World, meet Jimmie BrainSell. A superhero taking on business pains from around the world. Sales people all over the world are restricted by sub-par technology and less than ideal operations. Have no fear… Jimmie BrainSell is here!
Being ever so timely, SugarCRM announced their iPad application at SugarCon this past April. As a devoted Apple fanatic, I have to say, this adds a major cool-factor to Sugar.
The app is fully customizable and it looks pretty ridiculous.
Some big highlights…
Quick view display: shows the most urgent opportunities, important contacts, and upcoming meetings.
Customizable modules screen:Users can drag-and-drop their favorite SugarCRM modules to easily organize the application according to their needs.
Data synchronization:Keep contacts and other information synced between the iPad and the cloud.
Easy drill-down: Quickly access important customer information that is most relevant while on-the-road.
The iPad is awesome, but let’s not forget it’s little brother, iPhone, which is outfitted with similar functionality.
Sugar’s CEO Larry Augustine spoke about the new release at Sugarcon…
“We’re pleased to announce a native application of Sugar on the iPad,” noted Larry Augustin, CEO, SugarCRM. “The ultra-portability and groundbreaking iPad user experience that is made possible for us as a web-based business by Appcelerator fits perfectly with the extensible SugarCRM architecture that can scale across multiple platforms. We believe that our mobile workforce customers will benefit greatly from the enhanced capabilities that this new platform offers.”
Overall, it looks like a very handy little piece of technology.
Our latest guest blogger is Kate DeSantis, Marketing Director at Scanco LLC (a barcoding company that we dig). Scanco meets the needs of thousands of distribution and manufacturing operations with an extensive line of warehouse management solutions designed to integrate with Sage Software’s MAS 90/MAS 200 and MAS 500 ERP. Their products provide the functionality to perform RFID integration, inventory management, work order processing, remote sales and barcode printing. Visit www.scanco.com
Starting off on the right foot…
When companies contact us about automating their distribution processes, they have great ideas about handhelds and software but they are always unsure about how to start labeling their products. It’s understandable because there are LOTS of options. Here’s a quick breakdown of three scenarios and the best fit option for each:
1. Barcodes do not exist anywhere on my inventory.
First, don’t worry. We’ll get your products labeled in no time! The easiest way to get started is to label your products as they are received. You can generate those labels from a handheld or from the desktop to a thermal printer using a product called LabelXpert Designer. Any field that exists in MAS 90/MAS 200 or MAS 500 can be displayed on the label and those label designs are stored as templates. A handheld or desktop user can print labels for all items received or one at a time (perfect for companies with serialized or lotted inventory). The great thing about LabelXpert is that it reads data straight from your MAS system and does not rely on manual data entry. Once it’s labeled, you can trust that it is correct and scan away!
2. Most of my products are barcoded by the manufacturer but I have a few product lines that need some stripes.
You have two options for this particular scenario:
Our Duct Tape Marketing friend Dan Kraus cited an amazing web site this morning on his blog and Twitter. I got so excited about the new site that I’m dropping everything to write about it. That’s right, everything.
The site is fiverr.com. Regular people post services they’re willing to do for $5, no more, no less. There is a huge spread of offerings. Some are silly, “I will put a live tarantula in my mouth for $5″ and some are exceptional deals “I will make you a beautiful website or blog for $5″
I’ll take that!
Besides business stuff, there are great gift ideas, “I will draw a picture of your pet for $5″ or “I will make a custom greeting card for $5″
Social media also shines on the site. People are offering to post comments on your blog for $5, get you Twitter followers and even Facebook fans.
I had a fuzzy feeling looking through the site. People connecting and offering services they love to do for a very fair price of $5.
Filippo Passerini knows that a customer who likes to lather up with Pantene shampoo is probably in the market for Olay moisturizer products too — and as Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Procter & Gamble, a growing part of his job is making sure that the company makes both sales.
“We connect the dots with the information we have,” he says.
