Accounting Software and Credit Card Processing

Accounting Software and Credit Card Payment Processing

Credit card payments seem to be a wave of the future. When I read statements form the Internet like; “SVP of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, says, “Credit and debit card services play a vital role in our economy. 70% percent of our GDP is based on consumer purchases, and credit cards and debit cards make that easy, safe and fast.” This has to mean something…!

For the business customer that does not currently take payment in the form of credit card, the industry seems daunting and laden with fears of fraud and high costs. Some of those are true realities, but taking a step back and following some tips and common sense can ensure the process to start accepting credit cards can be less painful and the business result can be extremely lucrative.

For business customers that already accept credit cards, they already know the reward and the administrative hassle when the business runs an ERP/Accounting System. Depending on the ERP/Account System, the capabilities to process credit card transactions within the ERP/Accounting System can be limited and expensive. There are other options such as third party solutions that specifically designed to work with certain ERP systems and merchant account providers.

For anyone who wants to start accepting credit cards as form of payment for services or goods, you will need a merchant account provider and or a gateway provider. Often, merchant account providers either own, or are aligned to existing gateway providers.

A business cannot transact credit card transactions without a merchant account and gateway.

A merchant account is essentially a bank account where your credit card transaction payments will be deposited. Merchant account providers will charge fees (%) per each transaction and depending on the transaction, the fees may change accordingly based on the level of risk the merchant account determines. Risk to merchant account provider?  Well yes, the merchant account provider is responsible for collecting the funds from the credit card issuing banks. If the transaction is/was fraudulent, and the transaction funds have been deposited, and the business owner has withdrawn the funds, the merchant account provider assumes the risk.

Gateway providers electronically transact the credit card transaction between the issuing banks and merchant account providers. It is the gateway that allows communication to the issuing credit card banks to verify funds do exist in the customer account. Gateways also charge fees per transaction or monthly fees. Depending on the number of transaction per month, a customer my pay both monthly and per transaction fees.

As I spoke about merchant account and gateway fees, there are other fees that the credit card issuing bank changes. They are called Interchange fees. Everyone who accepts credit cards pays Interchange fees above any merchant account/gateway fees. Merchant account providers and gateway providers do not have control or receive any revenue from Interchange fees. These fees are simply the industry standard monitored by the federal government or within the governing body of any country where merchant account is located.

Payment processing solutions integrated with existing ERP/Accounting systems do exist. If the manufacturer/developer of the ERP/Accounting System does not offer a built-in solution, there are many third party software developers for each major ERP/Accounting Systems manufacturer.  Payment processing software add-on’s can save the business owner hours if not days in time and several thousand dollars in money depending on how the business currently enters the credit card transaction data back into their ERP/Accounting System. This is one of main benefits in payment processing solutions that integrate with ERP/Accounting System. Often the payment processing software will offer further tools for mass credit card processing or recurring payment processing. The advantages of automating through software are a great benefit for any business customer who has many customers and many transactions per day.

Choosing the software to purchase is more a reality of finding out who offers the solution. Although this is one of the newest types of payment processing solutions, there are at least one or two you can use that fully integrates with existing ERP/Accounting Systems. Seek help from your business partner that installed your existing ERP/Accounting Systems. Choose wisely as you will need to select a provider that is already PCI Compliant. If you currently process credit cards, expect that you may need to switch merchant account providers when choosing a specific payment processing software solution.

In choosing a merchant account provider it’s matter of understanding what your needs are now and in the future.  The merchant account industry is hyper competitive which results in low rates for everyone. The most important aspect in your decision, is what other services does the merchant account provider provide? You may want to integrate into an ERP/Account System or you may need recurring payment solutions; each merchant account provider should fit within your needs and grow with your business.  Always ask the merchant account provider to walk you through the merchant account contract and especially Schedule A, which lists all fees and when they will be charged. Knowledge is power and you should do everything possible to stay informed.

As mentioned, the gateway often is part of the merchant account service. Often the customer does not have a choice of gateway as merchant account providers do get a small portion of the revenue as part of their alignment of that gateway. Where you can choose a gateway only service may be through utilizing software to automate your payment processing needs or if the gateway cannot process your payment based on any rules/policies that the gateway provider may have. Fortunately, the merchant application process will highlight any potential roadblocks that may occur.

Payment processing solutions for any business is always a good idea. Before taking any initial steps in either accepting credit cards or installing payment-processing software, take a look at you own sales transactions. Estimate that fee’s can affect your revenues, but payment-processing solutions offer the ability to sell more goods and services and recognize your funds quicker. As in the old business philosophy, “You need to spend money to make money”. Payment processing solutions certainly fit in that philosophy.

Article by:

Carlos Balagat
Director of Business Development, Paytelligence
carlos@paytelligence.com
www.paytelligence.com
(800) 955-3060 Office

For more information please contact Rick Chase 800-294-2900 x 111

December 11th, 2010
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Posted in Accounting Software, Credit Card Payment Processing | No Comments »

Intercompany Transaction – General Ledger – Accounting Software

Intercompany Transaction – General Ledger – Accounting Software

At least 10% of our clients ask for such functionality and it is quite important to them. Sage Accpac ERP is one of the fewest accounting software packages out there that does this very well. Most of the clients that come to us wanting this functionality are using something like QuickBooks where it is impossible to do. QuickBooks does not even support multi-company functionality where you do consolidations let alone intercompany transactions.

