Five ways MSMEs can transform sales and marketing with SAP Business One

Like most businesses, MSMEs today operate in a dynamic, volatile and hypercompetitive market. And for businesses with a small base, the slightest change in external factors can have a disproportionate impact. So, while digitalisation and technology have a major role to play in helping them tap opportunities, particularly in times like these, it has to be done to address specific business challenges.

That is what SAP Business One does. As a comprehensive and customisable solution that connects various business functions, it provides a singular view and enables various functionalities specifically designed for small and medium scale businesses. To understand it better, let’s look at some of the critical sales and marketing challenges that SAP Business One helps address.

Balancing the backend of sales, inventory and production

While the sales and marketing functions are placed front and centre of a business, the overall success depends on many other functions coming together. It becomes particularly challenging in uncertain times when demand can vary month-on-month and the supply of inputs and raw materials.

SAP Business One helps consolidate and connect various functions that allow better visibility, analysis and ability to forecast. From a sales perspective, understanding the seasonality and monthly trends in orders can help better plan material and inventory to avoid a pile-up and wastage in the case of perishable goods. It also allows businesses to derive optimum returns on marketing spends.

Empowering the sales and marketing function while scaling-up

Different businesses grow differently at various stages of their journey. It can range from increasing the consumer base to expanding the product line or spreading to other markets. While the challenges vary, what doesn’t is the need to decentralise decision-making and to empower the sales and marketing function while scaling up.

SAP Business One helps businesses track and manage sales funnels efficiently and throughout the customer purchase journey. Depending on the scale and nature of operations, it can be used for various functions – from mapping contacts for populating the top of the sales funnel to automating and analysing marketing campaigns.

Customer acquisition and retention is becoming harder

In a hypercompetitive world like today’s, consumers are spoilt for choice. While more so in the B2C segment with the advent of e-commerce powered platforms, the competition is equally stiff in the B2B segment. This fundamental shift has made customer acquisition and retention that much harder.

SAP Business One enables organisations to harness customer data to deliver personalised offerings and a superior post-purchase experience. So, for a fledgling D2C enterprise that depends on periodic renewals or repurchases from its consumers, automating the processes to nudge customers and to offer customised offers can improve customer engagement and chances of a repeat purchase.

Unstructured reporting leaves data underleveraged

For small enterprises, data collection is often basic at the start of their journey due to an unstructured approach and the lack of access to a user-friendly tool to use it. This leaves precious data unused or underleveraged – data, that can be used to track patterns, which proprietors can use to make better-informed decisions.

SAP Business One offers comprehensive analytical capabilities and an integrated reporting and dashboard interface. Businesses can set benchmarks across key parameters, and when used in conjunction with intuitive tools and interactive analysis, it can be used to derive actionable insights from data. More importantly, access to information can be managed effectively and securely to avoid misuse of data.

Managing a remote and distributed sales and marketing team

Given the changes due to the pandemic, a hybrid of an onsite and offsite style of working is here to stay, wherein managing a distributed sales and marketing function can be particularly challenging. One way to overcome this is by empowering team members with the right tools and enabling access to data that helps them think independently and work smartly.

SAP Business One offers a seamless virtual platform that provides a comprehensive and single view as well as access to information to whoever needs it and wherever they need it. For example, for the marketing function of a multi-city retail operation, access to and analysis of real-time shop floor data can facilitate a two-way engagement between core teams and shop managers to gather and share insights that help improve operational efficiencies like merchandising and customer engagement.

SAP Business One has been designed to partner with businesses through their growth journey, even through times like now. Three features make it well suited for MSMEs:

• Flexible: A modular design allows you to pick and choose add-ons; the ability to tailor it for your unique requirements at a given time lends it a lot of flexibility
• Omnipresent: Access information and functionalities wherever you and your associates need it – cloud, on-premise, and mobile
• Affordable: Structured and designed to lower the total cost of ownership while offering a single, comprehensive and scalable solution

The value that SAP Business One brings goes beyond the technology, features and benefits it offers. In addition to the functional and operational capabilities for the sales and marketing function, SAP Business One helps medium and small businesses be more responsive and agile, which is the key to surviving today and thriving tomorrow. Enabling businesses with greater capabilities, Yotta helps them with end-to-end SAP deployments in a highly scalable, reliable and cost-efficient way – from SAP advisory/consulting to implementation, SAP infrastructure, SAP migration to SAP management and support. This is supported by Yotta’s industry-renowned Tier IV infrastructure core and SAP-certified solutions expertise.