BY DESIGN MARKETING BLOGS: THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS

There has been a dramatic uptick in ultra-generic marketing blog posts in the ByDesign space, both by SAP and by Partners. Take quick glance at the ‘Featured Content’ for some great examples.

The typical ultra-generic ByDesign Marketing blog typically goes something like this:

• Partner describes some generic business problem, siting various sources and studies. This usually occupies 90% of the blog’s content.
• Next, Partner mentions ByDesign and that it contains a feature that will help alleviate this business problem. The feature itself is not described…merely its existence.
• Finally, Partner promotes themselves as a ByDesign provider.

Here is a fictional example of the above template:

“Small business face challenges with limited resources and increasing complexity in their supply chain and vendor relationships. In fact, blah blah study states that most small to medium business process X number of invoices, with a limited accounting staff.

Typically not having an IT organization, these companies can use a platform such as SAP Business ByDesign to process invoices easily in the cloud, enabling on-demand access to key vendor relationship data.

To learn more about how SAP Business ByDesign can help your business thrive, contact blah blah person at blah blah company for more information”

Until now, I’ve taken a pessimistic approach to these types of blog posts, slamming/flaming them, and therefore making my passion for excellence appear to be childish lack of self-control. So in short, I have been a part of the problem, not the solution. It’s a new year, so I’m going to take a new approach: help, rather than criticize. (Note: I reserve the right to criticize.)

So how can partners provide more compelling marketing content, that may actually generate some leads, opportunities, and deals? I humbly offer my opinion below:

HOW TO MARKET BYDESIGN IN YOUR BLOG

Continue to highlight business problems, but demonstrate the value that ByDesign can bring to solve this problem in a way that is better than the competition.

Rather than gloss over the existence of a feature, describe the feature in a way that excites a prospect. Will ByDesign revolutionize your Order-to-Cash process? Will ByDesign provide business insight you’ve been missing for years?

Make sure to emphasize why ByDesign is better than every other system that contains the feature you’ve described as existing in the system, because every system also contains this feature. Here are some highlights to get you going:

• ByDesign is a fully integrated platform that allows you to view the life-cycle of sales, projects, customers, financial health, etc., in an unprecedented fashion, using a customizable, and cutting edge analytics engine.
• Have a special business requirement? SAP ByDesign has a developer ecosystem that can meet your needs and fill your gaps.
• With ByDesign’s open platform, you have the opportunity to automate and streamline common business processes like never before.
• The ByDesign community is full of passionate individuals with wonderful ideas for improving the platform. These ideas are regularly reviewed and implemented by SAP and its Partner Community. The community is engaging and collaborative, so you’ll never feel like you’re ‘on an island’ and always have many paths to support.
• The ByDesign user experience is the best in the business for a full business suite, with constant innovation and improvements being made.
• ByDesign brings your business to the next level with on-demand access from anywhere in the world, robust security and user management, and the decades of business process expertise of SAP, all built in.
• Not ready to bring all your processes to the cloud? ByDesign offers a simple subscription model that allows you to implement more and more functionality at your convenience, with no additional cost.

These are just a few core benefits that I would emphasize in a marketing blog post.  Describe generic scenarios and expect no response. Demonstrate unique value and get results.

With all the push to ‘Step Up to the Cloud,” it’s time to also “Step Up your Marketing Blog Posts.”

Follow me on Twitter @JudsonOnDemand.

Small & midsized businesses all around the world have always had difficulty managing and capitalizing on increasing customer demand.  Depending on the volume of sales orders, a small company can have thousands of open sales orders at any give time.  While this may seem like a strong ingredient towards increased cash flow, there is a whole other complex area that involves lead times, promise/delivery dates, inventory control, shipping and managing customer priority.

These difficulties, again, not strange to growing small companies, often leads them to look for software to assist in this process.  In the past, these companies looked to increase headcount by hiring additional customer service reps to assist in managing the increased volume.  These new heads continually monitor supply levels and utilize custom reports to figure out when, where and how much can be shipped.  Unfortunately, these reps also have to be perfectly aligned with the warehouse, or else the circle goes on and on for ever. 

