Industries · Building Materials
SAP Business One for building materials distribution
Heavy, bulky product sold by length, area, weight and pallet, delivered to sites rather than loading docks. Units of measure and delivery logistics are where the system earns its keep.
- The cycle
- Quote the job · Convert the units · Hold yard stock · Take the order · Load the vehicle · Deliver to site · Invoice against the job
- Alongside SAP Business One
- Inventory Counting, B2B eCommerce, Sales Rep App
The operating lifecycle
Sold by length, stored in a yard, delivered to a site
Units of measure and delivery logistics are what make building materials different. Both are handled badly by systems designed for boxes.
Stage 01
Quote the job
Pricing a project, often for quantities that will be released in stages as the build progresses.
What breaks as you grow
The quote priced in one unit and the order taken in another, with somebody converting in their head.
Handled by
Requirements
What matters in building materials
Multiple units of measure
Buy by pallet, stock by piece, sell by length or square metre, with conversions the system applies rather than the counter staff.
Yard and bulk inventory
Stock held outside, in bays and in bulk, counted and valued alongside everything in the warehouse.
Delivery scheduling
Orders that ship to a site on a date, in loads, rather than in a single parcel.
Contract and job pricing
Prices agreed for a project or a builder, applied automatically for the life of the job.
Counter and account sales
Cash sales at the counter and account customers on terms, in the same system.
Backorders and part deliveries
Partial shipments tracked so the customer and the yard both know what is still owed.
Recommended architecture
What a building materials operation usually ends up running
Derived from the lifecycle above rather than picked from a catalogue: these are the systems its stages actually call on.
- CoreSAP Business OneFinancials, inventory, pricing, purchasing and orders in one system of record.Overview
- Layer 01Inventory CountingSee it
- Layer 02B2B eCommerceSee it
- Layer 03Sales Rep AppSee it
Every layer connects through supported interfaces, reading and writing the same records. None of them keeps its own copy of your prices.
Mapping
Where the work usually goes
- 01Staff convert pallets to pieces to metres in their heads.Units of measure and conversions configured on the item master.
- 02Job pricing is agreed once and then applied inconsistently.Contract and special pricing held in SAP Business One and applied on every document.
- 03The yard is counted separately from the warehouse, once a year.Cycle counting by zone with barcode devices, posted back to SAP Business One.
- 04Trade counter sales are rung up outside the ERP.SAP Customer Checkout connected to SAP Business One.
Questions
Building Materials questions
Next step
Talk to someone who has configured SAP Business One for your kind of operation.
Bring your order flow, your inventory headaches and your reporting wish list. We will tell you what SAP Business One does out of the box and what we would build around it.