Let’s dive into BPA platform.
Food and beverage, manufacturing and wholesale distribution are often costly and time-sensitive industries which are reliant on effective supply chains and efficient warehouse management. Any hold up with order processing and fulfilment, purchase order approvals or payment processing, can have a significant knock-on effect for the entire running of the business.
Technology solutions that can streamline operations and make warehousing and stock management easier to oversee are therefore becoming extremely important; especially in this digital age.
Although SAP Business One is a proficient system for managing a company’s finances, customers and suppliers, many companies use additional applications or systems (warehouse management systems, eCommerce, EDI platforms etc.) to perform a specific task or manage a particular aspect of the business.
In order for companies to be efficient, these systems need to be integrated to allow the sharing of data between them, so that each part of the food and beverage, manufacturing or wholesale process can run as smoothly as possible. Technology solutions, such as BPA Platform, can improve the way that data is presented by automating numerous business processes and administration tasks, enhancing communication between departments, suppliers and customers.
Bridging the gap between SAP Business One and disparate applications makes sure that each application contains the most up-to-date information and that the organisation has full visibility into real-time data. This allows employees and management to make critical business decisions, helping to increase performance, improve efficiencies and drive revenue growth.
Integrating SAP Business One with the warehouse
Integrating SAP Business One with warehouse management systems and then automating business processes, is one area that manufacturers and distributors can benefit from. A dedicated solution can automatically transfer a wide range of data into a warehouse management system (WMS) from SAP Business One, including product, customer and supplier data, along with purchase orders, sales orders, sales returns and stock changes.
This enables the WMS to recognise products when they are scanned, understand what goods are being received, manage sales orders, enable goods to be picked and dispatched, as well as update stock levels and new stock that has been added.
Data also needs to be transferred the other way, making sure that SAP Business One is up to date, and that is has a record of purchase order receipts, sales order dispatches, sales order returns, stock additions and write offs. Once orders are shipped, job completion notifications can be imported from the warehouse management system to SAP Business One.
Automating sales orders and payments
Many companies can simply suffer from an increase in the volume of sales and daily orders, with the large amount of manual administration required to process orders becoming prohibitive and time-consuming. Automating this process can alleviate the problem.
BPA Platform can be used to integrate a wide range of third-party systems with SAP Business One, ranging from web shops and eCommerce platforms (Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce) to online payment systems (GoCardless, PayPal, Stripe, Worldpay). It can then easily automate the transfer of data held within these systems to SAP Business One, thus saving employee time, eliminating data errors, providing real-time information and improving the entire sales process.
For larger companies using an EDI Package, BPA Platform can integrate it with SAP Business One and then automate the transfer of orders. This can include placing some basic rules validation for orders received from customers, such as price checking, and ensuring that each order has a unique purchase order number.
Sales orders can then be imported from external sources into SAP Business One and order confirmations exported from SAP Business One to the EDI package. Furthermore, resulting invoices can be synchronised between systems to eradicate unnecessary data entry. For customers with complex requirements, it is also possible to generate documents, such as recurring sales orders.
Fulfilment and courier integration
BPA Platform has also been used to great effect at the despatch end of the order process, by integrating SAP Business One with the systems and web services of courier organisations. Automating this process means that delivery details no longer have to be manually entered. The delivery labels can be automatically generated and printed after the ‘pick and pack’ process is complete. This can eliminate data errors and result in significant time savings.
Using BPA Platform for integration and automation
Codeless Platforms’ BPA Platform , which is SAP-certified for SAP HANA, SQL and SAP Cloud, provides organisations using SAP Business One and other solutions with an affordable data integration platform to connect systems, departments and people.
The dedicated SAP Business One Connector enables organisations to integrate SAP Business One with practically any on-premises or cloud-based application at a fraction of the cost of bespoke development. More importantly, its drag and drop integration tools ensure that you can rapidly automate business processes to reduce operational costs and improve company performance.
Combined with Signum’s knowledge and experience in implementing BPA Platform to suit your exact requirements, your next SAP Business One integration and business process automation projects couldn’t be simpler.
If you wish to discuss the benefits of SAP Business One and the BPA platform in more detail, call one of our industry experts on 01244 676 900 or alternatively, complete the form here to arrange a personalised demonstration.