So what is intercompany transaction? Intercompany Transaction is the ability to post an invoice into one company and pay for it, yet distribute the liability and/or expense over multiple companies. Why is this functionality so important? It is quite important because it is time saving functionality. Imagine that you get an invoice for one of your companies in Canada while you’re in the US. You need to pay the invoice on their behalf make sure it is expensed on Canada’s books and not the US. If you have QuickBooks, you have to post transactions in both General Ledgers of the companies which means doing the work twice. Well in Sage Accpac ERP, you just need to do it once in one shot, and then the system will post the due-to and due-from in both ledgers.

As a controller or accounting person in any company, you would want to the least amount of mundane activities. Therefore a module like this always pays for itself. It eliminates errors, and even the problem of forgetting to do something.

See the link to our product.

If you have any questions, please call Rick Chase at 800-294-2900×111

November 23rd, 2010
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Posted in Accounting Software, Intercompany Transaction, Outgrown QuickBooks | No Comments »

Why should you stay current with your accounting software?

This is a common question that is asked by our clients “why should we stay current with our software?” Here is an article written by one of our consultnats, Jim Love.

Issues that arise when clients do not stay in the normal upgrade cycle  

We are in the process of upgrading a client that is eight versions back.  That is, eight new versions of Accpac have been released since the version that this client is using.  Nine, if you count 5.3B as a separate version from 5.3A.

Due to the changes in Accpac over the years, particularly three significant changes to the database structure, three separate upgrades must be performed to convert the data from the running version to the current version.  An upgrade has to be done in each of two intermediate versions, prior to upgrading to the current version.   Each of these upgrades is akin to doing a full, typical upgrade.

In order to accomplish this, three separate (virtual) machines had to be set up from scratch, each with a different version of Accpac.  We typically maintain computers running the current and last prior version of Accpac to better serve our clients.  And when a new version is released, we will, as a rule, have three versions of Accpac running for a time.  But that is about it.

Setting up a new computer, even just a virtual machine, is very time consuming.  The operating system has to be installed, all of the patches/product updates/services packs for that OS must be installed, generally requiring several reboots in the process, a database engine must be installed and configured, Microsoft Office (or at least Excel) must be installed, and then all of the patches/product updates/ services packs for that must be installed and applied, often requiring, again, multiple reboots in the process. 

Old Accpac patches no longer readily available had to be located and installed.  As a stated policy, Sage only supports the current and last two prior versions of Accpac, and until recently, they only supported one prior version.  Because of this, considerable time and effort was required to hunt down and obtain old product updates that were required for this upgrade. 

In addition, this client uses an Accpac application that no longer exists in the same form.  The Sales Analysis program developed by Sage Accpac was abandoned subsequent to the purchase by Accpac of the developer company of a competing (and superior) Sales Analysis program.  And since that prior program was shelved four versions back, a considerable amount of research and testing was involved in order to migrate that data.  Again, this was research in an area where materials are no longer readily available from Sage.

Another application used by this client, Lot Tracking, has undergone such significant changes through the years that it is essentially no longer the same program, either.  Again, considerable time was required for testing, research, and the obtaining of required but no longer readily available patches.

And, on top of everything else, the client is (wisely) choosing to move Accpac from a Pervasive database engine to a Microsoft SQL Server database engine.  Again, due to changes over the years, the running version of Accpac supports features that are incompatible between the two database formats.  Fixing this actually required hiring an outside specialist firm to “repair” the data, to make it compatible with SQL Server. 

At this point, the data has been repaired and a test upgrade has been successfully completed.  But it is appropriate to note that, even before the live upgrade has been started, approximately one hundred twenty (120) hours of service time has already gone into this upgrade.  We seldom need that much time to complete an upgrade, from start to finish, and when we do, it is for clients who have extensive customization and most often multiple companies.  The client in question, in this case, has no customization from us whatsoever, at least not at this point.  And only one Accpac company to upgrade.  And the live upgrade has yet to be started.  The time that we have spent so far, again, just getting to the point that we are ready to do the live upgrade, is probably more time than would have been spent, in total, doing four regular full upgrades, skipping every other version.  And the cost to the client of this upgrade is coming all at once, rather than in small chunks spread out over eight to ten years.

November 9th, 2010
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Benefits of Sage CRM by Job Title

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Sales Director

Name: John Maye

Title: Director of Sales

As Director of Sales, John Maye needs access to information at-a-glance about his sales team’s performance. With Sage CRM, all sales information is stored, tracked and reported, and information is displayed on the interactive dashboard. This gives John immediate insight into sales team performance while the easy-to-read graphics give him an instant view of how his pipeline is doing at any point in time.

Sage CRM automates the sales process for maximum effectiveness, ensuring no deal ‘falls through the cracks’. It boosts his sales team’s productivity by delivering a single view of leads, opportunities, tasks and activities on the interactive dashboard, thereby maximizing their time.

With Sage CRM Sales Force Automation, real-time sales opportunity analysis is provided instantly. Sage CRM provides a snapshot of all opportunities within the sales pipeline, allowing John’s sales team to effectively analyze and manage deals at every stage.

