SAP (NYSE:SAP) and NetServeAfrica Limited have entered into a partnership to provide management software solutions tailored to fuel the African growth story. Africa is a strong growth market and this may be a critical first mover advantage for SAP entering Nigeria as its economy consists mainly of small, discrete businesses. [1] SAP will likely face competition from Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) in the cloud-based ERP software market as it looks to target growth markets.
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Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer with an estimated output of 2.3 million barrels a day. With crude oil prices climbing, Nigeria is set to overtake South Africa as the biggest economy in the continent by 2025. Wages have doubled in recent times and consumer spending is expanding which is good news for this nation dominated by SMEs and more so for business application providers such as SAP. [2]
NetServeAfrica Limited has announced a partnership with SAP Africa to deliver SAP® Business One to the SMEs in Nigeria. NetServeAfrica claims this will help small and mid size businesses run their businesses better and maintain profitability. Currently the information systems adopted by these businesses consist of multiple applications with no integration. SAP’s platform on the other hand features a sales force system complete with pipeline tracking, new deal management, sales based on strategic pricing and contact management. It also integrates a platform for e-commerce if a business wishes to take its presence online.
The value-add to the SMEs however will come from the business analytics and decision support mechanism built into the platform to help make critical decisions related to materials requirements planning, financial management, budgeting, bank reconciliation and a complete inventory management system.
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