The Importance of Customer Data

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Tony Chiodo

The ability to manage information is playing an increasingly central role in competitive strategy.  In most industries, companies can no longer achieve sustainable competitive differentiation simply on the basis of the performance characteristics of their products alone.  The pace of technological development means that any product innovation a company makes today is likely to be quickly copied by competitors and become a standard feature tomorrow. Coupled with this, globalization is exposing companies of all sizes to unprecedented levels of competition.

As a result companies are increasingly being forced to look at how they can increase the value they provide by tailoring their offer to customers’ individual needs whether that is through customizing the company’s core product or adapting a range of supporting services (e.g. billing, shipping, customer support etc). Such an approach not only serves to provide a basis for short term differentiation, it also has longer term strategic benefits too.

The more a company learns more about a customer’s individual needs and tailors its products and services accordingly, the greater the value the customer receives.  Similarly, the greater the value the customer receives, the more important the company becomes to them. Progressively, the customer faces the prospect of ever greater disruption were they to consider switching to an alternative supplier owing to the time it would take any other company to acquire the same understanding of their needs and deliver a comparable tailored service.

Consequently, even though there may be other companies providing a comparable core product, such a strategy enables a company to develop strong relationships with its customers and an enduring hold over the revenue they generate. Indeed, in business-to-business markets, a company can find its relationship with key clients becoming so strong that it almost becomes an integral part of their businesses.

Learning about a customer’s particular requirements and marshalling the resources of the company to deliver tailor-made solutions is increasingly the only way for companies to avoid being drawn into commoditized price-based competition. For more and more companies, the integration of the front and back office is thus becoming a strategic necessity with the ability to capture and manage information effectively a critical core competency.

Help your company realize the value of customer data by downloading “Assembling the Jigsaw- Realizing the value of data”.

Posted in Customer Relations Management (CRM), May 2012, Newsletter | Leave a comment

Automating Warehouse Processes for a Greater Return on Investment

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Manny Buigas

Increasing Value for Customers and Shareholders

With costs and competition rising faster than ever, only businesses that find ways to increase value for their customers and shareholders can thrive in today’s market. The value chain concept holds that certain activities within a business represent opportunities for adding value to the product or service the business provides. In general, these activities are profit-generators that can be distinguished from the overhead and support functions of commercial distributors and company warehouses.

Value-adding functions often relate directly to the specifics of the individual business. Following are some value-adding functions that are common to most business and should be familiar to anyone who depends on their warehouse as part of their critical operations:

  • Inbound logistics
  • Outbound Logistics
  • Production/operations
  • Marketing and sales
  • Services

Warehouses are traditionally seen as purely cost-centers and not a potential area for value creation. Yet progressive businesses are turning their warehouses into a significant competitive advantage. Of the value-adding functions listed above, inbound and outbound logistics relate directly to wholesalers, distributors and distribution center operators. In addition, the quality of receiving, storing, and delivering product can affect production, marketing and sales, and services both positively and negatively.

The “True Tales of Warehouse Efficiency” whitepaper addresses the areas that are directly involved with the value-adds and ROI opportunities in automated warehouse processes. Specifically, this paper focuses on how progressive companies can keep mistakes at an acceptable minimum, improve efficiency, maintain compliance, maximize personnel utilization, and maximize inventory investment through effective use of inbound and outbound logistics and warehouse operations.

In a modern, automated warehouse management environment, these activities take place in a smooth, uninterrupted flow. Whether in a distributor or wholesaler model or in a dedicated distribution center serving a dispersed chain of retail stores, the process begins with receipt planning and execution. best legal steroids

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ERP: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” Why you may want to revisit your implementation

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Tony Chiodo

So said Mark Twain after hearing his obituary had been published in the New York Journal. Is ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) facing the same instance of misreporting, when we read that traditional implementations have run their course?

If you track the internet feeds and industry blogs, then you will have seen a trend over the past couple of months that is reporting ERP systems to be “still alive’, “not going anywhere”, and remain fundamental to the way that most small and medium-sized organizations (SMBs) manage their businesses.

With this reaffirmation of faith to the once almighty ERP system, what should you do, if anything, to nurture that relationship again? After all, don’t most companies have their systems running smoothly, to the point that it is part of their daily routine and they don’t have to give it a second thought?

