Executive Summary
- This is the Brightwork Research & Analysis software rating series.
- We rate both the software and estimate the risk of implementing each application.
MUFI Rating & Risk for SAP BusinessOne
MUFI: Maintainability, Usability, Functionality, Implement ability
Vendor: SAP (Select For Vendor Profile)
Introduction
SAP Business One is SAP’s midmarket solution. The application has over 30,000 customers. In March 2002, SAP purchased TopManage Financial Systems, an Israeli developer of business applications, and branded their system as SAP Business One. Therefore SAP Business One was not actually developed by SAP and has no connection to SAP ERP ECC, although SAP often attempts to obscure this point when they pitch SAP ECC along with SAP Business One as part of a two-tiered ERP strategy. SAP Business One uses a completely different infrastructure and has a different heritage.
SAP Business One has a clean interface, and unlike SAP ERP is very easy to navigate. While it has clearly been given the SAP blue-grey and royal blue color scheme, it feels much more nimble and usable.
SAP Business One can perform transactions like inventory transfer much more easily than in SAP ERP. Notice the navigation pane to the left is extremely easy to follow and to find what one is looking for.
When doing things like requesting reports, SAP Business One does a nice job of placing many options in a small space.
SAP Business One places inventory data, purchasing data and planning data all right with the item master data. This is an important feature of enterprise software, which is the ability to view related data on one screen. SAP Business One excels this, and it is a consistent feature of the user interface.
SAP Business One does not have a great deal of planning functionality, but what it does have is easy to find and easy to initiate. However, it’s very difficult for us to recommend using the planning functionality of any ERP system. The company simply loses too much in term of the quality of the planning output. While buyers will often propose that they are running an efficient business by relying upon ERP, we have yet to see any company using an ERP system solely to plan at an efficient level.
Overall, SAP Business One is the best product in SAP’s stable of products – something that would probably surprise a lot of people. It is also one of the few SAP products that are available at an appealing price.
MUFI Scores
All scores out of a possible 10.
MUFI Scores
- Ma. = Maintainability
- Us. = Usability
- Fu. = Functionality
- Im. = Implementability
| App | Ma. | Us. | Ft. | Im. | Cat. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average Score for Big ERP | 5.1 | 4.8 | 5.2 | 5.4 | Big ERP |
| Average Score for CRM | 6.2 | 6.2 | 5.1 | 5.9 | CRM |
| Average Score for Small and Medium ERP | 8.3 | 8 | 6.7 | 8.5 | Small and Medium ERP |
| Average Score for Finance | 8.8 | 8.8 | 8 | 8.8 | Finance |
| Average Score for Demand Planning | 7.6 | 7.2 | 7 | 7.1 | Demand Planning |
| Average Score for Supply Planning | 6.7 | 6.9 | 7 | 6.8 | Supply Planning |
| Average Score for Production Planning | 6.8 | 6.9 | 7 | 6.9 | Production Planning |
| Average Score for BI Heavy | 5.5 | 5.3 | 6.9 | 5.3 | BI Heavy |
| Average Score for PLM | 7 | 7.2 | 6.8 | 7.3 | PLM |
| Average Score for BI Light | 7.7 | 8.7 | 9 | 8.3 | BI Light |
| Arena Solutions Arena PLM | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | PLM |
| AspenTech AspenOne | 4 | 8 | 10 | 7 | Production Planning |
| Birst | 8 | 8.5 | 10 | 8 | BI Light |
| ERPNext | 10 | 10 | 7.5 | 10 | Small and Medium ERP |
| Delfoi Planner | 8 | 6 | 6.5 | 7 | Production Planning |
| Demand Works Smoothie SP | 9 | 10 | 7 | 10 | Supply Planning |
| Hamilton Grant RM | 10 | 9 | 8.5 | 9 | PLM |
| IBM Cognos | 2.7 | 3 | 1.5 | 3 | BI Heavy |
| Infor Epiphany | 7 | 8 | 6 | 5 | CRM |
| Infor Lawson | 8 | 7 | 6 | 7 | Big ERP |
| Intuit QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions | 9 | 9 | 5 | 9 | Finance |
| JDA DM | 9 | 7.5 | 8 | 8 | Demand Planning |
| Microsoft Dynamics CRM | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | CRM |
| NetSuite CRM | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | CRM |
| Netsuite OneWorld | 7 | 7 | 8 | 8 | Big ERP |
| OpenERP | 7 | 8 | 8.5 | 8 | 7 |
| Oracle BI | 4 | 4 | 3 | 6 | BI Heavy |
| Oracle CRM On Demand | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | CRM |
| Oracle Demantra | 5 | 3 | 3.5 | 4.5 | Demand Planning |
| Oracle JD Edwards World | 4 | 1 | 3 | 6 | Big ERP |
| Oracle RightNow | 6 | 7 | 4 | 5 | CRM |
| PlanetTogether Galaxy APS | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | Production Planning |
| Preactor | 8 | 7 | 3 | 7 | Production Planning |
| QlikTech QlikView | 9 | 9 | 10 | 9 | BI Light |
| Rootstock | 9 | 8 | 9 | 9 | Small and Medium ERP |
| Sage X3 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | Big ERP |
| Salesforce Enterprise | 8 | 8.5 | 9 | 7.5 | CRM |
| SAP APO DP | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 | Demand Planning |
| SAP APO PP/DS | 2 | 2 | 4 | 3 | Production Planning |
| SAP APO SNP | 3 | 4 | 8 | 4 | Supply Planning |
| SAP BI/BW | 1.5 | 2 | 4 | 2 | BI Heavy |
| SAP Business Objects | 3 | 2.5 | 7 | 3 | BI Heavy |
| SAP CRM | 4 | 3 | 6 | 4 | CRM |
| SAP ECC | 3 | 3 | 6.5 | 3 | Big ERP |
| SAP PLM | 1 | 2.5 | 2 | 3 | PLM |
| SAP SmartOps | 4 | 4 | 7 | 5.5 | Supply Planning |
| SAS BI | 6.5 | 7 | 9 | 6 | BI Heavy |
| SAS Demand Driven Forecasting | 7 | 8 | 9 | 7 | Demand Planning |
| Tableau (BI) | 9 | 10 | 10 | 10 | BI Light |
| Tableau (Forecasting) | 10 | 8 | 5 | 9 | Demand Planning |
| Teradata | 8 | 6.3 | 9.7 | 6 | BI Heavy |
| ToolsGroup SO99 (Forecasting) | 7 | 8 | 9 | 7 | Demand Planning |
| ToolsGroup SO99 (Supply) | 5 | 6 | 10 | 7 | Supply Planning |
Vendor and Application Risk
SAP Business One is a relatively straightforward application to implement, which assumes a higher risk as SAP owns it.