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Sales Director

  • Improves transparency in the sales pipeline
  • Offers exception monitoring/alerts
  • Enables corrective action against variance earlier in the sales cycle
  • Enhances sales forecast accuracy
  • Monitors progress against quota
  • Enables quarterly sales performance monitoring
  • Optimizes sales resource against high potential opportunities
  • Accelerates opportunity development
  • Leads to improved win/loss ratio
  • Leads to shortened sales cycles
  • Increases prospect-to-customer conversion rate
  • Delivers metrics on most valuable customers
  • Reporting and analytics features to identify customer trends and profiles
  • Improves consistency across the sales organization
  • Enables more effective identification of new market opportunities
  • Maximizes cross and up-sell opportunities
  • Reduces sales training costs
  • Reduces sales administration
  • Eliminates manual/duplicated sales processes
  • Improves team collaboration on opportunities
  • Decreases time spent on administrative tasks
  • Improves prospect targeting
  • Increases revenue yield per opportunity and account
  • Leverages intelligence from back-office applications
  • Provides visibility on sales team performance including identifying sales opportunities and pipeline potential
  • Boosts sales team productivity by delivering a single view of leads, opportunities, tasks and activities on the interactive dashboard

 

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Marketing Director

Name: Brandon Miller

Title: Marketing Director

As Marketing Director, Brandon Miller is responsible for the overall marketing plan and marketing budget. In recent times, his budget and resources have been severely cut, meaning he now has to do more with less and is under increased pressure to demonstrate return on marketing investment.

Sage CRM provides marketing users with the tools to target the right customer at the right time, eliminating guesswork and optimizing marketing resources. With Sage CRM, Brandon can track and analyze marketing activities efficiently and easily.

Sage CRM provides effective controls for monitoring marketing budget and can also calculate direct revenue yields. Sage CRM’s reporting capabilities helps Brandon track lead sources so he can focus his marketing activity on prospects that are more likely to purchase, increasing RoI and maximizing marketing spend. Graphs and reports can be displayed on the interactive dashboard for quick reference, enabling Brandon to analyze data in real-time. And integration with leading Sage ERP systems enables Brandon to generate accurate ROI calculations for better marketing measurement.

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Marketing Director

  • Reduces marketing administrative overhead and enables marketing budget to be tracked and managed
  • Leads to decreased cost per lead
  • Leads to decreased cost per customer acquired
  • Reduces marketing campaign lead times
  • Delivers detailed information on the lifetime value of customers and enables profitable customers to be easily identified
  • Enables real-time marketing performance analysis
  • Optimizes marketing spend
  • Enables tracking of variance against targets
  • Enables close alignment with the sales department and other key stakeholders
  • Provides improved intelligence to marketing on lead generation activities
  • Enables accurate measurement of marketing campaign ROI
  • Ensures customers receive the right marketing message at the right time
  • Delivers the ability to identify and provide customized products/services to different customer segments
  • Delivers a single view of relevant and comprehensive marketing information on the interactive dashboard

 

Benefits of Sage CRM to IT Management

IT Administrator

Name: Sue Chang

Title: IT Administrator

Sue Chang has the challenge of ensuring that all systems are working at their optimum level and that disruption to systems is minimized. Her role in choosing the right CRM solution was critical because it had to be one that could be rapidly deployed and easily customized with minimum cost or disruption to the business.

Her organization wanted a CRM solution that they could deploy quickly and easily so Sage CRM was the perfect choice for them. They were up and running in a week thanks to the expertise of Sage’s local on-the-ground business partner who really understood their requirements and helped ensure Sage CRM mapped to their specific business needs.

For Sue, Sage CRM’s deep integration with their Sage ERP system was an added bonus. And because Sage CRM provides extensive configuration and codeless customization capabilities, Sue has been able to easily tailor the solution to her organization’s particular needs. Sage CRM’s open architecture reduced development time for seamless integration with other third party applications, speeding up deployment time and reducing the total cost of ownership.

The on-screen coaching throughout Sage CRM and the easy-to-navigate interface has also meant that Sue’s training time for new users has been kept to a minimum.

Benefits of Sage CRM to IT Management

  • Offers reduced TCO
  • Requires minimum configuration out-of-the-box
  • Lowers administration and deployment costs
  • Modern web services, service oriented architecture
  • Easy to integrate with third party applications
  • Easy to integrate with on-demand services
  • Offers integration with leading Sage ERP systems
  • Leverages previous investments in back-office solutions and internet technologies
  • Avoids “rip and replace” in the future
  • Offers system scalability and performance
  • Scalable solution to accommodate growth and change
  • Offers flexibility to adapt to unique business processes
  • Supports mobile and disconnected staff
  • Empowers end-users to be self-reliant around reporting requirements
  • Delivers enhanced security and privacy of customer and corporate data
  • Enables decreased administration associated with regulatory compliancy
  • Enables IT to spend more time on strategic projects rather than day-to-day issue resolution

 

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Sales Executive

Sales Executive

Name: Aaron James

Title: Sales Executive

Aaron James’ role as Sales Executive requires him to sell his organization’s product and hit sales targets every month. Sage CRM empowers him to do this from day one by giving him instant access to calendars, accounts, reports, pipelines, contacts and call lists.

