So can SAP B1 be a huge pain? Yes. However, it can also be incredibly useful and when implemented properly can improve the efficiency and operations in the company. We've been running it here for a few years (migrated from some similarly legacy system) and it is vital to most of our departments. Not without its fair share of issues, but we take the good with the bad. Few notes: 1. VAR selection is VITAL, as is the specific consultant/support team at that VAR. If you don't have a good relationship with them it will be like pulling teeth. They also need to have a good understanding of your needs - what you want to take care of in-house and what you will pull on them for. We heavily relied on our VAR before my time here, and now do most of our stuff in-house because we can. 2. Yes, add-ons can be a monster so choose them wisely and the backing company + support + release lifecycle matters JUST as much as the functionality. You don't want to be stuck with on a legacy version of SAP a few years out because the add-on was never updated. If you have in-house devs you can build your own add-ons. 3. Go to the Business One User Group conference, at least for the first year. You will learn quite a bit and make good contacts, plus have the chance to talk to vendors and other customers. The next one is coming up this month in Austin http://b1.asug.com/ 4. TRAINING. Get some internal power users trained up really well so you don't have to answer random user/usage questions and can focus on infrastructure. 5. Infrastructure wise- do not go lean on the hardware that the DB server uses. I recommend SSD for the database to get best performance. You want to do full-hosted you can host on AWS and just Citrix in but you will also lose a bit of functionality and will also have to maintain AWS. Also note that we are not running HANA - we are running the original version based on SQL Server. HANA has different requirements (linux-based DB server, in-memory database, and various other things ) and is relatively new. Probably be good for new installs but we won't be moving our install over anytime soon. 6. The migration is probably going to be a nightmare (no matter which ERP you are moving over to - SAP B1 or otherwise). Plan, plan, and over plan. Prepare for downtime, prepare for the worst. Make sure your teams are prepared. Moving ERPs is never quick or easy, and don't just assume that the VAR has it handled, you will need dedicated internal resources armed and ready that can focus on this. 7. Make sure you also have your logical business processes straight. Half of the software running correctly is making sure the users are doing things the way they're supposed to. Expect that it may not do 100% of what you need out of the box. Anyway, hope this helps and feel free to message me if you have any specific questions.

HAHAHHAHAH!!!! Sorry but that software is pure bullshit garbage. Want to contact support? NOPE! Gotta deal with your VAR. Oh that add-on was only 32bit and your report crashes because your DB is over 4GB. That add-on was written to support Brazil, needs to used regional date time setting for that area. God good was it a PITA to help admin. Gave users citrix access to it since everything was fat sql calls from the client. Oh and when the client hung (which it will) citrix is at fault. I don't work with it anymore but I just got shivers writing this.

We used to run SAP but we recently moved over to RAP (Relate Accounts Production) as we found Sage did not care about any of our needs or the changes we requested. So far our experience with RAP is A+ RAP also worked out cheaper for us. www.relate-software.com ::Edit:: Just realized I sound like such a sales person... If SAP has what you need it's a good app but I recommend you give relate a ring and see what they can supply.

I recently left a job that when I first started had just moved to SAP. I have to say hands down supporting it was my least favorite part of the job. BY A LOOOOOOOONG SHOT. Enjoy :)

Currently running SAP b1 and i am pretty sure all you need is some formations for your users and get do some paperwork to show them how much it would cost to migrate (it's expensive). So far asn't had any problem from SAP b1. User permissions is a freaking mess though.

Why SAP? I suppose people don't get fired for buying SAP. Have you looked at Dynamics AX?