Likelihood of Implementation Success
This accounts for both the application and vendor-specific risk. In our formula, the total implementation risk is application + vendor + buyer risk. The buyer specific risk could increase or decrease this overall likelihood and adjust the values that you see below.
Likelihood of Application Implementation Success and Failure
Search for the application in this table using the search bar in the upper right of the table.
| Application | Prob of Implementation Success | Prob of Implementation Failure |
|---|---|---|
| Actuate | 0.77 | 0.23 |
| SAP Smartops | 0.39 | 0.61 |
| NetSuite CRM | 0.46 | 0.54 |
| Sugar CRM | 0.62 | 0.48 |
| Base CRM | 0.91 | 0.09 |
| SAP CRM | 0.35 | 0.65 |
| Salesforce Enterprise | 0.72 | 0.28 |
| QlikTech QlikView | 0.82 | 0.18 |
| Tableau (BI) | 0.98 | 0.02 |
| SAP Crystal Reports | 0.46 | 0.54 |
| Brist | 0.83 | 0.17 |
| MicroStrategy | 0.7 | 0.3 |
| SAS BI | 0.76 | 0.24 |
| Oracle BI | 0.35 | 0.65 |
| IBM Cognos | 0.23 | 0.77 |
| Infor Epiphany | 0.58 | 0.42 |
| Microsoft Dynamics CRM | 0.26 | 0.74 |
| Oracle RightNow CRM | 0.41 | 0.59 |
| Oracle CRM On Demand | 0.36 | 0.64 |
| Teradata | 0.76 | 0.24 |
| SAP Business Objects | 0.32 | 0.68 |
| SAP BI/BW | 0.25 | 0.75 |
| SAP PLM | 0.29 | 0.71 |
| Hamilton Grant RM | 0.89 | 0.11 |
| Arena Solutions | 0.96 | 0.04 |
| Delfoi Planner | 0.7 | 0.3 |
| Preactor | 0.64 | 0.36 |
| PlanetTogether Galaxy APS | 0.96 | 0.04 |
| AspenTech AspenOne | 0.55 | 0.45 |
| SAP APO PP/DS | 0.27 | 0.73 |
| Demand Works Smoothie SP | 0.93 | 0.07 |
| ToolsGroup SO99 (Supply) | 0.82 | 0.18 |
| Demand Works Smoothie | 0.96 | 0.04 |
| Tableau (Forecasting) | 0.9 | 0.1 |
| SAS Demand Driven Forecasting | 0.82 | 0.18 |
| ToolsGroup SO99 (Forecasting) | 0.86 | 0.14 |
| JDA DM | 0.57 | 0.43 |
| Oracle Demantra | 0.33 | 0.67 |
| SAP APO DP | 0.28 | 0.72 |
| FinancialForce | 0.92 | 0.08 |
| Intacct | 0.98 | 0.02 |
| Intuit QB Enterprise | 0.8 | 0.2 |
| ERPNext | 0.9 | 0.1 |
| OpenERP | 0.78 | 0.22 |
| Rootstock | 0.91 | 0.09 |
| ProcessPro | 0.93 | 0.07 |
| Microsoft Dynamics AX | 0.4 | 0.6 |
| SAP Business One | 0.49 | 0.51 |
| Sage X3 | 0.62 | 0.38 |
| Infor Lawson | 0.58 | 0.42 |
| Epicor ERP | 0.4 | 0.6 |
| Oracle JD Edwards World | 0.31 | 0.69 |
| Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne | 0.36 | 0.64 |
| SAP ERP ECC/R/3 | 0.32 | 0.68 |
| NetSuite OneWorld | 0.65 | 0.35 |
Risk Definition
See this link for more on our categorizations of risk. We also offer a Buyer Specific Risk Estimation as a service for those that want a comprehensive analysis.
Risk Management Approach
There are no special activities required for managing the risk of an SAP Business One implementation.
Finished With Your Analysis?
To go back to the Software Selection Package page for the Small and Medium ERP software category. Or go to this link to see other analytical products for SAP Business One.