Well here’s another quote to consider – Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration – so said Apuleius, Roman philosopher back in 124 A.D.  Has the success of the ERP system in managing and integrating business processes made SMBs become complacent, and could they be taking advantage of the agility of those systems to help them maximize the investment they have already made? The admiration award goes to those firms who continue to challenge themselves by changing the way they do business to outwit their competition. What may also need to change is the way they evolve their use of ERP systems to effect that change.

If you are one of the thousands of firms who implemented ERP only for accounting and financial management, when was the last time you reviewed your configuration to determine if it could do more? It’s likely that your original evaluation matched feature and functionality to specific business requirements, and once the implementation project was completed you have never given a second glance at what else the software could help you accomplish. Overtime, the business may have evolved and grown so that you now have increased reporting requirements. For example, through mergers and acquisitions, you now need to consolidate across entities or locations, and you’re not sure how or even if, your current system can accommodate this. So you continue to struggle with how to enter intercompany transactions, wasting a lot of your precious time.

It’s time to reverse the thinking; let’s put the proverbial screws on your ERP system and challenge it to do more. We’re in tough economic times, when everyone is trying to manage costs and get their expenses under control. Isn’t this the perfect time to take a second (or maybe it’s the first) look at streamlining your processes and determine if there are opportunities to improve?

So don’t believe everything you read; the demise of ERP seems to be only in the pundits minds. Maybe business owners should have a different approach – use it more effectively and efficiently, and evolve the software as their business evolves, rather than jumping on to the ‘next best thing so soon’.

Posted in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) | Leave a comment

Improving ERP Usability

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Manny Buigas

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have always offered powerful capabilities for managing operational data and improving business efficiency. Today’s organizations realize that ERP solutions are critical to helping them serve customers throughout their lifecycle and providing the accurate, up-to-date information they need to make better decisions more quickly.  And modern ERP solutions are delivering these capabilities with greater ease of use which further improves their benefits and ROI.

The best ERP vendors today are meeting customer demands by upgrading their solutions with a wide range of capabilities that improve usability. Read the “Improving ERP Usability” whitepaper which details the business impact of modern usability enhancements which include visual processes, dashboards, an intuitive user interface, a common look and feel, configurability, SOA architecture, mobile interfaces, eCommerce integration and business intelligence. ERP solutions that incorporate these capabilities reduce training and implementation timeframes to deliver faster ROI, reduce total cost of ownership, improve productivity, improve staffing flexibility and enhance collaboration.

Today, organizations are looking to ERP solutions to help more types of users more efficiently and effectively perform their everyday activities of driving business change and improvement. Strategic companies are demanding that ERP solutions help expand traditional business processes to support the complete customer lifecycle—from first contact to contract to cash to care.

To support this new approach, ERP solutions must provide staff across the business with accurate, up-to-date information in a format they can easily access and disseminate. ERP solutions must also help organizations improve their ability to analyze information to make better decisions and make high-risk decisions more quickly and accurately. Users are no longer willing to spend time digging through reports or struggling with hard-to-use solutions. are anabolic steroids legal

Posted in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), May 2012, Newsletter | Leave a comment

Business Intelligence Can Unlock the Secrets of your Organizational DNA

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Tony Chiodo

For decades, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software has provided organizations with essential integration of information between business functions, allowing for a single repository of data from a variety of applications. ERP serves as the circulatory system for your organization, keeping everything moving and ensuring that every department has access to the data it requires. ERP is also a treasure trove of corporate DNA, storing data that can be used to measure, analyze and improve efficiencies between departments and overall organizational health.

Researchers are discovering that our DNA holds significant clues about medical risks and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses. Increasingly, doctors can use DNA markers to predict disease and help patients implement preventative therapies. Business Intelligence (BI) can do the same thing for a company. BI is a means of unlocking vast stores of data within ERP software and quickly extracting crucial nuggets needed to adapt and improve performance. BI can be used to help business recognize cost-savings opportunities, to discover new paths to growth, and proactively address market shifts.

Any organization with growth expectations should give serious consideration to the value of BI in extracting more from the data within ERP. In an Aberdeen report on the connection between ERP and BI, analysts stated that “ERP can transform data into information but BI tools are required to complete the transformation from information to intelligence.”

