November newsletter

NOVEMBER 2020

A message from Lindsay IN THIS MONTHS
ISSUE:
To our customers,
- SAP B1 Training
As we come towards the end of a year that has been - Guest Blog
full of uncertainty and change, I wanted to take a - SAP V10
moment to thank all of you, our customers, - Funding
colleagues and partners alike, for your unwavering - Signum Support
support and loyalty. Thank you. - Brexit
- Computec
We, like you, have been focused on the health and - Do's & Don'ts
safety of our employees, families, and communities.
Our employees have been encouraged to work from
home since March and due to the nature of our
business, the shift has been relatively smooth and
we continue to deliver the high levels of service that
you have come to expect of us. This new way of
working will continue for the foreseeable future
whilst we all navigate our way through
these challenging times.

For over 15 years, Signum has risen to the challenge
and used our technology to help others and whilst
our businesses all now enter unchartered territories,
we recognise the critical role that technology plays
in each of our success. SAP was designed to handle
moments like this and as your partner, it is my
commitment to you that we will do our upmost to
ensure your SAP Business One solution supports you
on this journey.

Thanks again for your support, on behalf of the
Signum team, we wish you and your loved ones a
safe and happy Christmas.

All the best,

Lindsay Pointon

Lindsay Pointon

Contents Page

2 - SAP Business One Training
3 - SAP V10
4 - PiP Chemicals (Guest Blog)
5 - Brexit
6 - Signum Support

1.

Getting back on course

SAP Business One Training Opportunities

Learn SAP Business One online and at your own pace with our newly released ‘Back to
Basics’ training videos.

Whatever role you play in your business, we can help you become an expert in SAP
Business One. Our commitment to customer success and continuous approach to learning is
what drives our training offerings.

We currently offer a growing catalogue of SAP Business One training videos as part of the
‘Back- to-Basics’ initiative and these tackle topics such as Chart of Accounts, Document
Printing and Blanket Agreements.

You can view all available videos here

Enjoy unlimited Watch, Learn from Open to
access to all anytime, Signum's everyone and
our SAP anyplace, qualified completely free
Business One anywhere on consultants
any device for all!
training videos

Back to Basics not comprehensive enough for you? We also have our SAP Business One
training bundles!

Designed with you in mind, ‘Train and Maintain’ is a paid for service covering a range of
topics and tailored to your exact needs!

You can find a list of all available training bundles available here

2.

A closer look at Let's take a deeper look at the top 5
features of this release:

In case you haven’t heard, SAP Business Localisation - New UK (Brexit) localisation
One v10 is now on general release.
Features:
SAP’s goal with this new version has been New localization introduced for United
to provide an enhanced experience to the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
end user with a focus on streamlining Ireland to support post-Brexit
business processes. In this localization Make Tax Digital and
Extended Tax Reporting are set by
In a nutshell, SAP has updated Business default
One in the following areas:
Benefits:
Web client Smooth transition from pre-Brexit GB
localization to the new UK localization
Usability
Platform/Extensibility - Office 365
Administration
Features:
Financial Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive
integration allows for document layouts,
Management grid results and reports to be exported
into Excel and Word accordingly
Localization SAP Business One 10.0 Template
Management allows for more flexibility
Sales | Purchasing | Service in reporting and document layouts
management
Project Management
Benefits:
Inventory | Distribution Automatic upload of exports into
OneDrive
Production Easier report and document layouts
management
Platform | Extensibility Access from everywhere

3.

Project Management - Gantt Charts Financial Management - G/L Accounts in
Financial Reports
Features:
Interactive Gantt Chart allows Project Features:
Phases to be moved or Golden arrows are added next to the
extended/shortened interactively account codes in financial reports
New fields added representing Project allowing users to drill down into the
Due Date and Finish Date account record within the Chart of
Accounts
Benefits: Available in Balance Sheet, Trial
Project updated according to planning Balance, and Profit and Loss Statement
changes within interactive Gantt Chart
Easier and more visual planning of Benefits:
Project Management Tasks Direct access to account details and
account balance of relevant accounts
Usability - Enhanced User Interface increases usability and transparency
Streamlined with standard system
Features: behaviour
New icon and menu option under the
View menu enables the showing or Click here to download a copy of the
hiding of the toolbar release highlights
Users can enlarge working area by
hiding the toolbar Subscribe to our YouTube
The company name and username are channel to view the latest
clearly displayed at the top centre of enhancements through video
SAP Business One window; Click it to
open the “Choose Company” window and be the first to know
directly when new videos are
released.
Benefits:
Information about current company and Click here for more
logged-on user is displayed clearly
Switching between company databases
and users is one-click away

4.