More forward thinking companies also look to resolve such issues by going out and purchasing an advanced warehouse/inventory warehouse module.  However, most of these off-the-shelf, standalone solutions don't integrate/speak to one another, especially if this company has a legacy ERP system already in place.  This lack of integration, while able to be solved via custom programming typically comes with a hefty price tag; one that most small companies can't or don't want to palette. 

So, again, we are at the point of posing our original question of how to rapidly growing small companies stay on top of increasing customer demand and subsequent orders without settling for unintegrated applications or the other, less desirable alternative of killing cash flow with an expensive ERP system that requires constant upkeep?  Simply put, SAP Business ByDesign.  SAP ByDesign is a very affordable (even for small companies, as little as $11/user/month) and fully integrated ERP solution that covers CRM, HRM, supply chain management, project management, and financials, that can manage the changing complexities of your small business. 

SAP ByDesign has power capabilities that include ATP (Available-to-Promise) functionality that will notify your sales and customer service teams when products are out-of-stock in real time, as well as propose realistic deliver days based on lead times and stock turnover.  The system further can continually monitory inventory levels and automatically notify warehouse staff that orders need to be placed and are ready for fulfillment.  This automatic release of orders can be custom configured to prioritize orders based on your business requirements.  Lastly, when a new order has been shipped, accounting staff will be instantly and automatically notified that a customer should be invoiced.

If these problems are in line with what you face or anticipate facing, and are likewise looking for a solution that will streamline your entire operating procedures, especially managing customer demand, then look no further than SAP Business ByDesign.

To learn more, or register for our upcoming, live demo, visit http://nbs-us.com/demos/sap_byd/livedemo.

We’ve all heard the saying before—timing is everything. But what about when buying an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution? Is there a right time to buy, and how much is at stake if you wait too long?

ERP is a powerful tool for two key business objectives—syncing up the sales and operations teams and making accurate and reliable sales and inventory forecasts. But getting up and running with ERP can be a big investment—both in terms of time and money—so many businesses put it off as long as they can.

For major business decisions like implementing ERP, it helps to enlist the advice of an expert, which I have had the opportunity to do so many times, to discuss the details of implementing an ERP system.  In fact, the following questions shed some great light.

How do you know when it's time to implement a full-scale ERP solution?

Simply put, its all about timing for each individual company and each industry, so there is no hard and fast rule on when the right time is.  At Navigator, we have seen companies, in countless industries, in stages all across the board decide that they will benefit from ERP.  Whether a company is just launching, or in its maturity stage, or even frankly declining - they can use ERP to establish clear vision so to best understand their financial viability and health.

While ERP is a "cure all" solution, there are three common situations that can be resolved with the right ERP system in place.

1.  Executives can no longer trust the numbers

Executives rely on sales and inventory numbers to make important decisions about future business moves, and things can take a turn for the worse when those numbers are inaccurate. ERP systems provide real-time, accurate insight into the current state of the business’s financials, so execs can rest assured that the numbers are reliable.

2. Operations and Finance Deparments can agree on a single set of numbers

What if Sales is expected to hit 10M in sales for the quarter, but there is only enough inventory in-stock to sell 5M? Without the proper insight into this business reality, both teams are set up for failure. And, when failure occurs, it’s difficult to know where accountability lies. Was the sales forecast overly optimistic or did operations under-buy?

The Sales/Opps disconnect is one of the most common reasons why companies turn to an ERP solution. When an integrated ERP system is coupled with solid sales and operations planning (S&OP) procedures, you can maintain accountability and enable sales and operations to function cohesively off of one set of numbers.

3. A company needs predictive performance to remain profitable and viable

The ability to predict future performance—for better or worse—drives effective planning, decreases risk and maximizes opportunity. While a company cannot achieve predictive performance with an ERP system alone, a fully integrated ERP system allows an organization to operate under one set of numbers and enables predictability by reconciling sales and inventory forecasts.