After a year of hunkering down and slashing costs, many corporations are growing again — and technology is leading the way. A recent Gartner survey found revenue growth trumped cost cuts as CIO’s’ top priority for 2010.
Data mining is the process of extracting patterns from data.
Humans have been “manually” extracting patterns from data for centuries, but the increasing volume of data in modern times has called for more automated approaches.
“Pattern mining” is a data mining technique that involves finding existing patterns in data. In this context patterns often means association rules. The original motivation for searching association rules came from the desire to analyze supermarket transaction data, that is, to examine customer behavior in terms of the purchased products. For example, associations rule “beer ⇒ chips (80%)” states that four out of five customers that bought beer also bought chips.
Data mining in ERP applications can contribute significantly to the bottom line. Rather than randomly contacting a prospect or customer through a call center or sending mail, a company can concentrate its efforts on prospects that are predicted to have a high likelihood of responding to an offer.
Instead of sending an offer to all people, a company may only want to send offers to customers that will likely take the offer. It may also want to determine which customers are going to be profitable over a window of time and only send the offers to those that are likely to be profitable.
Is your ERP and CRM software helping grow your revenue and profit? Does your staff know how to data mine the tons of the historical customer data you have been accumulating over the years? Do you see your accounting staff and software as just an Expense Center rather than a Revenue Growth Center?
PCMag.com released a review of SugarCRM 6 on Tuesday and it looks pretty delish. They gave the new version (due for release on July 1) 4 out of 5, or “very good.”
Some highlights…
“The new version includes a much cleaner home screen that focuses more on current processes and workflow. It utilizes a combination of AJAX and other recent Web development capabilities. The rest of SugarCRM’s package remains as powerful as ever.”
Sugar Includes More Than Others
“It’s important to note that both paid packages include many built-in features that cost extra on other services. One example is forecasting, which lets you track how your individual salespeople have updated their projected results over the course of a given quarter. To get this with Salesforce.com…you have to pony up for the Enterprise version, which costs $125 per user per month—over four times what SugarCRM costs.”
Improved Workflow
“SugarCRM works hard to keep your main view uncluttered. The new task-driven home page focuses on upcoming calls, meetings, and opportunities, while a feed on the right shows current activity within the system. Search results appear in overlays, instead of on separate browser pages. Mouse over each module, and a pop-up will open that goes into more detail.”
Logging Calls Is A Breeze
“If a customer call comes in while you’re working on something else, click Log Call, and an overlay drops down that lets you attach new information to the contact on the phone, without losing the data you were originally working on somewhere else in the app.”
Sage MAS Intelligence is the Sage product that will replace FRx in MAS 90, MAS 200 and MAS 500. In the short term, customers will have the ability to use both FRx and Sage MAS Intelligence. While they have some of the same basic reporting features, there are many advantages of using Sage MAS Intelligence.
Sage MAS Intelligence empowers managers to quickly and easily obtain operations and strategic planning information from their Sage MAS system. Based on the familiar Microsoft Excel application, Sage MAS Intelligence effortlessly creates reports and analyzes data that is vital to growth and profitability. Managers can spend more time focusing on information analysis and interpretation and less time pulling the data together.
Sage will discontinue shipping FRx with new license sales by the end of 2010, and will no longer include FRx in the next release of Sage MAS 90 and 200 (4.5) and Sage MAS 500 (v7.4). Sage will continue support of FRx as part of previous Sage MAS releases.
New and current Sage MAS 90 and 200 customers will receive a single user Report Manager license for 4.4 as an on-plan benefit. New and current Sage MAS 500 customers will receive four single user Report Manager license for 7.3 as an on-plan benefit.
Additional promotional offers may also be made available for purchase of additional user licenses, and connector modules. Details will be provided soon.
Sage MAS Intelligence will be available for customers on
• Sage MAS 90 and 200 v4.4
• Sage MAS 90 and 200 Extended Enterprise Suite 1.4
• Sage MAS 500 v7.3
The “free” version provides basic functionality.