SMBs looking for this type of intelligence don’t need a Fortune 500 solution to get meaningful results. There are several BI solutions available, priced for the mid-market. This category of BI tools is easier to learn and use, and produces data in a format that everyone can understand. To deliver value, a BI solution must include these key features:

  1. Dashboards provide a graphical, at-a-glance view of the most important metrics and can be customized to individual business needs.
  2. Alerts monitor incoming data for specific conditions and automatically trigger emails or other communications to relevant employees and managers.
  3. Inquiry Tools for drill down into a specific time period, product line, department, or customer group, to quickly extract essential data.
  4. Multi-Dimensional Analysis Tools facilitate the import of data from multiple locations and while allowing the user to view the entire organization from a macro level.
  5. Quick Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) give stakeholders the ability to measure current performance on demand.
  6. Flexible Reporting Capabilities ensure an organization can create and generate reports that present essential data in a format that is most useful to decision-makers.
  7. Report Automation allows companies to be proactive in the reporting process, from creation to distribution, making it possible for them to respond quickly and effectively to changes.

The best way to approach the implementation of a results oriented BI tool is to ask the right questions. In an article on CIO.com, Gartner analyst Patrick Meehan suggested that “corporate executives should formulate two or three strategic business questions that need to be answered on a persistent basis and then determine what data must be regularly gathered and analyzed to answer them intelligently.” Well-implemented BI analytics can offer a significant advantage in today’s increasingly competitive business climate. The answers to your organization’s biggest questions are waiting to be discovered within existing ERP systems; let Business Intelligence be your map. steroids reddit

Posted in Business Intelligence (BI), May 2012, Newsletter | Leave a comment

Sage Product Name Changes

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Manny Buigas

In 2012 the names of many of Sage’s core accounting and ERP lines will be changing. These products will be identified with a numbering approach where higher numbers denote increasing levels of product capability or sophistication. The new product numbering sets will include Sage 50, Sage 100, Sage 300, and Sage 500. This will also bring the Sage naming system in North America in line with the Sage naming structure worldwide.

For our clients, Sage ERP MAS 90 and MAS 200 are becoming Sage 100 Standard ERP, Sage 100 Advanced ERP and Sage 100 Premium ERP. Sage ERP MAS 500 is becoming Sage 500 ERP. Sage ERP Accpac is becoming Sage 300 ERP, and SageCRM is becoming Sage CRM.

Posted in April 2012, News, Newsletter | Leave a comment

How to Find the Right Sales Tax and Use Tax Solution for Your Business

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Tony Chiodo

The market for sales and use tax solutions is harder to navigate than Times Square on New Year’s Eve. With all of the flashing lights, glitzy billboards, and noisy street vendors, it’s almost impossible to separate fact from fiction. On one side of the street you find shop after shop of desktop solution providers, and on the other, you find cloud application vendors. And it doesn’t stop there. On the next corner, you have to choose between single purpose tax providers and large conglomerates promising solutions for every imaginable business problem. Should you stick with established brands or boutique shops? And what about doing it yourself? Is that still a viable option? It’s enough to make you dizzy.

Finding the right sales tax solution doesn’t have to make your head spin. Read our whitepaper “Ignoring the Hype: How to Find the Right Sales and Use Tax Solution for Your Business.”

In this guided tour, we’ll help you eliminate the hype and separate fact from fiction so you can tell the difference between a real solution and a cheap knockoff. With proper information, you can be sure you won’t drop the ball on this important area of tax.

Posted in April 2012, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Newsletter | Leave a comment

Supply Chain Trends to Watch in 2012

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Manny Buigas

The Business Survey Committee of the Institute for Supply Management recently released its projections for the manufacturing industry. According to MarketWatch, ISM forecasts that manufacturing will continue to expand throughout 2012. Capital expenditures were up 11 percent in 2011 and are expected to increase nearly 2 percent in 2012.

ISM Forecast for 2012

Survey respondents report that the most challenging problems facing their businesses as they plan for 2012 are: poor sales (43.9 percent), government regulations (22 percent), inflation (17.4 percent), cost of labor (4.5 percent), quality of labor (4.5 percent), taxes (4.5 percent), and interest rates and finance (3 percent).

The panel also indicated that supply chain management practices will be improved in 2012 using the following strategies, listed in order: supplier performance management, strategic sourcing/supply base rationalization, demand planning/supplier lead time reduction, inventory management and control, and process and information systems improvements.

