3 key reasons why SAP Business One is perfect for wholesale distributors

As a wholesale distributor, visibility is essential. To operate at your most efficient, you need complete visibility over your inventory and relationships with manufacturers, purchasers, and even other distributors.

With a solution such as SAP Business One, you gain visibility over your entire operation - including your warehouse and distribution centre. SAP Business One integrates seamlessly with existing systems giving you a single source of truth with which to negotiate and manage contracts, coordinate payments, arrange deliveries, track inventory and more - ultimately ensuring you are always able to deliver the very best customer experience.


At LAKE, we have implemented SAP Business One for many wholesale distribution businesses. Helping them transform their operations and discover new levels of productivity and efficiency.

Based on this experience, we believe there are three essential features that make SAP Business One an ideal solution for wholesale distributors.

1. Integration with E-Commerce & Marketplace platforms

One of the great features that SAP Business One delivers is its ability to integrate with E-Commerce platforms, unlocking a number of key benefits including:

  • A full reporting suite across SAP Business One allows the sales and merchandising team to understand profitability by sales channel, product, geography, customer demographic etc, allowing you to make informed business decisions and drive yet further success.
  • Streamlining of information flowing between your ERP and your website or marketplace with real-time updates for product information, stock levels and price changes.
  • The enhancement of your customer experience with notifications of order progression and expected arrival dates.
  • Improved customer experience with on-time, in-full fulfilment of orders whilst eliminating the scope for errors in critical data and reducing the need to re-key information between disparate systems.

2. Purchasing and inventory control

One of the greatest challenges for any wholesale distributor is balancing the amount of stock that's coming in, against what is going out. Without an integrated view, it can be hard to extract meaningful insights or determine exactly how one area of the business is impacting another.

Even today, many wholesale distribution businesses operate with a collection of silo-based accounting systems, warehouse management solutions, and other ad-hoc software and spreadsheets. To make accurate and informed decisions regarding new orders, you need access to reliable and integrated information in real-time.

SAP Business One does just that, the solution gives you accurate insights on inbound and outbound shipments, inventory levels and item locations. You can also run real-time reports, valuations, availability, and pricing impact reports.

SAP Business One's intelligent forecasting tools are also great for predicting and managing future demand.

3. Accurate tracking, every step of the way

Every wholesale distribution business is built on the reliable and effective management of stock. To meet customer's expectations and operate efficiently, you need to know where your goods are at all times.

Today, it is possible to track individual items with far greater accuracy than ever before. By integrating remote tracking devices in the warehouse and distribution centre with a powerful system such as SAP Business One, you can gain considerable insight and control, with:

  • barcode scanning and wireless scanner devices to ensure pick accuracy in the warehouse
  • stocktake processing - including cycle counts - to check inventory and bin location data, ensuring stock accuracy and ease of picking for warehouse staff
  • accurate information on lot numbers, batches, serial numbers, expiry dates and optimal stock levels

Take the next step

If you would like to find out more, please download one of our guides to SAP Business One or call me now on 0113 273 7788.



Fraser Dunlop

by Fraser Dunlop

Blog updated 23rd April 2024.



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