In today's highly competitive environment, innovation plays a key role in staying ahead of the game. Fortunately, you can rely on help of business tools such as Dynamics ERP and SharePoint to help your teams collaborate, create, and deliver quickly and creatively.

The key to competitive advantage in today's connected world is innovation. Companies that can continually offer new product features and services will win and hold the attention of customers. To support innovation, how do you keep your employees thinking outside the box and building for the future?

Share the knowledge

Connect your employees to each other no matter where they are. When employees can collaborate in real time instead of emailing documents — not knowing who has the latest version and who contributed what — they keep innovation flowing. Dynamics ERP and SharePoint will give your teams the power to share their ideas in a central location without any slowdowns.

Lack of information, dated information, or disjointed information all keep people from making the best decisions. When you get the right information to the right person at the right time, you allow them to focus on productivity instead of data crunching. With business intelligence built on an integrated ERP system, you deliver information that fuels innovation.

Connect departments

When one department doesn't know what the other is doing, duplicate efforts, wasted time, and poor decisions follow. Dynamics ERP and SharePoint together allow you to share information from all departments across your organization. Help your team move forward together, basing decisions on the whole picture.

You can stay ahead of the competition by supporting innovation and creativity with a connected ERP system. Microsoft Dynamics ERP will help your teams collaborate and connect. Let's talk about how we can help you find creative solutions to get ahead of ever changing markets.

Is your staff bringing their own devices and gadgets to the workplace? There are pros and cons that you need to know before you decide to adopt this practice for your business.

You may have noticed more and more of your employees or colleagues bringing their own computing devices to work—be it their mobile phone, tablet, or laptop. Or perhaps in your company or in other companies you may have seen, they have let people decide which device they prefer because they are used to it at home. You may not realize it, but this is all part of a large trend called the "consumerization" of IT, in which the influence of consumer technology is being increasingly felt in the workplace. With the wide availability of cheap but powerful mobile devices and online services, a growing number of people are being exposed to the latest technology at home first—adopting them at a rate faster than most businesses are able to manage. This flips on its head the old paradigm in which traditionally new technologies would be rolled out to businesses first, before they would find their way to consumers.

This trend, plus the increasing sophistication of young workers today and their frustration with the tools available to them at the office, is pushing some companies to adopt a "bring your own device" or BYOD policy at work. They are not alone. According to research by technology analyst group Gartner, end users, not the IT department, will soon be responsible for 50 percent of business IT procurement decisions—ultimately bringing and running their own systems on company networks. Meanwhile, according to management consultants Accenture, around one-third of today's younger generation of workers (a group called "millenials") not only wants to use the computer of their choice at work, but also wants control of the applications they use too.

The benefits companies cite to adopting a BYOD policy are many, among them:

• Savings on capital expenses and training costs in using company equipment—compensating employees instead via other means such as flexible work hours, subsidized purchases, insurance, and other benefits.
• Less management headache—effectively letting employees decide what to use releases the company from some overhead and management responsibilities.
• Improved employee satisfaction—by giving employees the freedom to use devices and applications that they prefer.

However, before you consider letting employees bring their own personal technology to the work place, be aware that there are also disadvantages, and sometimes very real dangers in doing so. These include:

• Non-standardization of hardware, operating systems, and applications. If your business operations require that some equipment is integrated with others, then BYOD can in the long run actually increase IT management costs and decrease efficiency.
• Exposing your network to malware or security vulnerabilities and breaches. When your employees bring their own devices to work, you lose important control over their security. Consumer devices often don't employ comparable bullet-proof security technologies mandated by businesses.
• Leakage of confidential or proprietary information. Employees will naturally do what they want with the data on their devices, even if it doesn't belong to them, or it's against company policies. Employees can also lose precious company data when they misplace or damage their personal devices.
• Lower economies of scale in procurement. Essentially because everyone is buying devices on their own, you miss out on the chance to consolidate purchases and lower purchase costs for everybody.

Have you adopted a BYOD policy at work? Thinking about it? Worried about this trend? If you need to understand BYOD better so you can define a policy for your staff, contact us and see how we can help.

Did you know that there are many free tools available on the web that can increase your productivity? Especially beneficial to small companies who can always use the savings, these free applications and software, if used correctly, can both increase productivity and help maximize the resources they have at hand.

It is a constant challenge for small businesses to meet ever-changing and ever-evolving IT requirements while balancing a budget and keeping costs reasonable. And with software applications being one of the major factors that contribute to IT maintenance costs, it is always welcome news to come across free tools that work well and efficiently despite the lack of a price tag.