Trends to Watch

Based on these results, here are three supply chain trends to watch in 2012:

  1. Making tweaks to the lean supply chain. The natural disaster events of 2011 have dramatically shown the level of risk that companies expose themselves to when they rely on a small number of vendors. As the industry moves forward, companies will need to figure out how to effectively manage suppliers and develop a plan to handle potential supply chain disruptions. Bob Ferrari, a leading supply chain consultant notes in a recent Fortune article, “The question now is, has the quest for lowest-cost production and hyperlean supply chains overridden and exposed vulnerability to significant business risk?”
  2. New government regulations. The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, S.B. 657, (the “Act” or “SB 657”) went into effect on January 1, 2012. This Act must be followed by retail sellers and manufacturers doing business in California with more than $100 million in annual gross receipts. Essentially companies will be required to announce what steps are taken to ensure their product supply chain is free from slavery and human trafficking. There are a number of steps you should take in order to prepare for compliance with this Act. For example, Sedgwick LLP recommends: “Determine whether a system is in place to ensure accountability and sufficient training for those employees responsible for managing the company’s supply chain and, if not, implement appropriate procedures. This will likely entail an analysis of supplier guidelines to confirm that suppliers have integrated human rights policies into their guidelines and standards.”
  3. A return to speculative construction? SC Digest reports that “Speculative new construction will be the story of 2012, after two years of literally no new spec construction in the U.S.” In a report by Grubb & Ellis, vacancy rates have been declining and currently there is 10 million square feet of speculative construction under way.

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Posted in April 2012, Newsletter, Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) | Leave a comment

Key Ways to Advance Your Company’s Talent Management Strategy

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Tony Chiodo

Savvy leaders realize the importance of developing their internal bench strength today to competitively address the organizational demands of tomorrow. In reality, identifying and adopting the ideal components needed to support an integrated performance and learning management process is complex and time-consuming. For midsized organizations with limited resources, it’s even more challenging. Developing an organizational performance management process typically marks the first step toward a more integrated approach to talent management in midsized companies. During these formative stages, it’s best to take a systematic approach based on best practices that strengthen both the employee and the bottom-line, performance outcomes of your organization. The very phrase “best practice” is subjective and carries many meanings depending on an organization’s culture. What might be a best practice for one organization or industry may not be successful or acceptable in another.

So where do you begin as you attempt to make the grade in developing an effective talent management process based on best practices?

Begin by focusing on the five core internal performance management components necessary to support your key business priorities:

  1. Move beyond traditional orientation to more strategic onboarding practices.
  2. Develop and cascade S.M.A.R.T. goals throughout the organization to affect bottom-line results.
  3. Implement proven assessment and development tools to heighten workforce effectiveness.
  4. Reinforce workforce potential by identifying roles and individuals for succession planning purposes.
  5. Deepen employee engagement by creating a culture of shared accountability for career growth and development.

Learn more by downloading our whitepaper. For more information, watch this interactive video about HR compliance here.

Posted in April 2012, Human Resources (HR), Newsletter | Leave a comment

Social Media Becoming a Top Trend for Business Intelligence

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Manny Buigas

The explosion of social media is causing businesses to rethink how they capture and analyze social information for business intelligence purposes. What started just a decade ago with a few novel websites such as Classmates.com has evolved into a fully integrated world of hundreds of social networks and tools that have fundamentally changed the way we think and interact. There will be more tools and networks tomorrow–and all of this new technology is changing and evolving at a dizzying pace.

The world’s gone social
What’s even more astounding it the rate of adoption. There are over 2 billion Internet users in the world, according to Internet World Stats. But according to recent statistics, almost half of them are Facebook users and Twitter users who log hundreds of millions of tweets every single day. People view pages at YouTube 92 billion times per month! Out there–among all the tweets, status updates, and viral videos–is important information about how your company is viewed by customers, partners, and the public.

How can your organization benefit from so much social data?
Many companies have spent the past year or two “catching up” with the social media whirlwind. Unless your organization was an early adopter, you may have only recently embraced a social marketing strategy or adopted social media as a form of customer feedback in customer service and support. Perhaps your organization is considering social media to provide effective collaboration tools for internal use across the enterprise, or you are using it for recruiting and engagement purposes within your human resources department.

Where does all of that data go? How can it be leveraged for more powerful purposes? You’ll find the answer in business intelligence (BI) applications. Today’s BI tools are starting to incorporate data streams from social media platforms. Expect much more of this functionality to evolve with future application development.

Social analytics will empower your organization to better understand how your customers behave, what they like about your products, how they view your business and your brand, and what they recommend to their friends and colleagues. As your organization is better able to capture and leverage this information, you can use it to help make decisions about sales approaches, marketing promotions, public relations efforts, product development, and more.

The first step toward harnessing the analytical potential of social media is to integrate all kinds of business information across your organization with a solid BI tool.

Posted in April 2012, Business Intelligence (BI), Newsletter | Leave a comment