What happens if a business "sweeps" warning signs "under the rug" and continues to operate with a sub-par ERP, or simply no ERP at all?

ERP helps sales departments sell inventory with confidence, allows buyers to better track warehouse goods, and eases the transition between “old” and “new” models.  If you fail to adopt ERP after you see the warning signs, there are a number of problems you are opening your business up to.

Most importantly, without a systematic way to track inventory and sales, you run the risk of getting stuck with excessive inventory and scrap. This is particularly true for businesses with limited shelf-life products like the fresh foods industry. Fresh goods have a firm shelf-life, and managing this type of sale with QuickBooks or an antiquated inventory system is both time consuming and leaves room for error. The same is true for consumer packaged goods companies, who must regularly offer products with a new look and feel for every season.

What factors should be considered when selecting an ERP vendor/partner?

ERP is a point solution that can seriously stall your business if it doesn’t work properly, so it’s important to find a vendor with a proven track record that you trust. Just like choosing a doctor, you need to know that the vendor will be there for you to help you implement and troubleshoot your new ERP solution.

If this information rings true in any fashion, and you can see elements of such in your business, you can learn more about SAP's small-midsize business solutions on Navigator's (2011 SAP Partner of the Year) website at http://nbs-us.com/sapsolutions, or you can call 877.395.4SAP.

ERP and business management software in general has come a long way since the days of MS/DOS systems and green screens when I first started in the business over 15 years ago. The pre-Y2K the rush was often to get a system implemented before the collective computers and systems crashed and burned in the fiery aftermath of 4-digit date computer Armageddon. I often found customers sacrificing features and functionality just to get a system in place. However, now more than ever, with such a wealth of solutions on which to run a business, customers have a much broader choice of options, both in deployment as well as the features and functionality. Not only that, most business software users will have much higher expectations having implemented and used a wider variety of systems in the past – thus giving them a strong sense of what they want and what they don’t want. With this in mind, it’s important to recognize and successfully accommodate an emerging trend in the business software world.

Whether we’re talking Cloud/SaaS, On-Premise or any other method of using business software, it’s important to look at a more common model emerging among the consumers of business software solutions. It’s a given fact that software is headed more to a subscription model overall (we’ll save that for another conversation), but business software users demand even more. This model is what I refer to as the “solution hub and spoke”. Not to be confused with a similarly termed model in which companies have remote “spoke” instances of ERP systems with subsidiaries, this model deals solely with different software solutions within a company. In a nutshell, the “hub and spoke” sees the consumer choosing a core business management or ERP system as the “hub” of their business. It will do a variety of things, but must handle accounting and the basic business processes and transactions quite well -- at a bare minimum. From there, and this is the key, consumers have come to realize that the traditional ERP providers, SAP included, have typically not done well at providing point solutions that fit either their specific industry or a very specific need that’s part of a bigger business process. Examples of these “spokes” might include e-Commerce, 3PL, CRM, point of sale, 3^rd party billing, Payroll, Budgeting & Planning, EDI, sales tax updates and a variety of others. These companies specialize in their respective functionalities, thus making is somewhat difficult for any given ERP vendor to compete head-to-head with much of what’s offered in those point solutions (nor would they necessarily want to in most cases). What’s more, the trend is that these solutions are often cloud-based (SalesForce.com, Magento, Volusion, SPS Commerce, Adaptive Planning, Zuora, Avalara etc) creating another level of complexity. This combination makes for a somewhat challenging implementation for a lot of ERP VAR’s.

The main challenge in the scenario of the “hub and spoke” is that these disparate systems will ultimately need to communicate to each other. Luckily, solutions such as SAP Business By Design were designed with the “hub and spoke” model in mind. For a company wishing to employ a number of these “spoke” solutions, it becomes important that their “hub” be as solid as possible and ultimately allow for the data to be communicated effectively as well as  to be able to support an “n-tiered” cloud-connected solution. With ByDesign’s SDK as well as their A2X services, it starts to open up the possibilities to effectively create this “hub and spoke” ecosystem and get the respective pieces working together in unison.

