the customer by their advocates. Annually attended by over 200 customer organizations, the conference unites companies in distribution, manufacturing, retail, life sciences, consumer products and more!

Boyum IT and I-Business Network have been serving the SAP Business One community for over 15 years. We appreciated hosting Rosi Coronado for a workshop on the Boyum B1 Usability Package (B1UP) and to strengthen our partnership.

The cloud is more than a big ball of water vapor in the sky.  It is big business and big for business.  The reality is that everyone is in the cloud.  The services you use could be housed at Amazon, Azure or in a private cloud and you may not even know it!   Large enterprise has moved to the cloud for agility, innovation and speed.  Smaller business has historically had the advantage of nimbleness and inventiveness and cloud may be for you too! 

How do you leverage the cloud if you are not a large company with a big IT staff?  There are so many misconceptions about the cloud.

• Is it easier than on premise? Possibly
• Is it less expensive than in-house?  It depends upon how you measure cost.
• Can it improve your efficiency?  If you leverage it properly!

A recent Diginomica article discusses 5 ways to leverage ERP in the cloud without throwing away millions.  Of course small business can't throw away millions, but the article has good advice!

1. Use Software as A Service (SaaS) where it makes sense.   The reasons may be different, but the idea of SaaS is to keep up with features, functions, and technology without the complexity of keeping up!
2. Lift and Shift Trusted Applications  Most of our applications are available on premise or cloud.  In our private clouds we can integrate your special sauce with our special sauce to make extra special competitive advantages.
3. Take Advantage of World Class Architecture.  I-BN uses the same equipment used by large enterprises with layers of security that most small businesses have yet to think of!
4. Access Leading Edge Cloud Resources.  We utilize leading tools for cloud accessibility, environment management and leverage them across a large customer base. 
5. Earn Your Cloud Cred.  You likely have cloud based payroll or CRM, backup as a service or cloud anti-virus.  Now may be the time to spread your wings and move into cloud ERP.

You don't have to move everything to the cloud, but with I-BN Cloud 3.0 you have flexibility.  You can have a single application like Sage100cloud or SAP Business One in the cloud, or have a whole hosted desktop.  For more information on how we can make your business more efficient contact one of our solution experts at 678-627-0646 x230 or sales@i-bn.net.

When my wife and I were first married, like a lot of other younger couples, we began furnishing our new home via garage sales.   The second time we went out together she fell in love with a large painting that would go perfectly with the couch we just bought.  I asked the owner how much and she said, “$40”.  I took a deep breath and said, “I can’t give you $40 but I will give you $25”.  All of a sudden my wife blurts out, “Babe, the frame is worth more than that”!!!  After a few moments of awkward silence and with the owner of the painting smiling, I turned to my wife and said, “We need to talk”.

The way we interact with our computers and the software they run has been evolving since the rise of the internet and mobile computing.  As the technology has evolved we have seen web pages being built to act more like computers and computers being designed to work with the touch of your hand and the sound of your voice.  This evolution is leading to higher productivity and efficiency when implemented properly by the publisher and the end user organization.

• Microsoft - As discussed in our previous blogpost, Microsoft has been moving online with its Office 365 and Dynamics 365.  Many of these changes have been evolutionary and productive such as the ongoing enhancement of SharePoint and Flow for extending ERP to the web.   However, some of the changes are more revolutionary like their recent April 2019 and upcoming October 2019 release wave of Microsoft Dynamics 365.  In this next release Business Central will support only the modern client and will only allow for development of customizations and solutions in AL through VS Code.   This means any customizations done by partners will need to be re-written and could cause some severe disruption to customers.
• Sage - Sage is leveraging the positive aspects of the Office 365 enhancements building its "connected cloud" strategy into the Outlook client.  For example, Sage Contacts makes a variety of information about customers available as a sidebar for sales and customer service representatives without being in the Sage 100cloud system.  As the majority of Sage applications are built to work on-premise or in the cloud, their strategy is to move at a slower pace and more conservative in nature.   Sage Intacct is the only "true cloud" solution in its portfolio and Sage is developing more modules to expand this financial oriented product to appeal to a broader range of industries.
• SAP - The SAP appears to be taking both approaches.  The SAP HANA Cloud is building interfaces similar to Microsoft Flow, the new version of SAP Business One being released in October will support the current Fiori user interface as well as a new web client for a sub-set of the core functionality.   Even more impressive are the "intelligent enterprise" advancements demonstrated at the recent SMB Innovation Summit.  Innovation such as the integration of Honeywell warehouse management system directs staff to specific locations to pick an order on their headset where they simply confirm information with their voice.

At I-Business Network, our goal is to Powerful  Business Technology Made Simple.  We do that by cloud enabling your business in a data center designed specifically for the ERP systems we host.   Whether the technology is "true cloud" or more traditional, we make the user interface easy to use for you via browser, cloud application, or hosted desktop.  Because we are experts in both the cloud and the business management software we host, we minimize business disruption caused by changes in technology.

For more information on how we can make your business more efficient contact one of our solution experts at 678-627-0646 x230 or sales@i-bn.net.

Changing business management software is not something companies or their employees look forward to.   SAP Business One and the SAPDistribution Start Program provide clear benefits and rapid implementation

When it comes to Office Productivity Software, Microsoft Office remains the predominant player.   Over the past few years Microsoft has been working hard to improve the functionality of its web based Office 365 Suite and is driving all users to subscription based pricing.  ERP providers like Sage and SAP follow Microsoft closely and have been integrating the suite into their products in various ways.

Moving to the cloud isn’t about the money, it’s about optimizing your core business, increasing efficiency and effectiveness, driving new revenue and growth.  When you think about it, the benefits are there:

SAP has been a leader in business management software, and they have maintained their leadership by staying ahead of trends to meet customer needs.  The 2019 SAP SMB Innovation Summit held in Orlando June 18-20 was focused on how companies are starting to use big data, coupled with artificial intelligence to create the Intelligent Enterprise.