SAP Distribution Blog

The spread of the novel corona virus has changed life throughout the world.While public interactions have been mostly shut down, digital interactions are becoming a bigger part of our personal and work life.

Prime Meats is a family-owned meat packaging and distribution company managing a product line with varying units of measurement, and freshness deadlines. Prime Meats enlisted I-Business Network to deploy SAP Business One and leverage insights to help them deliver on their promises.

The key to profitability in distribution is being able to fill orders your customer needs while minimizing your stock on-hand.  Quite often we see most of the focus placed on the sales side trying to generate orders to match what is in stock.  Too much stock, run a promotion, offer a discount, or bundle. 

SAP Business One version 10.0 is the newest and best version ever of the business platform for your distribution business.  Currently available in limited release, version 10 includes new features, functionality and platform improvements including enhancements to project management for installation businesses, more flexibility in advanced unit of measure and much more!

Shelter in place orders have been in place for weeks and negatively impacting buinsess. 

E-commerce is not new, and most distributors have some form of online presence.  Emerging evidence points to a significant shift, as customers scale back their shopping in stores and instead go online. In China, online shopping has increased 15 to 20 percentage points, and e-commerce in Italy has increased 81 percent compared with the last week of February.  US consumers have largely followed the same pattern.

The impact of COVID-19 on the domestic, regional and your local economy are still not clear, but we do know that e-commerce is one of the beneficiaries of a shift in purchasing behavior caused by sheltering in place.   Our customers have reported everything from complete shutdown when a warehouse person tested positive, to shift working to keep up with demand and social spacing.  We have also heard numerous reports of major customers shutting down and smaller e-commerce vendors increasing order size.

Will all this result in a new normal?  A better question may be can you afford not to react?  The statistics quoted above and other pertinent information can be found in a McKinsey Digital white paper provided for us through SAP.  'Building an e-commerce business: Lessons on moving fast' is a great source of common sense and insight from a 1000 brick and mortar European retail chain that was able to react quickly. 

Coverings 2020, originally scheduled for April 20-23 in New Orleans, was cancelled due to the Corona-virus pandemic.  The decision to cancel Coverings 2020 "is a preemptive effort to minimize exposure to the COVID-19 virus and is in recognition of, and in full adherence to, federal, state and local requirements that are evolving due to these circumstances" according to their press release.

Business One is extremely flexible in setting up your posting periods.   The following tips and tricks are key to meeting the requirements for posting within Business One while meeting your company's fiscal requirements.  You can have 1 posting period per year, 12 monthly periods, 52 weekly periods, etc.  Some companies use a 4-4-5 week posting date series for their "Monthly" buckets.

Business One version 10 is the latest major release from SAP for its small to mid market product and the bedrock of SAPDistribution.com.  SAP continues to deliver on its vision of the Intelligent Enterprise through a strategy centered around: