SAP Business One is a trusted ERP backbone for mid-market companies worldwide. It helps manage finance, operations, and inventory in one centralized platform. But when it comes to complex supply chains, many businesses need to level up their inventory management functionality to better compete in their industry and protect/ improve their bottom line.
Relying on SAP Business One’s core inventory features alone often leaves planners struggling to find that perfect balance between inventory and cash flow. And in some cases, they’re stuck without answers to the problems holding them back, such as why they are sitting wth excess stock, managing unpredictable demand, or having too much cash tied up in the wrong stock items.
That’s where Netstock comes in: the perfect complement to this impressive ERP. By extending SAP Business One with advanced inventory planning and optimization, businesses gain the control, visibility, and agility they need to thrive and grow in markets where uncertainty is the only constant.
If you’re ready to turn your inventory control into total inventory optimization to improve planning and ROI, let us tell you more.
Key takeaways
- SAP Business One provides a solid foundation for ERP and basic inventory control, but in complex supply chains, businesses need to think about optimizing more than just managing inventory.
- Netstock enhances SAP Business One by adding smarter forecasting, automated replenishment, scenario planning, and more to help move businesses forward.
- Together, these two solutions deliver better inventory control, capital efficiency, and long-term ROI.
Who benefits from optimizing SAP Business One inventory control?
If you’re running SAP Business One today, you already understand the value of centralizing your business processes. But if you’re a CFO, operations leader, supply chain manager, or inventory planner, you’ve likely felt the pain of inventory inefficiencies that can persist, despite this impressive system.
Maybe your warehouse is packed with slow-moving items while popular SKUs are constantly at risk of stock-outs. Maybe too much cash is tied up in safety stock. Or maybe you’re struggling to get demand visibility across multiple locations.
These challenges aren’t about ERP fundamentals faltering. They’re indicators that you need to take your inventory planning to the next level.
What SAP Business One offers for inventory control
SAP Business One gives businesses a strong baseline for managing inventory:
- Item and warehouse management: Track products across multiple warehouses, manage item master data, and monitor stock movements.
- Inventory transactions and valuation: Manage receipts, issues, transfers, and returns, with real-time cost tracking.
- Stock levels and reporting: View stock on hand, committed, and ordered, alongside basic reporting functions.
- Cycle counting and alerts: Support for stock counts and threshold-based alerts to flag potential issues.
For many mid-market businesses, these tools are enough to cover the basics. SAP Business One ensures inventory data is structured, accessible, and tied to financials.
However, when businesses face growing product ranges, fluctuating demand, or global supplier networks, native functionality begins to reach its limits. SAP Business One was never designed to be an advanced forecasting or optimization engine – and that’s exactly where opportunities exist.
Opportunities to advance SAP Business One inventory planning with Netstock
SAP Business One provides a strong foundation. Modern supply chains today require more than what a core ERP can deliver. Enhancing your inventory control with optimization solutions like Netstock opens the doors for major opportunities ranging from advanced forecasting up to 24 months in advance, increased visibility to actionable insights, and “what-if” scenario planning
When SAP Business One and Netstock work together, you have these unstoppable capabilities at your fingertips.
Intelligent forecasting
Go beyond historical averages with demand-driven forecasting that accounts for seasonality, trends, and volatility.
Automated replenishment
Replace spreadsheets and manual calculations with system-driven recommendations for what to order, when, and how much.
Multi-location visibility & excess redistribution
Get a consolidated view of inventory access across warehouses, branches, and even suppliers. Multi-location inventory helps you balance stock efficiently, no matter where you or the inventory is based. Plus, you receive recommendations about how to balance excess inventory across locations to help avoid stock-outs and overstock.
Scenario planning
While SAP Business One lets you see what was, Netstock helps you understand “what if?” By integrating the two, you can test a variety of future scenarios, including supplier delays and demand spikes. Looking ahead and testing things out lets you make decisions with confidence – no matter what comes your way.
Integration details: How Netstock connects to SAP Business One
Netstock seamlessly connects with SAP Business One through a streamlined, secure integration that respects your IT infrastructure.
- The platform establishes a direct connection with your SAP Business One database, maintaining data integrity while enabling the advanced inventory planning and optimization features we’ve covered.
- The integration automatically synchronizes business data from SAP Business One into Netstock’s analytics engine. This sync includes transaction history, current stock levels, vendor information, and pending procurement documents.
- Once everything is connected, Netstock’s powerful programming transforms the raw SAP data into intelligent forecasting models and strategic inventory recommendations.
From there on out, automated daily synchronization ensures your planning decisions reflect real-time business conditions.
When inventory planners generate purchase recommendations within Netstock, these seamlessly flow back to SAP Business One as purchase documents ready for approval and processing. This bi-directional functionality eliminates duplicate data entry and maintains your established procurement approval hierarchy within your ERP.
Getting to this point is painless thanks to Netstock’s implementation specialists. They guide the entire integration process. Typically, full deployment is accomplished in 4-6 weeks, meaning you can start actualizing ROI in months, not quarters. Plus, this rapid implementation timeline allows your team to quickly leverage enhanced inventory intelligence and automated replenishment guidance, which is key, especially when approaching seasonal demand peaks.
Business impact: SAP Business One and Netstock in action
When Edco, a family-owned global business based in Australia, combined SAP Business One with Netstock, the results spoke for themselves. Their team struggled with manual data entry between their ERP and the spreadsheets they used for planning. By its nature, this tedious process wasted valuable working hours and opened the door for human error.
By layering Netstock on top of SAP Business One, they gained clearer visibility into stock requirements and reduced excess inventory by 25% in just nine months.
Netstock has been unquestionably the best software implementation we’ve experienced. The process was well managed, and the results have been fantastic.
Tim Edmondson, Managing Director
Going beyond ERP with smarter inventory planning
SAP Business One provides the backbone of your ERP strategy. But for businesses like Edco navigating today’s supply chain complexity, ERP alone isn’t always enough. Netstock adds the specialized intelligence that helps you optimize stock, free up cash, and protect service levels.
Together, SAP Business One and Netstock create a stronger, smarter inventory ecosystem – one that turns ERP data into business results.