All the information he needs to do his job effectively is available on the Sage CRM interactive dashboard for maximum productivity and ease-of-use. From here, Aaron can control and manage all his daily activities and tasks. Integration of Sage CRM with a leading Sage ERP system gives Aaron access to both financial and non-financial customer data, giving him a 360 degree view of his customer. Having the most up-to-date and complete customer information at his fingertips means Aaron has a better view of his customers and prospects at all times.

With Sage CRM Sales Force Automation, real-time sales opportunity analysis is provided instantly. Sage CRM provides a snapshot of all opportunities within the sales pipeline, enabling Aaron to effectively analyze and manage deals at every stage.

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Sales Executive

  • Increases visibility on customer interaction across departments and activities
  • Automates proposal and quotation processes
  • Eliminates manual/duplicated sales processes
  • Enables more effective collaboration with other sales executives and sales management
  • Optimizes focus on high-potential opportunities
  • Leverages financial information from the back-office system
  • Leverages market and competitive intelligence to improve win rates
  • Reduces time spent in the office (more time on sales calls) on sales administration
  • Enables data entry to be done once only
  • Reduces the amount of time spent forecasting
  • Assists to better organize and co-ordinate meetings and tasks
  • Ability to access and download customer information remotely or offline increasing sales effectiveness

 

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Customer Service and Support Executive

Name: Amanda Hughes

Title: Customer Service and Support Executive

Amanda Hughes is responsible for ensuring that customers receive an adequate level of service at all times; responding to information requests, handling and resolving customer complaints and updating and maintaining all this information in the organization’s system.

The intuitive Sage CRM interactive dashboard allows Amanda to easily view real-time customer information and resolve their issues effortlessly by employing the escalation features of Sage CRM.

Sage CRM provides Amanda and her colleagues with the ability to record customer queries/incidents which need to be followed-up. If a case is not followed-up within the time allocated, it will automatically trigger an escalation procedure to inform her manager. This ensures that customer cases are attended to in a timely manner and that issues do not ‘get lost between the cracks’. Cases can be tracked and actioned directly from the interactive dashboard without the need to switch between screens, enabling Amanda to get more done every day.

Additionally, integration with their Sage ERP system gives Amanda access to back- and front-office customer data for a complete 360 degree view of every customer, making every customer interaction more informative and effective.

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Customer Service and Support Executive

  • Enables customer satisfaction measurement and benchmarking
  • Assists with performance management and motivates staff
  • Captures feedback from customers on product/service issues
  • Ensures issues never ‘get lost between the cracks’
  • Reduces time spent researching issues by recording and centralizing customer interactions
  • Enables customer issues to be tracked and responded to, regardless of who answers the phone or received the e-mail
  • Enables staff to meet customer’s expectations
  • Identifies profile of most profitable customer to help with making out-bound calls
  • Improves response times to customer service requests
  • Ability to multi-task to service customer calls while accessing multiple resources for solutions
  • Reduces hold times for customers requiring customer support
  • Reduces the average time to resolve an issue
  • Increases the number of queries resolved on first contact rate
  • Leads to decreased number of service escalations
  • Decreases the number of customer complaints received
  • Extends customer service through 24×7 self-service options
  • Enables benchmarking/score carding of customer service operations on an on-going basis
  • Leads to increased customer retention
  • Leads to decreased cost of customer retention

 

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Marketing Programs Manager

Name: Yvette Fournier

Title: Marketing Programs Manager

As Marketing Programs Manager, Yvette Fournier is responsible for planning and executing effective marketing campaigns. With less budget at her disposal than in previous years, she needs to ensure that every campaign can be tracked and measured easily and effectively.

Gaining a deeper understanding of her customers and their buying behavior is critical in today’s competitive marketplace and Sage CRM provides the tools that Yvette needs to plan, execute and audit highly targeted marketing campaigns. Sage CRM can track and manage marketing campaigns from lead to close of sale, enabling Yvette to effectively assess the efficiency of her campaigns.

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Marketing Programs Manager

  • Enables marketing programs to be planned more efficiently and effectively
  • Improves marketing campaign response rate
  • Reduces marketing campaign lead times
  • Produces highly targeted customer communications
  • Enables fully integrated, multi-channel marketing initiatives
  • Enables automated response tracking
  • Leads to decreased cost per lead
  • Leads to decreased cost per customer acquired
  • Provides improved intelligence to marketing on lead generation activities
  • Enables accurate measurement of marketing campaign ROI
  • Ensures customers receive the right marketing message at the right time
  • Delivers the ability to identify and provide customized products/services to different customer segments
  • Delivers a single view of relevant and comprehensive marketing information on the interactive dashboard

 

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Finance Director

Name: Paul Forde

Title: Director of Finance

Budget management and cost control are the key responsibilities of Paul Forde as Director of Finance. Due to the challenging economic climate, he keeps an even tighter grip on the purse strings these days, and only considers solutions that offer a low total cost of ownership and a fast return on investment.

Thanks to its ease of use and speed of deployment, Sage CRM is effective from day one, meaning it starts paying for itself immediately, delivering rapid ROI. As Sage CRM is quick and easy to customize, it was deployed quickly in Paul’s organization by their Sage-accredited Business Partner, reducing the total cost of ownership.