For both the software consumer as well as the software provider (VAR’s included), this isn't a model that will go away soon and all involved will benefit from realizing this emerging trend and embracing the benefits it provides. For the customer, there will be a number of services and features they can take advantage of in order to better run their business. For software vendors, such as SAP, they can focus on their core competencies while, at the same time, allowing and encouraging these level of integration. For the value added reseller, they often find themselves as the orchestrator of such composite systems and therefore it is imperative that they be able to successfully handle the integration of the “spokes” to the “hub” and successfully work with the various parties involved in order to create a stable and valuable overall solution.

The future looks to be interesting and full of new challenges for all involved and it's exciting to be on the ByDesign team! Evolve or get left behind. 

LAS VEGAS — January 24, 2013—Navigator, today announced it is the recipient of the SAP® North America Partner Excellence Award 2012: Top Channel Partner – Cloud Solutions. Awards were presented by SAP Americas (NYSE: SAP) during the SAP North America Field Kick-Off Meeting (FKOM) 2013, held Jan. 22-24 in Las Vegas, to the top-performing SAP channel partners and SAP services partners in North America for outstanding contributions that impact overall SAP sales and pipeline-generation goals.  This is Navigator’s eighth top partner award in as many years.

“We are thrilled and excited to receive this award,” said Grant Fraser, president & CEO of Navigator. “As a rapidly growing SAP partner, it became very clear that the future of ERP software was and is in the cloud.  Over 60 percent of our new customers in 2012 were excitedly adamant about the cloud, as well as enabling their employees with the mobile access that they need to make timelier, better informed decisions.  We look forward to the future of cloud ERP, as well as maintaining our position as SAP’s go-to partner for cloud solutions in North America.”

Selected from SAP’s wide-ranging North American partner base, nominations for the SAP Regional Partner Excellence Awards were based on internal SAP sales data. A steering committee composed of regional and global SAP representatives determined winning partners in each category according to numerous criteria such as sales achievement and performance. As the recipient of the award “Top Channel Partner – Cloud Solutions,” Navigator has been honored as a leading SAP partner. Winners will receive strong recognition and future support from the SAP field for their accomplishments.

Navigator received the award during the SAP North America FKOM 2013, an annual gathering of SAP executives, SAP field employees and partners.  FKOM is SAP’s largest yearly sales meeting, intended to drive success during the upcoming year. Colleagues across the region gather to gain and exchange updated information on SAP’s strategy, sales methodology, best practices, business growth opportunities and product innovations. This year’s North America FKOM hosted more than 5,000 attendees from the U.S. and Canada.

“A thriving partner ecosystem is central to SAP’s success, and partners like Navigator, are key drivers for our customers’ success and for SAP’s market reach,” said Mark Milford, national vice president, North America Ecosystem Group, SAP America, Inc.“As the recipient of the SAP Regional Partner Excellence Award 2013: Top Channel Partner - Cloud, we recognize Navigator’s commitment and efforts in developing and growing its partnership with SAP, which has led to game-changing co-innovation and market expansion.”

Navigator Business Solutions, headquartered just south of Salt Lake City, Utah, has been an SAP partner since 2005.  Navigator, focused exclusively on the small-to-midsize enterprise sector, delivers SAP solutions both in the cloud and on-premises, namely the SAP Business ByDesign® and SAP Business One solutions.  Navigator currently serves more than 1,200 customers from 15 sales and service locations across North America. 

To learn more about SAP solutions available from Navigator, as well as to register for a demo, visit http://nbs-us.com/sapsolutions

(This blog is an addition to my blog from October 2011 which was related to ByDesign FP3.0)

SAP Business ByDesign offers since FP3.5 a functionality for process automations if you have projects on which employees from different companies are working. Pre-Requirement is that all those companies are implemented in the same SAP Business ByDesign System.

In this blog I will describe how you can configure this functionality and how the processes works in a project.

