SAP Business One Second Opinion or Fixing Complex Customization

In ideal scenario you are choosing Small Business ERP where modifications are not required and every required process could be implemented in settings.  But perfect fit is something difficult to expect as each small business has its own secrets and unique procedures.  Reasonable programming might be recommended and at this point we expect that you are reading this paper due to the fact that your original reseller screwed up customization project.  Let’s move on and review the way to recovery:

1. Consulting firm specialization.  Let’s think about the business of local accounting application reseller.  These people have to do heavy sales job by calling prospect and making tons of executive presentations.  These activities could be later justified by earning software licenses margin when they do initial sales.  And when project is performed firm has to have the most suitable consulting headcount to do the job.  Regular or better say generic ERP implementation requires one or two so-called functional consultant and optionally local firm could afford one technical consultant who is helping with installation, simple custom reporting and initial data conversion.  If your project requires custom programming then who will be assigned to do the job?  That’s right – technical consultant who has to do all kinds of technical work.  It is probably difficult to expect that the guy is equally experienced in such dedication demanding work as SAP B1 SDK coding

2. Technical Consulting Organization with Business One SDK Software Development Factory.  There are consulting organizations that do not pursue initial software sales and do not have strong telemarketing department.  Instead they are focusing on the secondary consulting market taking over custom integration, programming and reports design projects.  As the poll of customization projects is smaller comparing to initial implementations it is difficult to expect technical consulting organization to be located in your area.  These firms have to appeal to nationwide Corporate ERP customization market and even go internationally

3. What to do if my custom integration project failed?  Good idea is not to blame your original VAR as confrontation is not productive and suggest them to bring in technical consulting firm with strong records in SB1 programming.  Also if you feel that your basic implementation works OK and there is no need in local consultant visits onsite you may change your VAR to concentrate on customization project.  Nationwide technical firm typically works via web sessions and phone conferences with the option to make reasonably short visit onsite to shake hands and review your servers and personal computers park.  If you are in unique industry niche there might be a good idea to discuss with their consultants if they are familiar with the niche and if they are ready to design the specifications

4. Tools and Integration Technologies.  Native tools are Data Transfer Workbench (in challenging integrations it is deploying ODBC connections) and SAP BO Software Development Kit with DI.  The idea to write SQL Stored procedures to do direct data feed into company database is not really good as Business One has three tiers architecture.  SQL insert will trigger Watch Dog service to report to SAP direct SQL database access with records modification.  And secondly you may compromise data integrity.  In addition to SDK and DTW there are various integration products available through ISV channel

5. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representatives pick up the phone in Naperville, IL and St. Joseph, MI call center).  help@efaru.com.  In Chicago metropolitan area our customers are located in Naperville, Chicago, Aurora, Romeoville, Plainfield, Wheaton, Joliet, Downers Grove, Lisle and other local cities and villages.  We have head office in Atlanta, GA and international office in Sao Paulo Brazil