SAP Success Story

TechSmart, as a small business, selected mySAP.com for a scalable e-business platform to support its rapid growth. mySAP Workplace is at the heart of TechSmarts strategy to bring all applications, customers, partners, and suppliers under one portal.

TECHSMART PICKS HOSTED MYSAP.COM AS E-BUSINESS PLATFORM FOR RAPID GROWTH

TechSmart executes 80 percent of its sales over the Web, providing a comprehensive spectrum of asset-management services to companies that need to recover the maximum realizable value from their preowned, off-lease, or surplus officetechnology equipment. TechSmart wants to raise the percentage of business it conducts online even higher, and picked mySAP.com to drive its e-business model. We selected mySAP.com because we are a small business that doesnt plan on staying that way for long, says Michael Beller, TechSmart chief operating officer. Our challenge was to put into place quickly and economically an integrated, scalable infrastructure that would support growth across new product lines and services as well as expanded customer segments, geographies, and distribution channels.

TechSmart licensed mySAP.com through SAP Certified Business Solution [CBS] provider Titan Technologies Group. In partnership with its CBS providers, SAP makes it quick and easy for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) to benefit from mySAP.com, providing the end-to-end integration, unlimited scalability, and best-in-class business processes that these businesses require.

mySAP.com also speeds up the implementation process by eliminating the need to develop interfaces between the front and back ends. mySAP Workplace will be at the core of the TechSmart solution.

mySAP Workplace will help us pull together the different applications through one portal, Beller says. mySAP Workplace is also the vehicle that will enable us to provide direct access to TechSmart chose to have mySAP.com remotely hosted, due our suppliers. These suppliers provide product on consignment to the major savings available in both time and money. and constantly want to know the status of their equipment: has A hosted solution provided an entire infrastructure at a lower it arrived, has it been audited, what percentage is being repaired, cost than we could have realized ourselves and saved us the has it been sold? We will upfront cash outlay, Beller provide them with access to says. Also, in this tight labor all this information over the market, it is difficult to mySAP Workplace Internet through browserattract, let alone retain, the will help us pull based technology and mySAP information-technology together the Workplace. professionals we would need to manage the hardware and different applications mySAP Workplace will also be network infrastructure. through one portal. the foundation for TechSmart Finally, a hosted solution mobile e-commerce teams. dramatically accelerated our implementation. We have a number of physical facilities where we process assets, but we also work with customers directly at their own locations The comprehensive integration of functionality within with their PCs, printers, monitors, copiers, and datamySAP.com was a crucial selection criterion for the firm. communications and telephony systems, Beller says. With mySAP Workplace up and running over the Internet, I can send At the top of our list of priorities was integration between backmobile teams mini-operations centers, if you will anywhere office and e-business systems, says Beller. mySAP.com they are needed by customers on a temporary basis to perform integration reduces risk and complexity and provides a stable the exact same duties that we perform in our physical facilities. platform for growth, regardless of the direction the industry or This gives TechSmart the flexibility to customize our officeour business takes. mySAP.com integration also means more technology asset-management services and solutions to efficiency and productivity. We do not want people running individual clients desires. around performing non-value-added activities, such as looking up product information in one back-office system and then entering that data into a different e-business sales-channel tool.

TechSmart will also use mySAP.com to link to external business partners. On the supplier side, tools like SAP Business Connector will enable TechSmart to communicate directly via XML with vendor firms and their software solutions. TechSmart can also link directly to other Web sites, exchanges, and marketplaces. mySAP.com enables this process through thousands of predefined XML transactions that are mapped and configured to interface with the back end, Beller says. In addition to managing these transactions within a comprehensive e-business platform, TechSmart is also relying on mySAP.com to provide it with the business intelligence it needs to keep close tabs on its operations. The most challenging part of our business today is planning and forecasting, Beller says. We need to know where we are every day from an operations and sales perspective. mySAP Business Intelligence will enable us to have, at our fingertips, information on what quantities of future products are coming in, where and at what prices sales are taking place, and how quickly we are turning inventory. The industrys current rule of thumb on obsolescence is that an office-technology product loses as much as one percent of its value per week. mySAP.com will provide us the vital information we need to continually enhance the matching of our product supply to our product buyers.

As a small to medium-sized business, TechSmart is very pleased with its choice of mySAP.com. We chose to work with SAP for the breadth and depth of its vision and functionality, Beller says. We take a lot of confidence from knowing that SAP is going to continue to invest in its products and the smooth integration of those products. Even though we are a smaller company now, we serve a number of large customers in the Fortune-500 space. When these companies see that we have installed mySAP.com, they know we are investing for the future. The reputation of SAP has thereby turned out to be a huge benefit for our organization, both in substance and image.

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