Funding for Growth

Signum Customer, PIP Chemicals have recently been successful in securing funding
for a new WMS solution. We caught up with Adam Hunniford, Managing Director, to talk
about the challenges, the process and what advice he is able to offer other companies

who may be considering the funding option.

The Company

We are a chemical manufacturing company, supplying cleaning, care and protection
products, to the auto and sanitising industries.

The Challenge

As PIP Chemical has grown, requiring the need for additional staffing and resources,
it has become increasingly difficult to maintain quality standards. In earlier times, the
individual doing the manufacturing would likely have been deeply involved with the product
development as well as material sourcing.

As a result, operator errors could be easily minimized because the operator knew what he
was expecting. As staffing levels increased, this connection is impossible to maintain. Errors
in production were becoming more common and were only picked up at quality control
stages. This then led to time and money wasted reprocessing and remanufacturing products.
Additionally, increased physical size of the operation has meant that goods are much more
widely spread.

Consequently, there is the further time wastage trying to locate materials within the
warehouse and a need for operatives to keep a mental note to try to expedite their
processes.

In order to move the operation forward, it was decided that these uncertainties needed
removed. It was no longer acceptable that a manufacturing operative could be expected to
reliably differentiate between chemicals of similar name. The chemicals would need to be
able to be identified by the SAP system and be checked prior to use. It was no longer
acceptable to rely that quantities used were accurately transcribed to manufacturing sheets.
The quantities should be captured from weighing equipment and actual quantities recorded
rather than fixed backflushing. It was no longer acceptable for operatives to have to
remember where materials are stored and spend valuable time locating. The locations
should be recorded and the system should be able to prompt the operative where
to go to find them.

With these various elements addressed, the business will be able to move forward,
operating more accurately, more efficiently and in a position where further growth requires
much less reliance on operative knowledge.

5.

Funding companies approached and reasoning why those specifically

There really only was InvestNI for a project of this kind. We have a long running partnership
with them where they have assisted in several technological solutions as well as increasing
employment.

Funding company involvement

As a long term partner, we were well aware of what was required. InvestNI are fantastic
and worked with us right through the process, guiding not only how they would potentially
help financially, but also assisting in ensuring that the solution was suitable for the task we
had in mind.

The application process

As long term partners, it was very easy. All of our company records and financial reports are
provided each year such that there was no requirement to duplicate. Once the general remit
and costs were agreed with our client executive and IT specialist, the application process
took a matter of 1-2 hours to submit in the electronic system. There was some further
communication to get details sorted – something that took some weeks as it required input
from ourselves and Signum – but it was straight forward and could have been done within a
couple of days, had schedules allowed. There was no pressure on timescales as InvestNI are
very understanding that projects like these, with multiple parties, do take time to get right.
Once all was submitted, we had a positive answer within 2 week.

Future expectations

The funding allows PIP Chemicals to implement a class leading system which places us
firmly at the top of our sector. Whilst the company remains moderately sized, we will have
processes and capabilities exceeding many of those which are more than 10x the size. We
will be in a position to scale up easily without expensive and painful exercises changing the
core business systems.

Advice to companies looking to apply for/raise funding

Talk! Talk to your funding partners. They are there to help! They are not trying to block
you from getting funding, they actively want to give it to you if you can prove the value of
that input and that it will meet with their strategic goals. Additionally, don’t expect something
for nothing – if you aren’t willing to invest your own money, why would a funder be willing to
do it?

6.

Check out the Signum Resource hub!

Our resources hub is jam packed with
informative advice including eBooks,
Infographics, Videos, Whitepapers,

and so much more!

All specially selected to give you a
better understanding of the different

ways to grow your business with
SAP Business One.

You can access the resource
hub here

Inge's DO'S &
End of Year
DON'TS

DO - create a new financial year (posting periods, new period) in the last month of
DO - the current financial year or even earlier
use the code and name of other periods as example for the new periods

DO - update the due date range to cover your longest payment term for the last
day of the financial year (31/12 and 3 months means a due date range of
1/1/2021 – 31/3/22)

DON'T - set -01, -02 etc in code and name; SAP will do all this for you when you select
12 months as sub periods!

DON'T - hesitate to contact Signum Support in case of questions or error messages:
you will probably only do this once a year and a mistake can be easily made
and could affect your fiscal year structure

At the beginning of this year Signum's partner,
CompuTec released new versions of all their
solutions which are compatible with SAP
Business One 10 but that’s not all they’ve been
up to this year.

Here is a quick summary of the latest features;

Batch Traceability 360 Improved architecture for better
performance and easier upgrades,
This user-friendly plugin is a serious integrated barcode scanner simulator for
enhancement to ProcessForce’s previous batch testing, upgraded downtime management.
traceability capabilities. You can quickly access
summaries of complaints, customers, deliveries,
returns and production orders related to any
batch, see the relationships between batches and
navigate through the batch lifecycle on an
interactive graph and update batch status en
masse.

BulkChange Catch Weight Management

This plugin (currently in beta) allows you In the first of a three phase release,
to makes changes to large numbers of Bills of catch weight management is now supported
Materials simultaneously rather than go through for most warehousing transactions.
the painstaking process of updating each BOM
manually. You can also use the plugin to create TSL (Transport Layer Security) Support
new revisions of existing BOMs.
Up next: Serialization plugin and CompuTec
The Quality Plan – ISO 2859 Compliance WMS for Android

The Quality Plan allows you to assign
quality control rules according to supplier
performance as per ISO 2859 compliance
standards.

Coming soon: Plant Maintenance module

Migrate your entire IT infrastructure to the Cloud

Lets move together!

With millions working remotely, it has caused major strains on the infrastructure of
businesses. This has resulted in more and more businesses looking at the cloud as a
solution.

In a recent survey commissioned by DevOps automation specialist Codefresh found that
COVID-19 is at least prompting a reconsideration of on-premises infrastructure
strategies. 75 percent said the pandemic has convinced them to move at least some
infrastructure to the cloud, “representing a dramatic shift in strategy and further adoption
towards the cloud” Codefresh stated.

The good news is - Adopting the cloud doesn’t have to be complicated!

We can offer services to migrate your entire IT Infrastructure to the cloud including
SharePoint, cloud file storage and various other office apps.

The biggest challenge is taking the first step!

Contact your Signum representative for further details.

Brexit Update

Brexit will have a huge impact on businesses across the UK, in relation to
your SAP Business One solution, please rest assured that SAP is monitoring
the situation closely to prepare for the changes that will need to be made to
SAP Business One when the UK leaves the EU.

We are working alongside SAP to ensure we can support all our customers
during this transition period.

Please keep a look out for future Brexit dedicated communications.

Ideas in Your SAP Business One tip
Action from Chief Product Owner, Ari Schapira

Plain Vanilla is not a common first choice, and one size
doesn’t fit all. This is true for ice cream, T shirts, and…
business. Of course, there are similarities and best
practices many companies use, and yet - every
business is different.

This is why user-defined fields, values, objects, and
windows are so popular. Take user-defined windows for
example - they look exactly like original SAP Business
One forms, and like original functions, you may want to
grant different users different
authorizations.

For that purpose you can use the "Additional
Authorization Creator":

Here, you can create authorizations and assign them
to the relevant user-defined windows. You can set a
structure and dependencies, and define whether an
authorization is "Full/None" or "Full/Read/None".

The authorizations you create are added to the
"General Authorizations" window, under the "User
Authorization" section, enabling you to grant the
relevant permission to each user:

Available in SAP Business One and SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA.

Keep an eye on your Signum Customer Forum for more SAP Business One Hints and Tips!

Welcome to our
new customers

You're part of the family now!

Signum are delighted to announce some new additions to our growing
client family. All the companies listed below have come on board with

us in recent months.

The Team at Signum look forward to working with you all and
supporting your business plans through the continued development

and improvement of SAP Business One.

Creative Distribution is one of the UK’s Portek have been supplying bird scaring and
leading independent Distributor’s of agricultural products to the trade for over 30
Entertainment and Toys
years.

Grafityp is a leading manufacturer and Supplying to a small operating business
supplier of self-adhesive sign making vinyl. within the large Diageo group.

Montgomery Waters is a family-run business
providing quality Welsh Mineral water.