SAP,Business,One,Integration,a computer SAP Business One Integration and Reporting Technologies

----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes a Gone are those times when the companies and the organisations didn't need a hi-tech system to handle them. Owing to the considerable increase in the business sector and thus, an enormous increase in the complexity of the organisational struc

We would like to discuss popular tools coming directly from SAP and you may keep doing your homework and check ISV channel tools such as iBolt or Scribe.  If you are thinking about relatively simple ongoing integration then we typically recommend small Software Development Kit programming project in Microsoft Visual Studio.  Initial data migration is typically done in Data Transfer Workbench which allows you import millions of historical documents assuming that you are deploying ODBC connection to SQL View with CSV template imitation.  In reporting section we would like to talk about Crystal Reports since SAP acquired Business Objects and CR is now one of the most recommended tools.  Let’s begin with Data Transfer Workbench:1. Integration via Data Transfer Workbench.  DTW is part of the Sap B1 certification training and every consultant knows how to fill in so-called Excel templates or in other words CSV files located in Program Files directory then follow SAP, Data Transfer Workbench and Templates.  Please be aware that Excel is not geared to compose template file with millions of rows and due to this fact your CSV based data conversion might fail or you may feel that it is in limbo.  However there is work around where you are importing your export from legacy accounting to SQL Server Custom table via SSIS import wizard and do data cleansing in custom SQL View.  Next step is to connect to this view via ODBC in DTW.  Please note that DTW like CSV template format and in your SQL View you should imitate its structure including column headers in the first row2. Integration via Software Development Kit custom programming in MS Visual Studio.  SDK has objects documentation and code samples in VB and C#.  This method is more flexible comparing to DTW as here you can trigger integration in real time upon the event of customer credit card payment in Ecommerce shopping cart for example.  Both Data Transfer Workbench and Software Development Kit are accessing database via Application Server and they provide reliable data integrity.  You can also exercise SDK programming in cross platform environment by enveloping its code into SOAP XML Web Services.  If you do it that way then you can call web service from Linux with PHP ecommerce application hosted in MySQL.  Small comment about integration coding in Software Development Kit.  If you feel that you have to budget programming project at twenty thousand dollars or higher then consider first seeing executive demo on such third party tools as iBolt3. Crystal Reports.  This tool is great for so-called managerial reporting.  At the same time we are not really leaning toward recommending CR for designing financial statements such as Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss Statement and Statement of Cash Flow because Financial reporting requires Chart of Accounts and General Ledger transactions parsing driver.  We also recommend you to abstract data pulling layer in SQL Stored Procedure or View prior to beginning report layout design.  If you have a chance to test SQL Select statement directly in SQL Server Management Studio then you should be sure that your report doesn’t produce annoying duplicate rows and incorrect summaries4. Implementation Phases.  We recommend you to take one step at the time and first plan generic implementation phase.  When you feel that you are using B1 system in production mode and it is now stable then think about the next phase where you deploy some custom programming5. If you would like to hear alternative opinion.  Small Business ERP application success rate is not a hundred percent and some of the customers are unhappy.  Consulting firms are known to expose their prospects and customers to overpromising as they hope to learn the technology as the project progresses and reasonably have the customer to finance learning curve.  If you would like to avoid higher percentage of failure try to invest more time in your homework and especially ERP system selection and consulting firm references6. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representatives pick up the phone in Naperville and St. Joseph, MI call centers).  [email protected].  We have local presence in Atlanta, Chicago, Southern California, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese.  One of our experiences is international Corporate ERP and Consolidated Financial reporting