ThinkFree Online Office One of these applications is ThinkFree Online Office, which is a cloud application that enables you to create and edit documents in common formats. It also comes with free 1GB of storage and allows you to work from anywhere, since the documents are stored online. And with its own app for Android users, ThinkFree is particularly advantageous to people who need to work on the go.

ReqMan Another free cloud-based application that can prove useful is ReqMan, an online project management tool. You can use this to manage and track your different projects using various templates the service provides. And since it's in the cloud, mobile personnel and staff who are given access to your ReqMan account can work even when they're out of the office.

Gliffy Gliffy is a free tool that you can use to create all sorts of technical illustrations – diagrams, floor plans, flowcharts, and more. The basic plan is free, but you also have the option to subscribe to their more fully featured plans for a minimal fee.

ScheduleOnce For managing schedules, calendars, and the like, ScheduleOnce allows you to keep better track of all your appointments, meetings, and deadlines through a single tool. It integrates with your calendar on Google, and then allows other people to see your open times when they can schedule a meeting with you. Think of it as a one-stop-shop for your scheduling needs.

If you want to know more about these tools and how you can best utilize them, please feel free to contact us. We’ll be happy to guide you and help you make the most out of these types of applications to improve your efficiency and bottom line.

Are you able to track the true profitability of the projects that your business delivers? If your business provides services that are delivered by multiple people or departments in your organization, you may not be charging enough. Estimating costs to cover salaries, sales time, travel time, and other hidden expenses may be eating up your profits without you realizing it.

Take the guesswork out of project costing with a systematic review of the projects that you have delivered. Evaluate how you should capture and assign actual costs to specific projects, including:

• Project definition. Projects take different forms for different organizations, and it's helpful to have a good understanding of what yours entail. A manufacturer could define a project as a custom-made machine. A marketing campaign is a project for an advertising company. Each wedding would be set up as a project for a caterer.
• Assign the costs that should be allocated. Direct costs, such as materials, are easy to allocate to projects, but other costs might be less obvious. Think through all the steps of your project activities, from conception to delivery, to capture the full cost of delivering that project.
• Determine how to track time, costs, and expenses. Rule of thumb: keep it simple. Consider how much detail you really need to capture to accurately track costs. And be sure to make it easy for your employees to enter and assign time and expenses to each project, no matter where they are – you'll get more accurate results.
• Monitor. Check the results of your project costing regularly to make sure that your employees are using the system consistently. Use reports to monitor the profitability of each project, and then adjust your prices accordingly.

Project costing is a critical business management technique that most companies today need for at least a part of their business. A business management solution such as Dynamics ERP can help you manage projects and the expenses that go with them automatically. Give us a call and let us help you get a handle on project profitability.

Distributors around the globe face similar challenges with inventory. These common problems put distributors at a competitive disadvantage as customer expectations rise.

Common challenges include:

• Too much of some products – excess inventory and dead stock lead to decreased turnover and profitability.
• Stock-outs of other products – resulting in backorders, lost sales, and dissatisfied customers.
• Knowing what is in stock – the on-hand quantity in the computer system does not agree with what is actually on the shelf in the warehouse.
• Material misplaced in the warehouse – material is "out there somewhere" but can't be found when it's needed.

Effective inventory management A systematic plan to achieve effective inventory management will allow you to meet and exceed customers' expectations of product availability. In addition, effective inventory management will maximize net profit by minimizing total inventory investment. Effective inventory management results from the balance of inventory control and inventory management.

Inventory control is managing the inventory that is already in your warehouse, stockroom, or store, including:

• Knowing what products are "out there" and how much you have of each item.
• Knowing exactly where each piece of each product is located in your warehouse.
• Ensuring that all inventory remains in salable or usable condition.
• Storing products to minimize the cost of filling customer orders.

Inventory management is determining when to order products, how much to order, and the most effective source of supply for each item in each warehouse – that is, ensuring that you have the right quantity of the right item in the right location at the right time. Inventory management includes all of the activities involved in forecasting and replenishment.

Customers expect you to know what is in stock and when you can ship. Let us help you find the right balance of effective inventory management with a financial management system that helps you deliver on time and on budget.

Desktop Virtualization is a new way to simplify management, strengthen security, and ultimately gaining new efficiencies from your investment in IT. Read on to find out more.

There is growing interest in Desktop Virtualization with its promise of improved manageability, security and efficiency for the business. Simply put, Desktop Virtualization is new technology that separates the system software such as the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware.

Desktop virtualization allows the hardware, like a laptop or a server, to run multiple operating systems. Imagine having your Mac running Microsoft Windows and Office, or your Dell running OS X and GarageBand for example. To stretch the concept even further, operating systems and applications can be housed on remote machines – such as a server farm in Texas – which you access via the web. The applications are not resident on your computer at all.