Example process description

1. We (Almika GmbH) sell a project to our customer Berliner Elektrobetriebe.
2. Because we have not enough free resources, we have to involve employees from our other company (Innovat GmbH).
3. We will purchase those employees for our project and they will track time and expenses.

Pre-requirements

The pre-requirement for ByDesign intercompany processes is certainly the existence of at least two companies in organizational management (two different org units with flag “Company”).

In our scenario Almika GmbH is the purchasing company so in fact it`s the customer of Innovat GmbH and Innovat is the supplier of Almika GmbH.

That`s the reason why you have to check Innovat supplier master data and Almika account master data.

You have to ensure that Sales Order Confirmations and Customer Invoices will be sent via Internal EDX (XML communication) to Almika GmbH.

You have to ensure that purchasing orders will be sent via Internal EDX (XML communication) to Innovat GmbH.

All services we want to use in this scenario have to be active for purchasing and pre-configured list price/selling price is needed for those.

Purchasing option in service master data.

List price of supplier Innovat GmbH for our service.

Selling Price for customer Almika GmbH for our service (50 EUR).

Also very important is that you check that the right Sales Organization and valuation in service master data is set. This is a critically point because if you have the wrong settings here the whole process will end in an inconsistent sales orders. In my example Sales Organization "BR Berlin" of Innovat GmbH is responsible for Almika GmbH so we have to ensure that this Organization is set in my service.

Example process test, let`s go…

First we create a Sales Order for our customer “Berliner Elektrobetriebe”.

We add two different items.

Consulting is of type “Service - time and material (project)”

Travel Expenses is of type “Expense - time and material (project)”

After this we let ByDesign automatically create our project.

Now we can start to plan our project and create a purchase request to get employees from our other company (Innovat GmbH) working on it. In the following screenshots you can see that if you select this Supplier, the “Intecomapny relevant” checkbox will be automatically checked.

Adding an employee from our other company Innovat GmbH to project plan. (This will also register this employee as service agent for purchasing.)

Creating a purchase request for Oliver Müller from Innovat GmbH.

After releasing our project, SAP ByDesign will automatically create the purchasing request and if configured right, it will also directly create the purchase order itself. But in our case we want to enable the employees of Innovat GmbH also to track their expanses and so we have to add a second item besides the service on purchase order.

Automatically created Purchase Order.

Add a second item (expense service) of item type limit to purchase order and send update. Only with this item Oliver Müller can track expenses to the project.

SAP Business ByDesign creates a Sales Order for Purchase Order 331 with customer Almika GmbH. Now you can easy create an intercompany project from this Sales Order for Innovat GmbH.

From this point you can start tracking times and expenses from both companies to your origin project (for customer “Berliner Elektrobetrieb”). The intercompany project is automatically released in background but should only be used for controlling from Innovat GmbH perspective.

Time sheet for Oliver Müller (Innovat GmbH), you can see the origin project for customer Berliner Elektrobetriebe and purchase number 331.

Expense report for Oliver Müller (Innovat GmbH), you can see the origin project for customer Berliner Elektrobetriebe and purchase number 331.

From financial perspective all those expenses of Oliver Müller will be automatically booked as internal costs for Innovat GmbH and at the same time as external costs (not yet invoiced) for Almika GmbH. It means in fact that you can control your project expenses in real time.

Recently I have perused the profiles of some ByDesign firms on LinkedIn, and what I saw disturbed me. The ratio of Sales people to Consultants is roughly one for one. What are the implications of this:

1. You'll sell a lot more deals

2. You will not be able to execute on the promised made in these deals

3. You will hire any warm body to fulfill demand

4. Those warm bodies will not be ready for prime time, lacking skill and experience, and your client will suffer.

In my opinion, this is a recipe for failed implementations, and thus destruction of reputation. You are sacrificing current dollars for a sustainable business. Selling the most doesn't make you the best. Being the best makes you the best.

In this industry, in this market space, your firm's reputation is everything.

I repeat:

YOUR FIRM'S REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING

Word of bad implementations get around. I don't imagine SAP is interested in having partners soil ByDesign in this fashion.

