How Small & Medium-Sized Businesses Prepare for the New Economy

Through Digital Transformation, Resilient Supply Chains, and Experience-Driven Solutions

SAP commissioned a research study from Oxford Economics on the priorities, challenges, and digital maturity of 2,000 small and midsize companies across 19 countries.  According to the research, transforming operations around new technologies and human experiences will be critical to resilience and growth.

Key Findings:

  • Customer experience matters most. The data was consistent throughout the survey, even during the pandemic: customer experience outranks even increased profitability and risk mitigation as a top priority.
  • Employee experience is also critical. Improving employee performance and retaining top talent are even more important in a crisis, which may be why top performers cite improved employee  experiences as their second-highest strategic goal (though, like others, they have work to do in this area). Other respondents also rank employee experience high on their list of strategic priorities.
  • Data to support decision-making is a weak point. Gaps in data collection and analysis hinder the ability to improve experiences for customers and employees, to respond to changes in the  market, and to get full value from technology investments. As the pandemic progressed, surveyed executives were even more likely to cite data analytics shortages in a range of areas.
  • Digital transformation is a priority for small and midsize organizations. Respondents expect major progress toward digital transformation in the near future, with nearly all saying they will make at least moderate progress within three years. Top financial performers are further ahead, which should allow them to be more flexible in adapting to a challenging and ever-changing  environment.

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What Our Customers Say

Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner, Baronet Coffee

Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner

“Anyone you tell that you’re going to a new ERP system, they all give you that ‘pained look.’ To think that we’re on a year from when we did discovery to now three months into our live implementation, and all we’re working on is some fine-tuning. Some of these fine-tuning tasks are those little things that make our life so much easier, but this wasn’t what I expected when we went live because people told me so many horror stories. I was thankful for the effort on both Softengine and Baronet teams.”

Denise Ost, Chief Operating Officer, Goodwill Industries, San Joaquin Valley

The good news is that SAP Business One’s Sales Analysis capabilities enabled us to evaluate the results of that campaign and then make adjustments for future promotions. Specifically, we can check the number of transactions, discount levels and net gain or loss per promotion and per location. We have to be very careful with how we spend our precious marketing dollars and the new system gives us the tools to optimize our investment in that area.

Jason Dugan, CFO, Trudeau Distributing Company

Softengine has been a key contributor to our rollout of SAP Business One. The company’s consultants were excellent and helped ensure that we had a successful implementation.

Leonard Kang, Operations Manager, Christopher Lena

We decided to find a partner we could put our trust in. Softengine is very experienced and systemized in its approach. We were very confident we’d made the right choice. Small businesses might be intimidated by SAP software. What they don’t realize is that SAP offers solutions designed specifically for small to midsize companies like ours.

Ray Lacorte, VP of Operations, Choice Organic Teas

We feel like we are in great hands with Softengine and the SAP Business One system they installed. It’s nice to finally put all those unreliable ERP systems and redundant procedures in the rear-view mirror.

Justin Ku, Administration & Operations Coordinator, Swabplus

The Softengine team was able to tailor SAP Business One to deliver all the traceability Swabplus needed, including all the applicable reports. Softengine enhanced the core system to enable creation of new batch numbers if components don’t already have them and the option of batch-costing. They also added fields for escalation dates, expiration dates and additional inspection data (e.g., who inspected and when), which could be incorporated into each Certificate of Analysis.

Virginia J. Gregorian, COO, Turbo Wholesale Tires

Our experience with Softengine has been extremely positive. Any time we call for assistance, they always assign someone who’s highly professional and gets the job done quickly. Interestingly enough, I’ve become so much more educated about IT-related matters since working with the Softengine team on this project. Every time we need to upgrade the system, they walk me though all the steps to make sure that I completely understand what’s happening, which contributes to the overall success of the upgrade. It’s been a pleasure to work with them.