Desktop virtualization shifts the burden of managing the system software from you or your in-house IT teams to someone else—people who can do a better job managing and updating your Windows and Office software than you can. If you have a fairly large organization managing a large number of machines, centralizing support allows the organization to gain from economies of scale—ie less people to manage more machines at less cost. Leveraging the computing power of server farms with faster machines also allows employees to get more value out of aging desktops and laptops.

Enabling anytime, anywhere access to applications and data, Desktop Virtualization connects your employees to the tools they need no matter where they are. As organizations support more and more remote employees, using desktop virtualization technology gives them access to their Windows desktop anywhere in the world, at any time, on any device.

Are you supporting remote workers or is your hardware slowing down your employees? Let's talk about Desktop Virtualization and how you can try it for your organization today.

The big difference between Android and the iOS is the fact that, on an Android device, you can play Flash videos. There are times however when this seeming advantage can be a disadvantage as Flash (such as Flash ads) can slow down your browsing experience or even crash your browser. There is a solution.

You can turn off Flash if you choose to. Simply go to your Browser's Settings by pressing on the Menu/Options button, then go to Advanced and change 'Enable plug-ins' setting from "Always on" to "On demand." Flash applications will now appear as an arrow that you must touch to start.

There are times when you may want to capture what is currently being shown on your iPad's screen. That’s easy to do on an iPad.

Simply press the Home button and then the Sleep/Wake button simultaneously. When you hear a click, the screenshot has been taken. You can then go to the photos gallery to see all of your captured screenshots.

As an owner or manager of a small or mid-size business struggling to keep up with technology and changing business environments, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Should you keep limping along with multiple, unconnected systems, or bite the bullet and implement an ERP system? The ERP evaluation process isn't easy, but with a few guiding principles you can prepare your company for the future.

Practical advice for ERP selection

1. Define critical requirements first – Don't get sidetracked with the bells and whistles of the applications you review. Before you start, define the functionality that is critical to your organization and stay focused. Communicate your requirements to your vendors and require that they focus on those requirements in their presentations.
2. Double check references – Go the extra mile when you check references provided by a vendor. The more clients you speak to, the better picture you will get of not only the vendor's products, but also their level of customer service for all their clients – and not just their best clients.
3. Don't overthink it – It's easy to get into "analysis paralysis" with such an important decision. Once you have decided to take the plunge into ERP, keep moving forward and find the best fit for your requirements. Create a realistic project timeline to maintain momentum and keep the project on track.
4. Choose the evaluation team carefully – Choosing a new ERP system is a business decision, not an IT decision. While IT should be involved, the evaluation team must make certain that the product fulfills the critical business elements that are needed for the organization's success.
5. Partner for project success – Once you have found the right solution for your organization, make sure that you have the right partner as well. The implementation partner you choose will make the difference between success and failure. Choose an organization that understands your business.

Prepare for the future Selecting an ERP system is a big step for a modest business organization. Choosing the right ERP system will build the foundation for growth for many years to come. Find out how you can transition from spreadsheets and disconnected software to a fully integrated ERP system. Call us today.

ERP Drives Manufacturing Innovation It's the start of a new year and 2012 forecasts for manufacturers are starting to look more promising. To stay ahead of the competition, you need to respond to the market with innovate product additions. A fully integrated business management system should enhance innovation to improve your responsiveness to the market.

Improve innovation When you can identify opportunities for new products at an early stage, you can respond with new, innovative products or product variants. Your ERP system should provide you with information from across the organization, with deep insight into product preference trends. With industry-specific and customer-specific KPIs delivered to your key decision makers, you can get a jump on the competition to meet changes in customer preferences.

Innovation in most manufacturing environments requires collaboration between outside partners as well as multiple internal departments. Spending time fighting outdated systems makes it hard for teams to keep communication lines flowing. An ERP system that integrates with collaboration solutions like SharePoint and common applications like Office gives teams the tools they need for easy collaboration.

Reduce time to market Fast and accurate planning is a must for the innovative manufacturer – budgeting and planning cycles can't last weeks and months anymore. Real time inventory, production, and supply chain information presented in one easy-to-use dashboard gives managers the tools they need to plan and execute quickly.

Coordinating multiple facilities and departments to support new products from production to delivery requires an integrated ERP system. Automated workflow ensures that products move from development to production environments by eliminating delays and miscommunication. A fully integrated ERP system will support new products entering the production schedules and adjust inventory levels at key distribution points.

Get ready for leaps of innovation in 2012, and improve your responsiveness to the market with a fully integrated ERP system. Call us to talk about how we can help you build a better business.