SAP and ERP for small business guide

As your company grows, you may be wondering how to expand your systems and organize business data. You'll likely need a more sophisticated system to handle all of your business needs -- from the back end to the front end. ERP systems offer that sophistication and can help advance

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and improve your business processes as your business continues to expand.

This SearchSAP.com guide gathers content from our site, our sister TechTarget sites, and across the Web to make the SMB decision-making process as painless as possible. We'll provide current news and analysis of the midmarket, then provide an overview of mature ERP choices. These resources will explain how and why ERP systems can benefit your business and will help you decide which system is right for you.

Drop me an e-mail to let me know what other learning guides you'd like to see on SearchSAP.com.
The SearchSAP.com Editorial Team.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
   SMBs: A current analysis
   Choosing your ERP path
   SAP for SMBs
   Linux for SMBs
   Oracle for SMBs
  SQL for SMBs
   More Learning Guides

  SMBs: A current analysis Return to Table of Contents

AMR Research: "[We] surveyed more than 500 IT professionals to identify Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application adoption, usage, satisfaction, challenges, and future plans. Small and Midsize Businesses (SMBs) -- companies with fewer than 2,500 employees -- are turning to ERP vendors for products and services to help them achieve productivity gains and grow their bottom line."

-- AMR (SMB Managing)

  Choosing your ERP path Return to Table of Contents

  SAP for SMBs Return to Table of Contents

General SAP information

SAP is the fourth-biggest software company in the world employing about 30,000 people in more than 50 countries. According to SAP's website as of August 2005, they have 96,400 installations, 1,500 partners, 25 industry-specific business solutions and 28,200 customers in 120 countries. Traditionally, SAP has catered to the big enterprises of the world. Fortune 500 companies need a lot of horsepower to keep business data flowing smoothly across multiple countries, and SAP soon became the gold standard. Today, SAP is reaching downstream to SMBs, primarily through two products: BusinessOne and All-in-One.
Read more on SAP (SearchSAP.com powered by WhatIs.com)

Case studies

SAP All-in-One

SAP Business One

NextiraOne Federal: "SAP Business One allows us to lower our cost of operation. We are very cost-conscious, very competitive, and … lowering our operating cost provides us with a competitive advantage."

-- Duane Taylor, CFO, NextiraOne Federal (High Tech)

  Linux for SMBs Return to Table of Contents

Linux (often pronounced LIH-nuhks with a short "i") is a Unix-like operating system that was designed to provide personal computer users a free or very low-cost operating system comparable to traditional and usually more expensive Unix systems. Linux has a reputation as a very efficient and fast-performing system. Linux is a remarkably complete operating system, including a graphical user interface, an X Window System, TCP/IP, the Emacs editor, and other components usually found in a comprehensive Unix system. Unlike Windows and other proprietary systems, Linux is publicly open and extendible by contributors. The system is sometimes suggested as a possible publicly-developed alternative to the desktop predominance of Microsoft Windows. Although Linux is popular among users already familiar with Unix, it remains far behind Windows in numbers of users.
Read more on Linux (SearchEnterpriseLinux.com powered by WhatIs.com)

  Oracle for SMBs Return to Table of Contents

Oracle (in ancient Greece, someone in touch with the deities; from Latin, oraculum or divine announcement) says it is the world's leading supplier of software for information management but it is best known for its sophisticated relational database products (notably Oracle9i), which are used in Fortune 1000 corporations and by many of the largest Web sites. Oracle's relational database was the world's first to support the Structured Query Language (SQL), now an industry standard. Oracle targets high-end workstations and minicomputers as the server platforms on which to run its database systems. Based in Redwood Shores, California, it has more than 43,000 employees worldwide and does business in over 150 countries.
Read more on Oracle (SearchOracle.com powered by WhatIs.com)

  SQL Server for SMBs Return to Table of Contents

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system produced by Microsoft. It supports a superset of Structured Query Language SQL, the most common database language. MS SQL Server uses a variant of SQL called T-SQL, or Transact-SQL, a superset of SQL-92 (the ISO standard for SQL, certified in 1992). MS SQL Server also supports Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). It is commonly used by businesses for small to medium sized databases, and in the past five years large enterprise databases, and competes with other relational database products for this market segment.
Read more on SQL Server 2000 (Wikipedia)

  More Learning Guides Return to Table of Contents

This was first published in September 2005

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