What next for SAP Business One in 2023

SAP says SAP Business One is as “strong as ever” as more features are planned for the Version 10 web client in 2023.

Speaking in his annual review, Rainer Zinow, Senior Vice President, Head of SAP Midmarket Product Management, outlined how SAP Business One continues to be one of SAP’s most popular solutions for customers deploying a new solution or replacing an existing one.

There are now in excess of 75,000 companies that run the end-to-end system globally with more than 1,200,000 daily users.

“SAP Business One is a long-term investment for SAP,” Rainer said as he outlined the previous 12 months for B1 and what’s planned ahead for this year.

2022 Challenges

He admitted there were two significant challenges at the start of 2022 which impacted the delivery of new features for the solution.

Firstly, the Covid lockdowns in China impacted the development of the web client. Then the war in Ukraine then saw a spike in cyber attacks, which saw SAP change its strategy.

SAP decided to improve security features across all of its solutions to ‘ensure we provide the maximum security for our customers’, Rainer added, irrespective of the platform or hosting model.

V10 Web Client

“The web client is the future of SAP Business One.” Rainer said.

New enhancements were released in 2022, including new analytical features. Rainer added this was his ‘highlight in 2002 when it comes to SAP Business One’ and said the new features were ‘amazing’.

These new tools are part of a series of new features planned in the future for the web client as part of SAP’s ‘multi-year’ journey. “The web client is taking more and more shape and form,” Rainer said.

He believes the web client is only 50% completed of what SAP would like to accomplish with the tool, “So we are on a good track,” he continued.

One of the new features released for the web client includes the new ‘Horizon’ skin. This is similar to the SAP Fiori interface and now provides consistency across the SAP portfolio of solutions.

2023 Priorities

There are three main priorities for SAP Business One in 2023: compliance, security and user-experience. “To keep the core stable, that’s the most important thing,” Rainer said.

Further details of planned functionality for SAP Business One is available in the solution’s product road map. Details for these new tools will be released by SAP across 2023.

One thing that Rainer did encourage was for partners or SAP Business One users to continue sending in ideas or requests to enhance the solution. In 2022, SAP received 2,155 of these Influence Requests. Forty-two of these have already been delivered as new functionality and 38 have been accepted for development. A further 88 are under long-term consideration, with 45 requests planned for longer term development.