With Sage CRM, Paul has greater visibility on key performance metrics across his organization which he accesses daily through his bespoke interactive dashboard. Thanks to Sage CRM’s tight integration with his Sage ERP system, he now has a 360 degree view of the business across the front- and back-office, for more accurate business performance visibility. He can also drill down into the sales forecast and pipeline for greater insight and better business management.

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Finance Director

  • Drives revenue growth
  • Improves market share
  • Improves business/shareholder value
  • Improves profitability
  • Offers depth and breadth of functionality at a competitive price with a low TCO
  • Delivers rapid ROI
  • Leverages financial information from the back-office system for a complete view of the business
  • Measures customer value and identifies the most profitable customers
  • Enables easy management of revenue/budget variance
  • Enables real-time corporate performance management
  • Improves corporate visibility and control
  • Improved responsiveness to critical business needs
  • Offers flexible payment and deployment options, on-premise and on-demand

 

Benefits of Sage CRM to the General Manager

Name: Jon Delahaye

Title: General Manager

As the General Manager of his business, Jon Delahaye is responsible for strategic planning and management right across his organization. Understanding all the business areas, especially the commercial functions and having access to business performance metrics from right across the business to help critical decision-making are key to him.

Reporting and dashboards within Sage CRM give Jon instant insight into business and employee performance, facilitating informed business decision-making. By providing management with real-time analysis of the current situation, this enables him to monitor and take action on changing performance indicators.

Sage CRM assists Jon’s organization in accurately preparing sales forecasts; every day, senior executives can track exactly what deals are coming in from where, and identify emerging trends in different regions and market segments.

Sage CRM’s interactive dashboard delivers at-a-glance business performance metrics that enable Jon and his management team to make critical business decisions and conduct effective business planning as trading conditions change.

Sage CRM provides extensive central control over operations and budgets, helping senior management to control these areas more effectively in a highly cost-conscious world. Additionally, out-of-the-box integration with Jon’s Sage ERP systems gives him a 360 degree view of the business from front- to back-office for maximum visibility of business performance.

Benefits of Sage CRM to the General Manager

  • Drives revenue growth
  • Improves market share
  • Improves business/shareholder value
  • Improves profitability
  • Offers depth and breadth of functionality at a competitive price with a low TCO
  • Delivers rapid ROI
  • Leverages financial information from the back-office system for a complete view of the business
  • Measures customer value and identifies the most profitable customers
  • Increases customer acquisition rate
  • Reduces customer attrition rate
  • Enables easy management of revenue/budget variance
  • Enables real-time corporate performance management
  • Improves corporate visibility and control
  • Improved responsiveness to critical business needs
  • Improves sales forecast accuracy
  • Improves sales conversion rate
  • Improves competitive win rate

 

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Customer Service and Support Manager

Name: Johan Kloenne

Title: Customer Service and Support Manager

Johan Kloenne has direct responsibility for managing the customer service and support team, resolution of customer queries and provision of feedback on customer needs. He is responsible for the delivery of world-class service to customers and needs a system that enables him to achieve this effectively.

Sage CRM provides customer service management with a powerful tool to monitor agents’ performance. With Sage CRM, Johan can assess quantitative metrics such as case volume and case resolution times, as well as qualitative metrics such as the prioritization of cases and overall customer satisfaction. Customer queries are monitored in real-time to ensure that SLAs are reached. Information is displayed on the Sage CRM interactive dashboard for Johan’s ease of reference.

Using Sage CRM’s customizable workflow, Johan has been able to define customer care processes and escalation points. If a customer service case or query remains unresolved for longer than the predefined time, the workflow process triggers an automatic escalation notification to him, thereby ensuring no customer issues ‘fall through the cracks’.

Providing quality customer care and maintaining satisfied customers is a challenge for every business, now more than ever – Sage CRM’s customer service capabilities enable Johan and his team to deliver an exceptional customer experience to his customers every time.

Benefits of Sage CRM to the Customer Service and Support Manager

  • Enables customer satisfaction measurement and benchmarking
  • Increases productivity of customer support representatives
  • Provides self service to customers around common issues
  • Ensures issues never ‘get lost between the cracks’
  • Monitors service performance against service level agreements
  • Enables customer issues to be tracked and responded to, regardless of who answers the phone or received the e-mail
  • Reduces customer support costs
  • Improves response times to customer service requests
  • Reduces hold times for customers requiring customer support
  • Reduces the average time to resolve an issue
  • Increases the number of queries resolved on first contact rate
  • Leads to decreased number of service escalations
  • Decreases the number of customer complaints received
  • Extends customer service through 24×7 self service options
  • Enables benchmarking/score carding of customer service operations on an on-going basis
  • Leads to increased customer retention
  • Leads to decreased cost of customer retention

 

Source of information: www.sagecrm.com
For more information contatct Rick Chase at E2E Management 800-294-2900
www.e2emanagement.com

November 9th, 2010
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Increase Sales and Lower Operation Costs

Increase Sales and Lower Operation Costs

There are ways to increase sales. Of course with increased sales there is always an increase in operation costs. So how do you increase sales while lowering your operation costs?