Each client will get a one User License for the Sage MAS Intelligence Report Manager, which allows a user to:
• Author new reports (organizing, creating, editing), as well as filter and aggregate data based on existing data containers.
• Run, edit and clone the standard report templates for management (financial reports, dashboards, financial trend analysis), as well as general ledger, sales, purchases, and inventory transactional reports
• Set permissions/security on all reports.
• Connect to one ERP company database at a time (if running two or more companies, user can redirect to relevant company connection)
Please contact me if you want further information:
Kevin Cook, Senior VP of ERP & Open Source, BrainSell
866-356-2654 x204
The Federal Hire Act of 2010 has a few if’s and but’s. Here’s the new legislation in a nutshell…
Companies who hire unemployed workers this year (after Feb. 3, 2010 and before Jan. 1, 2011) may qualify for a 6.2-percent payroll tax incentive. In effect, they will be exempt from their share of Social Security taxes on wages paid to these workers after March 18, 2010.
This reduced tax withholding will have no effect on the employee’s future Social Security benefits, and employers would still need to withhold the employee’s 6.2-percent share of Social Security taxes, as well as income taxes. The employer and employee’s shares of Medicare taxes would also still apply to these wages.
In addition, for each worker retained for at least a year, businesses may claim an additional general business tax credit, up to $1,000 per worker, when they file their 2011 income tax returns. For finer details, check out the Fed Site.
The two tax benefits are especially helpful to employers who are adding positions to their payrolls. New hires filling existing positions also qualify but only if the workers they are replacing left voluntarily or for cause. Family members and other relatives do not qualify.
This is my first blog. I’m sure you will be able to tell this if you continue reading.
I am a consultantaccountantbusiness man – old school kind of guy. I get the idea of using emails and postcards and phone calls to generate business. But this new age stuff – blogs, Facebook and Twitter – I’m not too sure about.
However, my new boss, Jim, says this is the way of the future. Something about in-bound vs. out-bound marketing mumbo jumbo. Plus, Jim has hired this twenty-something Blog Queen that we have to “communicate” with for bringing in new business (only kidding, she is a great gal – or can I still say gal?).
So I am going to get with the program and try to come up with ideas or thoughts or bring up things that I think would be of interest to business people and see what happens. Over time I will become good at it. I am sure of this because I believe in hard work and commitment to a task. Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, maintains that anyone who expects to become world-class at anything had better plan on doing it.
And what is “it?”
Think meeting face to face is a thing of the past? Think again; there’s nothing like breaking bread, shaking hands, and getting to know your customer. Even with new technology like online meetings (gotomeeting), instant messaging, email, and social media (think Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), face to face holds real value in the business world.
What I really enjoy about our business is meeting clients and learning about their business as well as their people. During a client meeting I have no other agenda but to learn and often it’s surprising to find out what I didn’t know. On Wednesday last week I had the pleasure of meeting a new client, Susan at Conproco. We had the chance to get to know one another and gain an understanding of the issues she faces day to day while using Sage MAS 200 ERP software that we service and supply.
We had far more in common than just the accounting/ERP software we service. In fact, Conproco is a manufacturer of architectural coatings and masonry applications. In my earlier career, my family business was also a manufacturer of architectural coatings and my understanding of the business is part of my DNA. I’d worked almost every facet of such a manufacturing operation. Not only did I have an appreciation for their business, and a new means to provide better service with personal experience, but I also enjoyed a walk down memory lane. My thoughts went all the back to my teenage years and begging my dad to let me work at the factory. It was a place I had loved to visit and come to enjoy the smell of paint.
You may think this meeting trivial, however, for me it was an awakening to how we might be able to help this client further. All because of a fateful face to face meeting. Even better, when we asked Susan what restaurants were nearby she meantioned great place called Margarita’s. Funny, also a client of ours. I had to make sure we gave our business back to another great customer.
Get out and see you customers. In a market where new business may be a zero sum game, building relationships and knowing how to help the ones you serve will be one of your best investments.
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