With the latest release of SAP Business One, Version 9.0 the development teams have continued to deliver on the roadmap that was laid out in 2011 to provide a solution that allowed users to get real insight in to their business.

You can now utilise multiple tools in Version 9 from the SAP Crystal Solutions portfolio all of which integrate seamlessly with SAP Business One and 3 of these tools are included either free of charge or with an entry level free content offering.

Lets take a quick look at what’s at your disposal…

SAP Crystal Solutions deliver rich, interactive insights in to your SAP Business One data

SAP Crystal Solutions deliver rich, interactive insights in to your SAP Business One data

SAP Crystal Reports 2011

Delivered free of charge and utilised as the default report design and form print layout designer for B1 , every SAP Business One customer receives a free Designer license and free runtimes for every SAP Business One user.

You can turn the information contained in your SAP Business One data into a sophisticated, interactive report. This can help you deliver key insights for smarter operational and strategic decision making.

  • Design formatted reports with Flash integration, interactive charts, and flexible export options
  • Deliver reports via the Web, email, Microsoft Office, or embedded in applications
  • Empower end users to explore reports with on-report sorting and parameters
  • Minimize ongoing IT and developer involvement with interactive reports

You can learn more about using SAP Crystal Reports with SAP Business One here at the SAP Business One Academy…..Crystal Reports and SAP Business One

SAP Crystal Server

SAP Crystal Server allows you to equip your decision makers with intuitive, easy access to business intelligence (BI) essentials – including reports, dashboards, and data exploration.

The key benefits of SAP Crystal Server are that it will allow your users to:

  • Easily access and share reports and dashboards and explore corporate data from a single solution
  • View critical insights across data sources with intuitive, guided data exploration
  • Ensure corporate data is readily accessible with a common semantic layer
  • Accelerate report design and deliver personalized reports to a dynamic list
  • Deliver reports, dashboards and data exploration within a managed, secure BI infrastructure

Heres a summary of whats new in SAP Crystal Server and some additional details of how the benefits I mentioned above are delivered – Whats New in SAP Crystal Server 

SAP Crystal Dashboard Design

SAP Business One comes with pre-built dashboards available for you to get immediate insights in to your key data that are built using SAP Crystal Dashboard Design. With this tool you can get a holistic, actionable view of your business with powerful data visualizations. You can create interactive dashboards from your SAP Business One data with ‘point-and-click’ ease – and gain insights that can help you confidently plan for the future.

Heres a few examples of some scenarios you can implement with dashboards and SAP Business One.

  • Monitor performance across your organization with key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Visualize emerging trends and instantly understand the impact of business changes
  • Build interactive dashboards quickly with an intuitive, flexible interface
  • Consolidate reports and information from multiple sources into a single dashboard
  • Integrate live data into your dashboards to gain immediate business insights
  • Model changes with ‘what if’ analysis
  • Share dashboard views online or through familiar tools such as Microsoft Office and Adobe PDFs
  • Take a look at this solution brief to learn more about SAP Crystal Dashboard Design – download the brief

SAP BI OnDemand

One of the key challenges of deploying a business intelligence solution is that concern that your people may not use it effectively. So its often a challenge to make the initial investment…you just dont know if the money will generate a return on your investment.

Thats where the free entry level deployment of SAP BI OnDemand thats included with SAP Business One can help.

You can explore, report, and share your SAP Business One data with SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand. It’s a comprehensive business intelligence solution in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that helps you get up and running in minutes.

  • Get a complete view of your business
  • Support informed decision-making
  • Save time with self-service BI

In this video I’ll show you how easy it is to get started with SAP Business Objects BI OnDemand – and even if you are using an earlier version of SAP Business One like Version 8, you can start using this solution now!

So you can see there are a lot of options available….my suggestion is that you reach out to your SAP Business One partner to ask them for more information about the portfolio and have a detailed discussion about your business objectives and how they can help you meet them using these additional tools.

Of course, I am also available to help you…simply leave me a comment hee or reach out to me at richard.duffy@sap.com….I am here to help.