I have been helping clients for over 20 years to increase sales and lower operation costs. I have visited with many CEOs and CFOs and what was common amongst all them was the use of spreadsheets and labor to do things that can be automated by fully integrated systems. So what am I talking about? I am talking about integrated accounting software with sales management and customer service software. Those systems are also called ERP and CRM systems as well.

 What would an operational improvement of 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, or even 5% do to your bottom line?

Annual Sales 1% 2% 3% 4% 5%
$5,000,000.00  $50,000.00  $100,000.00  $150,000.00  $200,000.00  $ 250,000.00
$10,000,000.00  $100,000.00  $200,000.00  $300,000.00  $400,000.00  $500,000.00
$20,000,000.00  $200,000.00  $400,000.00  $600,000.00  $800,000.00 $1,000,000.00
$50,000,000.00  $500,000.00 $1,000,000.00 $1,500,000.00 $2,000,000.00 $ 2,500,000.00
$100,000,000.00 $1,000,000.00 $2,000,000.00 $3,000,000.00 $4,000,000.00 $5,000,000.00

In reality, if you can eliminate spreadsheets and manual processes, you can eliminate at least one full time employee and improve the bottom line. What this also means is the speed of delivery. How much time does it take for anyone to copy, paste, save, recalculate, and other spreadsheet functions with room for errors to deliver a quote or a report? If you have all these processes automated, your response time and delivery to the customer are so much faster which means you can close business fast and Increase Sales while Lowering Operation Costs.

September 18th, 2010
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Sales Forecasting

There are a couple of ways to do sales forecasting, the messy/unreliable way, or organized and reliable way. Which one do you practice?

The old messy and unreliable way of doing sales forecasting is actually very interesting and comical. Monday morning meeting where the VP of Sales or CEO asks the sales guys to send him their forecasts of what business is going to close this month so they can discuss it with production and make important decisions on what to start planning for. The sales guys, some optimistic and never accurate, and some conservative and never accurate. They all provide their sales forecasts in spreadsheets or a plain paper with some stuff on it. The VP of Sales who is an expert in copy and paste into Excel will put the numbers together and knowing their salespeople, will add a certain percentage to this and subtract another percentage from that to come close to the numbers he/she thinks are the accurate (inaccurate) numbers. He/She gives those numbers to the President of the company and the Production manager and explains what they need so they can sell. The president of the company then says “yes, no, maybe” and then the production manager says “what, no way, yes way” and shares his/her Excel spreadsheets from the production they put together based on last month forecasts. Guess what, they over/under produced, pretty much all the time.

So what is the problem?

When a company runs a non-integrated system where Sales does not have a specific Sales Process to follow and input their opportunities of what business will close based on where the prospect is at in the sales cycle, then it is a mess. When the production department runs a non-integrated system where inventory production visibility is not available to sales or management but rather just sitting somewhere in someone’s head, then it is a mess. When the CEO or VP of Sales can’t run Business Intelligence by a click of a button (without Excel) to compare sales of last year to this year, last quarter to this quarter, increase in sales, decline in sales, then it is a mess.

 If this is your reality today, you need to make a change. The change you need to make is improve the operation by implementing a fully integrated systems and processes in your company where numbers are visible and accurate.

 What I am talking about here is this: Integrated End to End Business Management Software such as Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management. WOW, what in the world is that? That simply means, accounting software, manufacturing and inventory management software, sales force automation software, marketing automation software, order management software, shipping and receiving software, all fully integrated.

 Any questions: Call Rick Chase at 800-294-2900 x 111.

August 10th, 2010
Posted in Accounting Software, Business Intelligence Software or BI, Manufacturing Software | No Comments »

Power of Integrated E-Commerce with ERP Software

Power of Integrated E-Commerce with ERP Software

 One of our clients used to use QuickBooks to manage sales orders that were coming in through the phone and a non-integrated Yahoo e-commerce site. Orders were fine and consistent for about $5 million annually.  The client was unable to manage that much business on QuickBooks because:

  1. Lack of accuracy in the inventory management system
  2. Lack of business analytics
  3. Lack of integration to the e-commerce store
  4. Data corruption in QuickBooks because of the size limitation
  5. Lack of integrated CRM software

 

When you have that many problems in an accounting and inventory management system, you know your margins are shrinking as your business grows.

 We met with the client to evaluate the business issues and study the business process to see if there is a match between the need and our Sage Accpac ERP software.  We all determined that the match was right on. We set up a demo to show the features of the software that match the business needs and the client made the decision to move forward.

 What the client ended up getting was the following:

  1. Sage Accpac ERP
  2. ICINITI E-Commerce
  3. ICINITI Credit Card Processing
  4. Sage CRM
  5. MJD StarShip
  6. AccuDart Bar Coding
  7. DataSelf Analytics

 After all was that was implemented in a two months period and setting exact goals to measure the success of the implementation; the client used the Sage CRM system to send out an email to his customers with a special coupon to use on the ICINITI E-Commerce. When the client came in the morning he saw that there were 1,500 new orders that came through at night on the E-Commerce site that is fully integrated which means the orders were already entered into the Sage Accpac ERP Order Entry module and matched against the customers Accounts Receivable credit. All the client had to do is Pick, Pack, and Ship, then finalize the credit card transactions immediately through the system. By using the Business Analytics, the client was able to determine clients buying habits, what products they purchase the most and the least, and which clients are growing and which are slowing down and much more

Now imagine your company using the same setup that our client is using. Knowing what your margins are and what your cost per order is, how much more money do you think you made on a 1500 new orders that go directly through your Order Management or Inventory Control software.

