SAP To Bring Business One To U.S., Will Sell Via Channel

Business One, which will compete directly against offerings from Best Software and Microsoft, has been available in Europe for the past year, but a U.S. version of the offering is scheduled to begin pilot-testing in the next few weeks, said Gary Fromer, SAP's vice president of small/midsize business and hosting.

Unlike SAP's R/3 offering for the enterprise, Business One will not be sold directly by SAP and will only be sold through its own separate set of channel partners, Fromer said. "None of our current partners are really viable resellers for Business One," he added.

The company plans to target 25 major cities by the end of the year through a limited set of partners that have expertise in business processes.

"Having 10,000 partners is a big mistake. We're taking this city by city, and we want our partners to be located within a 60-mile radius of the customer," Fromer said.

Business One, which is based on code SAP gained through its 2001 acquisition of Israel-based Top Manage, is designed to be implemented in less than a week and includes modules for contact management, pipeline management, order management, general ledger, logistics and distribution, Fromer said.

SAP has more than 100 employees dedicated to Business One worldwide, he said. In addition to offering Business One as a stand-alone solution, the sales force will also position it as complementary to R/3 for smaller companies that have relationships with larger companies running R/3.

"I think we're years ahead in terms of enabling an ecosystem that actually works using Business One and R/3," Fromer said.

The Business One suite comes after the software maker in January realigned its U.S. sales force to a geographic focus from a vertical focus. As part of that sales reorganization, the company cut 132 positions, 44 of which were in the field-sales organization, a spokesman said.

SAP said the sales reorganization and layoffs will not affect the company's midmarket push or its efforts to team up with solution providers.

The company also is hiring to fill 44 different positions, so the net loss is only 88 employees, the spokesman said. The move back to a geographic focus is aimed at putting field-sales personnel closer to their customers, according to the company.

SAP will continue its push into small and midsize businesses in 22 vertical markets and will continue to build that partner network, the spokesman said. He also discounted rumors that the sales-force cuts were due to disappointing momentum in the CRM arena vs. Siebel Systems, saying that momentum in CRM is moving in SAP's favor and that the company is gaining market share.

Solution providers so far have been unfazed by the changes.

"All indications are that the SMB push is still on and the changes won't affect it," said Tom Wilson, president of the Osprey Division of NIIT, a Charlotte, N.C.-based SAP partner.