So my advice: Sell what you can deliver. Sell excellence. Do not sell mediocrity. We are not in 'gold rush' mode yet, so your failures will be public and they will not get lost in the fray.

So I beg of you, partners, be responsible with your growth, stay humble, and deliver excellence.

First some words to the growth of this space in last months...I really appreciate that, it`s amazing how many great developers for Cloud Solutions OnDemand Studio are now active in this space.

Now from this point I would like to share my thoughts about how we can move forward...

Consultants wanted

I think we need more consultants in this space.

I personally started as developer for Business ByDesign in 2010 but with time I became more and more a consultant. So that`s the reason why on the one hand I really appreciate the incredible growth of the ByDesign developer community here on SCN but on the other hand why I also miss the consultants. What we really need are more blogs and threads about "How to fullfill concrete business process requirements".

Examples:

- How to create fixed asserts?

- How to configure intercompany functionality?

- How to do prototype manufacturing?

- ...

We could also use our wiki page to bring up a central page for links to this different How-To`s.

So if you are a ByDesign consultant or if you know some try to get them blogging here on SCN.

Separation of development and consulting topics

Currently we have no strict separation of ByDesign and ByDesign studio space. We should working on that issue to give other people a better overview. Do somebody know if we have a concrete moderator for those spaces? Unfortunately, I never read something from him/her...

Reputation

I see a lot of good blog posts and answered questions but where is the reputation? Please if you ask something and you get answers then give points for those! If the question is answered, mark it as answered. And if you read a blog post then vote for it!

I have been asked many times on how to manage a rental in ByDesign. Here, I reveal my secret solution, which is simple and easy. Note that you will need some base knowledge in Products, Services, and Logistics. These are easily learned via the built-in help.

Note that I am posting this via an old/irrelevant SCN account while the SCN Team figures out how to get me into my normal account.

Step 1: Create a rental material

Create a new Material for your rental product. Make sure it is activated for all Relevant Processes. Make sure to maintain the product cost in Valuation

.

Step 2: Create a rental service

Create a new Service corresponding to your rental product. Make sure it is activated for all Relevant Processes. Do not maintain a service cost in Valuation.

Step 3: Create a Sales Order for your rental product

Assuming you have stocked up on this item (you may even consider creating a separate Rentals logistics area, but let’s keep it simple for now.

Click Submit > Release Order.

Step 4: Deliver the rental item

Run the Release Due Deliveries Run in Outbound Logistics
Control. In Outbound Logistics > Delivery Proposals, Post Goods Issue. Your
inventory for this item will be reduced by the amount in the Sales Order.

Step 5: Invoice the Customer for the first week

Step 6: Monitor Sales Order and Release Execution Each Week to Invoice the Customer

Each week, edit the sales order and complete execution on a week’s rental. Complete Execution for each week as each week occurs. Do this by selecting the line item and select Complete Execution.

Step 7: Assume the rental term is completed and each rental week has been invoiced.

In Inbound Logistics, create a new Parts Delivery Notificatiion

Step 8: In Inbound Logistics > Task Control, simply Confirm the put-away task.

Now your rental product is back in stock and you can rent it out again.

(AGAIN)

RENT AWAY, YOUNG SPIRITS!!

You can follow me on Twitter @JudsonOnDemand

So many devices, quite a few releases, and just as many scenarios. Can you keep track of it all? If not, have a look at the attached file which shows you which SAP Business ByDesign scenarios are available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Android, and iPad per release. There is also information on which work center must be assigned to get a certain scenario on device. Helpful?

SAP Business in Focus is a corporate performance app for your Apple® iPad® that displays and aggregates

the latest information from cloud applications across your company and beyond to provide you with the comprehensive view that you need to run your business.

It gives you the following key financial information and functions:

•Real time KPIs

•Live reports

•News from any number of external sources

•Instant collaboration with the Jam® social network

•A fast closing overview

•Functions that allow you to drill down, mark, annotate, and send

Interested? Check out the SAP Business in Focus documentation for more information, out soon!