Let me know if your company needs such integrated ERP, E-Commerce, CRM, and Shipping Software.

July 15th, 2010
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Posted in Accounting Software, E-Commerce Software | No Comments »

Selecting Manufacturing Software

Manufacturing Software

As a manufacturing company you would consider your business one or combination of the following types of manufacturing:

  1. Make to Order
  2. Make to Stock
  3. Engineer to Order
  4. Configure to Order

 When it comes to selecting a manufacturing software for your company, it would be very easy if you were only one of those. But if you are a combination of a few, then you have some work to do. Most software companies started by being strong in one of those areas but not in a combination of all.

 Here modules you need when you do the following:

  1. Make to Order
    1. Bill of Materials
    2. Work Order/ Job Costing
    3. Material Requirements Planning
  2. Make to Stock
    1. Bill of Materials
    2. Material Requirements Planning
  3. Engineer to Order
    1. Estimating
    2. Work Order/Job Costing
    3. Material Requirements
    4. Advanced Scheduling
  4. Configure to Order
    1. Estimating
    2. Work Order/Job Costing
    3. Material Requirements
    4. Product Configurator

 

To learn more about how to select an ERP system for manufacturing industry, please contact us for FREE Consulting Hour

July 13th, 2010
Posted in Manufacturing Software | No Comments »

Outgrown QuickBooks?

How do you know that you have outgrown your QuickBooks accounting software?

There are many indictators that should tell you it is time you need to switch to a real accounting software with more robust features for the size of your company. Here are some pointers for you to know you’ve outgrown your QuickBooks:

  1. You’re using Excel more and more for your reporting needs
  2. You’re adding more people in the accounting function to do tasks that can be avoided if you had a more robust system
  3. QuickBooks file size is about to blow up because of the limitation of the size and your data
  4. You have an non-integrated E-Commerce website and you have to do manual updates to both accounting system and your webstore
  5. You know that it is quite unacceptable to delete a transaction without having any audit trail
  6. There is no true Inventory Management capabilities so you end up doing things manually
  7. There is no true Manufacturing Software capabilities so you end up doing things manually

Can you list more issues with your QuickBooks? Please tell me.

Here are some tips on evaluating new accounting software:

  1. Make a list of all the reports you need to run your business
  2. Make a list of all the business issues your company faces and your ideas of possible solutions
  3. Find out what similar companies in your industry are using and happy with
  4. Make sure you have a set budget in mind to spend on the software, implementation, hardware, and support contracts

February 16th, 2010
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Posted in Accounting Software, Outgrown QuickBooks | No Comments »

EDI, why do we need it?

What are the benefits of EDI or Electronic Data Interchange?

Even though some may look at EDI as a huge problem because they simply don’t understand it, it is actually a blessing. Of course it is a blessing if it is integrated with your Accounting Software or Order Management/Inventory System. The reason I say that is because it is a requirement for you to do business with large companies like Walmart, Target, Petco, and few of the other large possible customers. If you are considering supplying any of them with product, then you have to do business with them their way. They will not call you to place an order with you over the phone or go visit your website to place an order on it. They will simply transmit a document/order to you via EDI and you need to send them a document/order confirmation back via EDI. Now of course when they send you this document, you have to manually print it, data enter it into your order management system, and then hopefully if you entered everything correctly, pick, pack, and ship, and send them back an documet telling them you have done that. Later on when you want to invoice them, you have to do the same by sending them a document electronically. Sound like a lot of time consumed and again hopefully without any errors just to do business with those large companies. Of course as you read in the agreement, they have the right to charge penalties if you make any mistakes on the orders or shipments. So what do you need to know?

Integrated EDI with Accounting and Order Entry/Inventory Management Software will give you the following benefits:

  1. Reduce manual data entry and errors
  2. Streamline transaction processing
  3. Increase productivity without increasing staff

Here are some of the document numbers that are required by your customers or vendors:

  • 204 Motor Carrier Shipment Information
  • 210 Motor Carrier Freight Details and Invoice
  • 214 Transportation Carrier Shipment Stats Message
  • 810 Invoice
  • 812 Credit Debit Adjustment
  • 816 Organizational Relationship
  • 820 Payment Order/Remittance Advice
  • 824 Application Advice
  • 830 Planning Schedule with Release Capability
  • 832 Price/Sales Catalog
  • 844 Product Transfer Account Adjustment
  • 845 Price Authorization Acknowledgement/Status
  • 846 Inventory Inquiry/Advice
  • 849 Response to Product Transfer Account Adjustment
  • 850 Purchase Order
  • 852 Product Activity Data
  • 855 Purchase Order Acknowledgment
  • 856 Shipment Notice/Manifest
  • 860 Purchase Order Change Request – Buyer Initiated
  • 861 Remittance Advice
  • 864 Text Message
  • 867 Product Transfer and Resale Report
  • 875 Grocery Products Purchase Order
  • 880 Grocery Products Invoice
  • 940 Warehouse Shipping Order
  • 943 Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipment Advice
  • 944 Warehouse Stock Transfer Receipt Advice
  • 945 Warehouse Shipping Advice
  • 947 Warehouse Inventory Adjustment Advice
  • 990 Response to a Load Tender
  • 997 Functional Acknowledgment

