On Tuesday 10th July, around 25 of our clients joined us for our SAP Business One User Event 2018, held at Cheltenham Racecourse in Gloucestershire.
Balloon One’s MD, Craig Powell, opened the event, briefing delegates on the latest news and developments within the company. In the year since the previous SAP Business One user event, Balloon has increased its revenue by 16% and worked with 10 new customers. The company has also developed an international presence, with partnerships with: a Highjump partner in Toronto, Canada; a project manager in Melbourne, Australia; and a five-strong support team in New Delhi, India.
Development Road Map and Digitalisation
Then Frederic Bada, Senior Solution Expert & Channel Enablement for SAP Business One, took everyone through the roadmap for SAP Business One. He briefed us on the product’s upcoming functional features, and revealed the development plan that runs right up to version 11 in 2023.
As with the SAP Innovation Summit in Barcelona earlier this year, digitalisation was a key topic. And the opportunities available to businesses through innovative new technologies were explored, opportunities such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and the internet of things (IoT).
GDPR Compliance and CRM in SAP Business One
Paul Woods, Senior SAP Consultant at Balloon One, ran through tangible examples that can help businesses remain GDPR compliant using SAP Business One. For example, using authorisations, personal data management and personal data reports. Paul also gave an insight into future developments that will enhance GDPR compliance even further. These features – to be added in SAP Business One 9.3 PL04 – include a personal data setup area, access logs and a personal data management wizard.
His next presentation showcased the elements of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in SAP Business One, including an overview of the functionality and proposed frameworks for success.
Boyum Update
Boyum’s dashboard tool is widely adopted among SAP Business One users. For this presentation, Paul ran through the newest updates to the Boyum product, including:
- Universal functions: User Defined Table (UDT) Handler, a tool for simplifying the manipulation process of UDTs.
- Master Data Management: management of static data in batch.
Customer Case Study – Classic Fine Foods
Nicolas Normand, Operations Director of Classic Fine Foods UK, showed us how the company had been using SAP Business One.
Operating in more than 10 countries, the company is a distributor of fine foods. It has been using SAP Business One since 2005, and over time has added the inventory planning tool, Valogix, and the warehouse management system, HighJump.
Nicolas explained how the business and data challenges had been met, and also reflected on the lessons that had been learned. Last year Classic Fine Foods appointed Balloon as its global partner as it continues its drive to adopt various supply chain solutions globally across the business.
Valogix V8
Systems Advisor, Ed Napier-Fenning, gave a presentation on the planning tool, Valogix. It is a comprehensive system for stock forecasting, inventory optimisation and stock replenishment.
Valogix has been an SAP solution partner since 2004 and has customers in 46 countries worldwide.
Warehouse operations have to balance a number of things. On the one hand they want to decrease stock costs, shipments and lost sales. But on the other, they want to hold a more competitive price position, improve first-time order fulfilment, and boost response rates. Valogix assists distribution companies with these inventory management challenges. It can take account of fluctuations in sales, long supplier lead times, warehousing operations where stock is both held and used in multiple locations, and situations where the information is there but it is difficult to access.
Ed showed how Valogix eliminates:
- Complicated forecasting scenarios carried out with complex spreadsheets
- Intensive manual processes for replenishment
- Optimisation difficulties, including a lack of time, information or capability to optimise
- Poor availability, leading to happier customers
- Excess stock holding, leading to a happier accountant; and
- Expensive out of stock situations
The SAP Business One User Event 2018 was both inspiring and informative for us. And the feedback we received is that this was also the case for those delegates that joined us. We hope to see you next year for more of the same!