Every day, more and more companies are migrating their business information systems to the cloud.  But until now, there has been no way to easily foster collaboration between the growing number of customers and potential customers alike.

Our 2012 Conference was such a success that we are excited to be hosting it again, October 21-23, 2013 in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Whether you are brand new to the ByDesign world, currently implementing, or a live customer, this conference will be an incredible to network with other SAP Business ByDesign users, as well as learn from SAP's top global ByDesign partner, Navigator and other top-tier SSPs on how to get more out of your SAP Business ByDesign system.

You'll also hear from superior ByDesign technology partners as well as Navigator's own development team on functional extensions now available that enable companies to get even more out of their SAP Business ByDesign system.  At the conference, you'll get an inside look into some of SAP's first ByDesign customers, and how they are leveraging ByDesign to foster incredible growth. 

Like what you hear?  Register before August 15th (8/15) to enjoy a $100 savings* with our Early Bird Rate of $295.  And, discounted hotel rates are only $109/night*, so don't delay and book your spot today! 

Register at the Following link.

http://sapinfo.nbs-us.com/sap-business-bydesign-users-conference

Every day, more and more companies are migrating their business information systems to the cloud.  But until now, there has been no way to easily foster collaboration between the growing number of customers and potential customers alike.

Our 2012 Conference was such a success that we are excited to be hosting it again, October 21-23, 2013 in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Whether you are brand new to the ByDesign world, currently implementing, or a live customer, this conference will be an incredible to network with other SAP Business ByDesign users, as well as learn from SAP'stop global ByDesign partner, Navigator and other top-tier SSPs on how to get more out of your SAP Business ByDesign system.

REGISTER NOW!!  SAVE $100

You'll also hear from superior ByDesign technology partners as well as Navigator's own development team on functional extensions now available that enable companies to get even more out of their SAP Business ByDesign system.  At the conference, you'll get an inside look into some of SAP's first ByDesign customers, and how they are leveraging ByDesign to foster incredible growth. 

Like what you hear?  Register before August 15th (8/15) to enjoy a $100 savings* with our Early Bird Rate of $295.  And, discounted hotel rates are only $109/night*, so don't delay and book your spot today!

SAP University Alliances is proud to announce that the SAP Business ByDesign Video Training is now available. It provides a broad understanding of SAP Business ByDesign and includes comprehensive demos of different areas of the solution.

The target group for this video training is business students as well as technical students and provides a broad understanding of SAP Business ByDesign.

It explains SAP’s motivation to be a cloud player and introduces cloud computing as well as illustrates the challenges of a cloud provider.

Additionally, it contains comprehensive demos of different areas of SAP Business ByDesign e.g. a complete end-to-end process and a demo about the SAP Solutions onDemand Studio [will be renamed to SAP Cloud Solutions Studio].

The SAP Business ByDesign Video Training is available for PC as well as iPad (2, 3, 4, and mini), iPhone (4, 4S, and 5), and iPod Touch (4G and 5G) and it is free of charge.

• For PC, please use the following link to download the video training:
  http://support2.galileo-press.de/SAP-Business-ByDesign/Video-Training.zip (2.2GB)
• For iPad, iPhone, or iPod, please use the following link to download the video training:

http://support2.galileo-press.de/SAP-Business-ByDesign/iPad-Videos.zip (2.2GB)

Regards

Kristof Schneider

Global Program Manager, SAP University Alliances

The Order-to-Cash (Project-Based Services)business scenario is used to manage the complete end-to-end process of selling project-based services to customers. This scenario integrates sales quotes and sales orders with project management allowing you to create customer invoices for time and expenses recorded against a customer project. Invoices can be created on a time and materials basis, a fixed-price basis, or a combination of both. After the customer invoice has been issued, customer payments can be monitored. This scenario also supports the analysis of project profitability based on project costs and revenues.

To explore this scenario further, have a look at http://bit.ly/1cjmL89.

