subject: Sap Business One 2007a Consulting And Projects Recovery [print this page] In certain business situations you have to freeze software support budget and stick to outdated versions including accounting application. When situation improves and you decided to call your original consulting firm they might be not really capable and interested to deal with your account as at this point such versions as 2005A and 2007A are no longer supported directly by SAP. Of course it is always good advice to update the version to whatever is current (in March 2012 it is 8.82). But now you probably have another issue as your annual support contract with SAP lapsed and you do not have access to new release registration keys. Is my version really supportable or should I simply walk away and implement another package maybe something like QuickBooks or Sage Peach Tree? Lets sit down and calm down and review the options:
1.Is your version supportable? Yes it is but likely through VAR channel. There are nationwide and regional consulting firms with technical support call centers. They should be happy to get your account. User interface and table structure are very similar to what you have in 2007A or 2005A. There is knowledge base and if you have specific technical issue there are chances that it was already reported and solution was posted
2.Can we find local consultant to help us on case by case basis? If you think about tech support as it is done by large ERP brand name vendors such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics or Sage consultants typically do not go onsite. Instead they are helping you instantly via web session. We do not believe that such issues as data repair, new user training or reports design should be done by visiting your office. It might be challenging for technician to deal with hardware problems or printer driver but it is likely that you have either internal IT department or MSCE computer networking contractor
3.Second Opinion or failed project recovery. It is not a secret that ERP software implementation success rate is not hundred percent unfortunately. There might be various reasons for project to fail. But the most popular is picking consultant who is very nice and friendly but coming through the learning curve. It is not necessary that the guy is not really certified or cannot train users. It might be attributed to underestimated complexity with customization, SDK programming or integration with external database or application. If you are coming to conclusion that your project is in limbo or about to be in this phase it is important to pick the time for second opinion
4.Lets take some questions. We are located here in California and we have small office in China. Is it possible for us to open SAP B1 user interface in Chinese? Yes and our recommendation is to deploy Chinese company database on the same server in the headquarters and open it via Citrix. Chinese version is 2007B or 2005B. In 8.8X releases A and B flavors are merged into one installation. We tried to implement custom integration by programming SDK in Microsoft Visual Studio. However developer disappeared with the source code. Is it possible to take it over and recover our investments? We would like to show some optimism as it might be good idea to revisit specification and recode the customization
5.Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, help@efaru.com. We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, Atlanta Georgia, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA and Canada nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). We are working on Brazilian ERP consulting market in Sao Paulo since 2004
