Dynamics 365 Business Central vs. SAP Business One: A Neck-to-Neck Comparison (2023)
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central vs. SAP Business One is a popular comparison among business owners who are finding the perfect ERP (enterprise resource planning) for their business. Implementing such a solution will empower a business to manage, control, and streamline its entire business with ease.
In this blog, we are going to do an accurate comparison of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central vs SAP Business One so that you can choose the perfect solution for your business.
Why Dynamics 365 Business Central vs SAP Business One Comparison is necessary?
Comparing these two solutions will help you understand the features and capabilities of both applications. Once you compare them all, you will have the sound knowledge to choose the perfect solution.
Dynamics 365 Business Central is the perfect ERP solution for SMBs. Being a cloud-based ERP solution, it offers powerful features and capabilities to deal with unique business operations while optimizing resources.
D365 Business Central can manage different departments altogether, like financial management, inventory management, warehouse management, and project management. This Microsoft Dynamics ERP is so flexible that you can easily customize it to align with your unique business needs.
You can integrate different native and third-party solutions to enhance the capability of certain business operations. You can integrate Mobile WMS by Tasklet Factory to enhance warehousing and inventory capabilities.
When we compare SAP Business One with Business Central, they offer similar features. But when it comes to managing entire businesses like Business Central does, SAP Business One lacks functionalities.
Microsoft Business Central is simple to use and comes with an interactive user interface. Whereas SAP Business One is a bit complicated to handle. Before comparing more features, let's see the comparison table.
Dynamics 365 Business Central vs SAP B1: Comparison Table
Our technical experts have done intense research on both solutions and come up with the below comparison.
Key Differences - Microsoft Business Central vs. SAP Business One
As per the above table, we can see that there are a lot of differences between these solutions. Both of these solutions are ERP and are specially designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Despite being so similar in terms of features and capabilities, they still possess some differences. Such key differences are given below:
1. Financial Management
Business Central comes with a powerful and effective economic management module to manage all financial requirements. This module also includes advanced financial reporting, budgeting capabilities, and simplifying the general ledger.
On the other hand, SAP B1 has limited financial management features, especially designed for small businesses.
2. Inventory Management
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central has a specific inventory management module to manage, track, and control inventory and warehouse operations for a business.
SAP Business One offers simple tools to track inventory levels across multiple locations and manage stock levels.
3. Sales Management
Dynamics 365 Business Central comes with advanced sales management capabilities and also has basic CRM (customer relationship management) features. Even so, you can integrate D365 BC with Sales Hub to enhance sales capabilities.
When compared with BC, SAP Business One offers limited capabilities that are sufficient only for small businesses. For medium and large businesses, you will need to integrate some advanced solutions based on their integration functionality.
4. Manufacturing
Microsoft Business Central is a great choice for manufacturing businesses, as it includes advanced production planning and scheduling capabilities. Also, it collaborates and connects different departments, which include production, quality, inventory, and supply chain.
SAP B1 comes with standard manufacturing capabilities that sometimes act inefficiently to manage tasks and connect different processes. It doesn’t have any specific modules to deal with manufacturing operations.
5. Customization
The best part of Microsoft business solutions is the flexibility of customizing the solution based on unique business requirements. By connecting with your Business Central implementation partner, you can customize it and make the solution align with your business.
SAP Business1 is a standard solution and offers only standard functionalities for all industry types. However, if you still want to customize it, you can do so, but it has limited customization functionality.
6. Deployment
Based on the deployment option, you can go with any of the solutions because both of them come with cloud and on-premises deployments. However, Business Central also offers a hybrid deployment option that enables you to choose the deployment that aligns with your data hosting requirements.
7. Scalability
Cloud solutions are scalable. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a cloud ERP built with Microsoft Azure as its base, so it is more scalable. This means it can handle a large volume of data chunks and transactions, which makes it scalable whenever required.
SAP Business One is more suited for businesses that are small and can only generate a limited amount of data. It's crucial to remember that Dynamics 365 BC can handle complex business scenarios, while SAP Business One is more suited for moderately complex business operations for small businesses.
User Interface Comparison: Business Central vs SAP Business One
The user interface is an important concern for beginner users. If the interface is simple to understand, anyone can utilize the solution without any hassle.
1. Dynamics 365 Business Central
One of the major benefits of going with Dynamics 365 Business Central is its simple and effective user interface. It has a convenient UI that comes with drag-and-drop components to let you customize the dashboard as per your needs.
