SAP, a Major market shareholder in the ERP software industry with its best-in-class ERP solutions, also has a wide range of product Portfolio with a large number of acquired and in-house products.

 

Offerings for Small, Mid and Large-sized industries:b

 

SAP offers two mid-market solutions, SAP Business ByDesign (ByD) and SAP Business One (B1). Even though SAP differentiated these two solutions as B1 for Small and Mid-sized Enterprises (SME) and ByD for Large and Mid-cap Enterprises (LME), there is still a chaos among LME sector in choosing the best fit solution for their organization.

 

This article will help the Mid-Market Companies determine the right SAP solution based on their business requirements, resources and budget.

 

Overview of ByD and B1:

 

SAP developed an in-house ERP called SAP Business ByDesign in the year 2009, especially for SMEs. It is offered as a SaaS product, hosted and maintained by SAP itself. ByD is often referred to as a “Suite in a Box” because it is a wholesome complete ERP solution where all the modules are seamlessly integrated.

 

On the other hand, B1 is an acquired product of SAP and was branded as SAP’s product in the year 2002. It is an on-premise solution, but in some cases, the data is hosted in a public/private cloud. Hence, it is not a SaaS product. B1 has a single core to which the necessary modules need to be added and integrated.

 

To determine the best solution for your needs, I’ve listed down the key differentiators.

 

Users:

 

Although there is no upper limit for the number of users in both the solution, the sweet spot for ByD system is 5 to 500 users.

 

And, the sweet spot for B1 is between 5 to 50 users.

 

Updates:

 

SAP regularly updates ByD on a quarterly basis making sure the system is keeping up with the ever growing technologies.

 

In B1 there are no updates once the solution is implemented. It incurs additional cost if the system needs to be updated.

 

Security:

 

ByD is hosted in SAP’s highly secured Data Center. SAP has three such data centers with state-of-the-art security measures inclusive of AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and bulletproofing.

 

Whereas B1 is hosted on the Partner/Customer’s data center which means it might be vulnerable to attacks. Not as secure and safe as SAP’s data centers.

 

Scalability:

 

ByD is dynamic and it can be configured at any time in order to suit the Customer’s changing business processes.

 

B1 is static and it is difficult to modify an implemented project.

 

Multi-Company Implementation:

 

ByD is capable of maintaining organizational structure, running subsidiaries and overseas branches with a single system. And, Entity specific chart of accounts is possible.

 

The multi-company is not a standard in B1, it is add-on based. Entity-specific data or entity-specific chart of accounts is not possible.

 

Cost Involved:

 

ByD: Implementation cost, Annual Subscription cost, Partner’s Support (Optional).

 

B1: Implementation cost, License Cost, AMC (Product), Hardware, Security and Maintenance (Datacenter), Power and Space(infrastructure), IT Personnel.

 

Henceforth, on considering the above-mentioned criteria’s, my personal opinion is that SAP Business ByDesign is more futuristic and cost effective compared with SAP Business ONE.

 

If you are a Mid-Sized firm looking for an ERP there are few options which can be considered better than SAP Business ByDesign in the market. But if you are still not sure you can try the application free for 14 days by registering for a Free trial or if you would like to know more about SAP ByD please drop us a message here.