To have a look at the other business scenarios that SAP Business ByDesign offers, check out the Comprehensive Visualization and Exploration of All Business Scenarios section on http://help.sap.com/byd-en

It is easy to submit your idea. Create an idea in SAP ideasByDesign that other customers/partners can vote on, or vote on an existing idea. Our product management takes these ideas into account when planning for future releases.

Have a look at the current ideas in Mobile Solutions.

The current Top 5 are:

1. Quotations in Active Sales for iPad

2. Business card scanner or handshake function in mobile apps

3. SAP Business ByDesign for Android tablets

4. An account summary in mobile apps

5. Catalog synchronization for Active Sales for iPad

It is easy to submit your idea. Create an idea in SAP ideasByDesign that other customers/partners can vote on, or vote on an existing idea. Our product management takes these ideas into account when planning for future releases.

Have a look at the current ideas in Mobile Solutions.

The current Top 5 are:

1. Quotations in Active Sales for iPad

2. Business card scanner or handshake function in mobile apps

3. SAP Business ByDesign for Android tablets

4. An account summary in mobile apps

5. Catalog synchronization for Active Sales for iPad

In this blog, we'd like to introduce you to one of things that is new or has been changed in the August 2013 version of SAP Business ByDesign.

Of course, you can find more information in the What's New in SAP Business ByDesign documentation, which is available online or as a pdf.

Today, we're going to talk about Intercompany Repair Process Automation.

You can now configure electronic data exchange between you and your supplier system by maintaining a Purchasing and Service Order Integration communication arrangement. This allows the automatic creation of service orders.

You can now add an additional spare or service to the already existing service that is maintained in the service order received electronically from your customer system. When you release the service confirmation for an electronically received service order, the system now triggers automatic creation of a goods and services acknowledgement in the customer system.

In this blog, we'd like to introduce you to some of the things that are new in the August 2013 version of SAP Business ByDesign.

Of course, you can find more information in the What's New in SAP Business ByDesign documentation, which is available online or as a pdf.

Are you familiar with the What's New video in SAP Business ByDesign? The topics that are highlighted in the What's New in SAP Business ByDesign August 2013 video will be blogged about here.

Here's what we've presented so far:

• Intercompany Repair Process Automation

We'll add more blogs about the topics as they arise. Stay tuned.

In an Intercompany Project scenario, if an employee belonging to the external company has to record time successfully, the following business documents should be created before the first time recording against the project.

1. Project should have the status ‘Released’.
2. Purchase Request should be created and the corresponding Purchase Order should be ordered.
3. Sales Order should be created and submitted. This document should be created automatically when the Purchase Order is ordered.
4. Intercompany Settlement Project should be created automatically and it should have the status ‘Released’.

If the above business documents are not present, then there will be error messages shown during time recording. The following UIs can be used to check the business documents.

1. Check whether the Purchase Request is Intercompany Relevant and note down the Purchase Order ID
   1. Project Management WoC
   2. Projects WoC View – All Projects
   3. Search for the Project and click on Edit – Products and Purchasing
   4. Click on the Purchase Requests Tab
   5. Select the Purchase Request and in the detail section, check that the Intercompany-Relevant flag is set to True. The flag can be seen in the Basic Data tab of the Details section.
   6. In the Details section, navigate to the Document Flow tab. Note down the Purchase Order ID.
2. Check the Sales Order ID.
   1. Purchase Requests and Orders WoC
   2. Purchase Orders WoC View - All Purchase Orders
   3. Search for Purchase Order (Purchase Order ID) and click on Edit
   4. Navigate to the Document Flow view and note down the Sales Order ID.
   5. If the Sales Order ID is not shown, check whether the Purchase Order is ordered. If not, Order the Purchase Order and then the Sales Order ID should be available.
3. Check the Intercompany Settlement Project.
   1. Sales Orders WoC
   2. Sales Order WoC View - All Orders
   3. Search for Sales Order (Sales Order ID) and click on Edit. Click on View All
   4. Navigate to the Document Flow view and check that the Project ID is present.
   5. If the Project ID is not shown, check whether the Sales Order is submitted. If not, Submit the Sales Order and then the Project ID should be available.