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2. SAP Business One
SAP B1 has a configurable UI that you can modify to make it look better for you. SAP Business One’s UI is more conventional, while the user interface of Business Central can be personalized to maximize productivity and overall efficiency.
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Pricing Comparison: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central vs SAP B1
SAP Business One and Business Central pricing is very competitive. However, once you have your exact business requirements, you can choose a value-for-money plan for any of these ERP solutions.
1. Dynamics 365 Business Central Pricing & Licensing
In general, Microsoft offers three plans for all businesses: Team Member, Essentials, and Premium.
The Team Member licenses will cost you $8 per user/month, and this will only allow you to perform some limited tasks, like data entry or data sharing.
The Business Central Essentials license will cost you $70 per user/month and will allow you to avail different Business Central modules that include finance management, sales and marketing, project management, inventory management, and warehouse management.
The Business Central Premium license will cost you $100 per user/month and will allow you to avail of all modules of the Essentials plan. As a premium licensing plan, it comes with service and manufacturing modules.
2. SAP Business One Pricing & Licensing
SAP B1 is part of the SAP Integration Suite, which is available in two licensing options: Professional and Limited.
The SAP Business One professional license will cost you $108 per user/month and is specifically built to manage the business operations of mid-sized businesses with complete access to all modules.
The SAP Business One Limited license will cost you $56 per user/month, and it lets you access limited functionality of the solution. Based on CRM, finance, and logistics, you can choose the desired modules for your business.
Remember, the pricing for Dynamics 365 Business Central and SAP Business One can vary depending on the specific edition, the number of users, and the type of customization required.
So, always contact an ERP solution partner or Microsoft Dynamics Partner, like Dynamics Square, to understand your exact business requirements.
Integration and Customization: Microsoft Dynamics Business Central vs SAP B1
Both enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, SAP Business One (SAP B1) and Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, are SMB-centric and can be integrated with other respective software based on solution compatibility. However, you will need to contact your ERP partner to check the integration capabilities.
However, there are some key differences in terms of integration and customization capabilities between these two solutions:
1. SAP Business One
SAP B1 is built on the SAP HANA software architecture. It is a platform known for its robust flexibility and scalability. SAP B1 offers a wide range of integration options that let you integrate various third-party software.
SAP doesn’t have an ecosystem of business solutions like Microsoft does. But you can still integrate solutions like Microsoft Dynamics CRM, eCommerce, and other accounting systems with SAP B1.
SAP Business One also allows you to custom-develop the solution based on business-centric requirements.
2. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Dynamics 365 Business Central, also known as Dynamics NAV, is a popular ERP solution equipped with modern capabilities for business management. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is known for its smooth integration capabilities with other Microsoft products (the Dynamics 365 ecosystem), such as Office 365 and Power BI.
It offers a range of third-party software integration options as well that let you supercharge some specific business operations for ease of accessibility. Though the third-party integrations with Business Central work seamlessly as compared to SAP Business One.
Business Central is a fully cloud-based ERP solution with easy customization abilities to use the Power Platform to create customizations, automate business processes, and create business operation-centric applications.
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central is considered a powerful solution as it is capable of automating most of the business processes, eliminating data silos and redundancies from the system. Whereas SAP Business One acts a week in terms of overall business management features and capabilities.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central vs SAP Business One: Which one Suits you Better?
Before choosing the perfect solution, your major concern must be to understand your business as well as its different operations. Once you were able to get into the nerves of your business, you would be able to make the best decisions capable of simplifying it and generating more revenue.
To simplify the decision-making process, let us conclude this blog.
If you are looking for a standard business solution that can manage general business processes without any scope for business improvement, go with SAP Business One.
If you want a solution that is flexible, easy to scale, comes with great performance, and offers cost-effective licensing plans, go with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
In case you need help with Dynamics 365 implementation, our 150+ technical consultants will be delighted to help your business grow. With 500+ clients around the globe, our Dynamics 365 support partners have helped businesses grow and scale at a fast pace.
You can send us an e-mail at harsh.nager@dynamicssquare.com or call us directly at +1 281 899 0865 to get instant support from a reliable and trusted Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner.
Read more: Business Central Implementation
Ayush Jain is a seasoned Digital Marketing specialist renowned for his expertise in harnessing the power of cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions to propel business growth. With an impressive track record spanning more than four years, he has cultivated fruitful partnerships with numerous SaaS enterprises, driving substantial brand recognition and unlocking revenue potential.