    • Those are some terms you need to be familiar with when talking to an EDI vendors:

    ANSI Acronym for American National Standards Institute, which is the organization that acts as coordinator and clearing house for information on national standards, including EDI.
    ANSI ASC X12 Also referred to simply as ANSI X12 or the X12 format, ANSI ASC X12 is the most common EDI standard used in North America.
    API Acronym for Application Program Interface, which is middleware provided by a software publisher that enables software created by other software publishers to integrate with their application.
    AS1 AS1 (Applicability Statement 1) is a specification for transporting data securely and reliably over the Internet using Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) as the communications protocol. SMTP is the de facto standard for exchanging e-mail transmissions across the Internet. Security is achieved by using digital certificates and encryption.
    AS2 AS2 (Applicability Statement 2) is a specification for transporting data securely and reliably over the Internet using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as the communications protocol. Security is achieved by using digital certificates and encryption.
    AS3 AS3 (Applicability Statement 3) is a specification for transporting data securely and reliably over the Inernet using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) as the communications protocol. Security is achieved by using digital certificates and encryption.
    ASC Acronym for Accredited Standards Committee, which is a team that has been chartered by ANSI to develop a specific set of standards.
    ASN An Advanced Ship Notice, or ASN, is also known as the 856 transaction in EDI parlance. ASNs indicate when a shipment was sent, the carrier used to ship it, and how it was packed.
    Barcode A barcode (also bar code) is a machine-readable representation of information. Originally barcodes stored data in the widths and spacings of printed parallel lines, but today they also come in patterns of dots, concentric circles, and text codes hidden within images. Barcodes can be read by optical scanners called barcode readers.
    BOM Bill of materials (BOM) is the term used to describe the “parts list” of components needed to complete an end-item for sale.
    BSP A Business System Plug-in (BSP) is a TrueCommerce software module that “maps” or arranges the data structure of EDI transactions so that they may be imported into and exported out of an accounting software application in an automated fashion.
    Connectivity The ability to make and maintain a connection between two or more points in a telecommunications system. The typical mechanism for establishing connectivity in an EDI system is a Value Added Network (VAN).
    CSV file The comma-separated values (CSV) file format is a file type that stores tabular data using the comma symbol to distinguish between different values.
    Data Element The smallest unit of information in an EDI transaction set, such as quantity or ZIP code. Data elements combine to make data segments.
    Data Segment EDI A line of information in an EDI message. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a set of standards for structuring information that is to be electronically exchanged between businesses via application-to-application communication. The term EDI refers to the implementation and operation of systems and processes for creating, transmitting, and receiving EDI documents that emulate business transactions such as purchase orders and invoices. EDI has been in use for nearly three decades and is the data format used for the vast majority of the world’s business-to-business electronic commerce transactions.
    DUNS Number A nine-digit number assigned and maintained by Dun & Bradstreet to identify unique business establishments. DUNS numbers are assigned worldwide and include US, Canadian and international organizations.
    EAN A European Article Number (EAN) is a barcoding standard which is a superset of the original 12-digit Universal Product Code (UPC) system developed in North America.
    EDIFACT United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce, and Transport (UN/EDIFACT or EDIFACT) is the international EDI standard developed under the United Nations.
    EPP An Electronic Partner Plug-in (EPP) is a TrueCommerce software module that “maps” or arranges the data structure of EDI transactions as required to automate exchanging data with a trading partner’s EDI system. The EPP “tells” the TrueCommerce system which transactions are supported by a particular trading partner, how the data should be formatted, and what data is required on transactions that are sent to the trading partner. Each EPP is for a specific trading partner and includes the data mappings for all transactions that are required by that trading partner.
    ELP The Electronic Label Plug-in (ELP) is a TrueCommerce software module that automates printing barcode labels.
    FTP File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a common way to move files between computers over the Internet. Anonymous FTP gives users access (without an ID and password) to areas on a remote system that contain public files.
    Functional Acknowledgement A Functional Acknowledgement (also referred to as a 997 transaction) confirms that an EDI transaction has been received by a trading partner and indicates the time and date of receipt.
    Integration Integration refers to the process of exchanging data between to different applications in an automated fashion (with little or no manual intervention).
    SCAC Standard Carrier Alpha Codes (SCAC) are unique four-letter codes that identify transportation carriers
    SDK A Software Developers Kit (SDK) is middleware provided by a software publisher that enables software created by other software publishers to integrate with their application.
    TC.Net TC.Net is the TrueCommerce network that provides connectivity between EDI trading partners.
    Trading partner A trading partner is another company with whom you conduct business, such as a vendor or customer.
    Transaction A transaction is the exchange of a business document that facilitates a business process, such as a purchase order, invoice or advance ship notice.
    Translation The act of converting a business document to and from the EDI standard.
    UPC Universal Product Code (UPC) is the most common barcode format used in North America.
    VAN A Value Added Network (VAN) refers to an intermediary used to facilitate EDI connectivity between trading partner

    December 6th, 2009
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