More and more important: Communicating worldwide, extensively and comprehensibly
Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG’s business areas, active worldwide, require speedy and comprehensive communication with customers and vendors in 70 countries around the world. Purchase orders, quotes, delivery notes or invoices, some with additional attachments, must be sent to various addressees in a way that is flexible, convenient, and comprehensible. Up to now this was done by letter, fax or manual email dispatch. Documentation of what had been sent was usually missing in the SAP® system.
The solution: Send Business Objects (SBO)
In the standard set-up, the ERP system that was in use did offer certain solution options, but for what was required they turned out to be inflexible and difficult to use. Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG’s Head of IT and Organization, Matthias Rausch, says: “We were therefore looking for a simple, convenient, and secure solution that could be integrated as seamlessly as possible into SAP® ERP, in order to fill those gaps.” Market research provided the answer – and the company came across enycon Informatik GmbH, a logistics consulting and software development company in Saarbrücken. For over 15 years, enycon consultants have been optimizing business processes in companies in the industrial, retail, energy and property sectors. They too had noticed the lack of these special functions in SAP® ERP, and had therefore drawn on their experience to develop a standard solution offering exactly the functionality that Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG was looking for: the add-on Send Business Objects (SBO) for SAP® ERP.
Sending emails with document attachments – comprehensive and individual
The add-on SBO for SAP® ERP specifically supports emailing from within the SAP® ERP software. It is fully integrated into the ERP system, supporting the standard functions such as message determination and storage of emails in the generic object services. After installing the add-on, it is possible, when sending business documents (for example purchase orders, customer quotes, order confirmations, invoices, etc.) directly by email, to add important additional information in file format, without having to exit document processing. The relevant file attachments can be selected from a whole range of sources (for example file directories, document management systems, archiving systems). The user can individually adapt the email text, the subject line and the recipient list (TO, CC, BCC). Additional SBO standard functions, such as automatic suggestion of recipients, texts and attachments, allow emails to be created and sent in a fully automated manner, with no user intervention. That makes daily business communication even easier. For that purpose, customer-specific rule sets are defined in SBO customizing during the installation.
Convenient additional functions – reproducible and multilingual
Email creation can be called up via the generic object services of the respective business object (vendor request, purchase order etc.), and a dialog guides the user through the process until the email is released. The email is sent via the SMTP server using message processing. The transmission information from the email is logged using SBO and archived if required. It can therefore be reproduced at any time and used as the basis for a new email for the business object or for resending. The authorization concept guarantees differentiated user access in accordance with Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG’s company guidelines. In addition, SBO provides a language concept so that in companies like Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG, with international reach and therefore multilingual communication, its use can be implemented using standard tools.
Comprehensive business communication becomes a reality – with SBO
Last but not least, the selection team was impressed by the broad spectrum of possible uses. With SBO, all correspondence requirements can be met quickly and easily – from individual emails to placing an order in Purchasing to sending delivery notes and invoices. The same applies to documents in PM, CS, and QM, or for correspondence in Financial Accounting, for example open items lists. In the Sales environment, too, when sending technical specifications, graphics, product descriptions, catalogs or contracts, SBO is worth its weight in gold during daily business.
Quickly installed – easy to use
The enycon team needed less than two days for installation and customizing on site in constructive cooperation with the IT department. After a brief introduction, SBO was able to be implemented in various areas right away. “A big advantage – SBO can be implemented directly with minimal training, because the user interface is kept simple and understandable,” says Matthias Rausch.
Increased transparency due to use of SBO – direct savings in terms of time and money
There are additional benefits: By sending business documents by email, the company saves not only money in the form of postage and consumable material. The foremost benefits are in time saved and of course the increase in transparency. This is particularly noticeable thanks to the integration of SBO into SAP® and the logging of all processes, and therefore the entire email history. Business documents that have been sent by mail are stored in a connected archive using SAP ArchiveLink®.
