When it comes time for your organization to evaluate ERP systems, whether you are replacing a small business accounting package or an aging ERP, it’s important to clarify the components.  Each piece (often called module) of the ERP system delivers different value for your organization. To get the most from the full system, make sure your evaluation team understands the fundamentals.

Financial Management At the core of ERP are the financial modules, including general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, billing and fixed asset management. If your organization is considering the move to an ERP system to support expansion into global markets, make sure that multiple currencies and languages are supported, as well as regulatory compliance in the U.S. and in foreign countries.

Other functionality in the financial management modules will include budgets, cash-flow, expense and tax reporting. The evaluation team should focus on areas that are most important to support the strategic plans for your organization.

Business Intelligence Business Intelligence (BI) has become a standard component of most ERP packages. In general, BI tools allow users to share and analyze the data collected across the enterprise and centralized in the ERP database. BI can come in the form of dashboards, automated reporting and analysis tools used to monitor the organization’s business performance. BI supports informed decision making by everyone, from executives to line managers and accountants.

Supply Chain Management Supply Chain Management (SCM), sometimes referred to as logistics, improves the flow of materials through an organization by managing planning, scheduling, procurement, and fulfillment, to maximize customer satisfaction and profitability. Sub modules in SCM often include production scheduling, demand management, distribution management, inventory management, warehouse management, procurement and order management.

Any company dealing with products, from manufacturers to distributors, needs to clearly define their SCM requirements to properly evaluate an ERP solution.  It’s easy for a vendor to focus on their applications’ strengths and not address the full needs of the company.

Human Resource Management Human resource management ERP modules should enhance the employee experience - from initial recruitment to time tracking.  Sub modules can include payroll, performance management, time tracking, benefits, compensation and workforce planning. Self-service tools that allow managers and employees to enter time and attendance, choose benefits and manage PTO are available in many ERP solutions.

Manufacturing Operations Manufacturing modules make manufacturing operations more efficient through product configuration, job costing and bill of materials management. ERP manufacturing modules often include Capacity Requirements Planning, Materials Requirements Planning, forecasting, Master Production Scheduling, work-order management and shop-floor control.

Integration Key to the value of an ERP package is the integration between modules, so that all of the core business functions are connected. Information should flow across the organization so that BI reports on organization-wide results.

ERP can be easier than you imagine - Microsoft Dynamics ERP is cost effective and familiar to your users. If you are thinking about upgrading your systems to a fully integrated ERP system, give us a call.

As the economy rebounds, it’s time to realign your view of cash flow. During the recession, maintaining enough cash to make payroll and keep the doors open was the primary focus for most organizations. Now that the future is looking brighter, are you ready to align your resources and costs to maximize cash flow and profits?

The next stage of growth The accounting program and spreadsheets you used in the past to manage payable, receivables, inventory, and payroll can’t handle the larger task of optimization as your business grows. Balancing all of the variable resources in your business, and matching them to your forecasts goes beyond manual processes.

To grow your business effectively and remain competitive in today’s fast paced economy, you must have a clear view of:

• the status of your resources, including inventory, employees and capital assets
• operational efficiencies, including the costs to produce and deliver your products
• cash flow through the business to support operations

Aging accounting systems and spreadsheets cobbled together can’t deliver a complete picture of the three fundamental building blocks of your organization. To support growth and take advantage of the growing economy, it’s time to look for an ERP system. Connected data and consolidated reporting will give you the ability to balance all the elements for success.

Usability for fast results As you begin evaluation of ERP systems, keep in mind that usability is critical to fast results. The economy is rebounding now, and you need to implement an ERP system quickly. Choose an ERP solution that gives employees a familiar user interface, and is integrated with Microsoft Office. With both cloud and on-premises deployment options, Microsoft Dynamics ERP is an easy choice.

Let’s talk about how you can take your business to the next level. Call us today.

As mobile devices become more multifunctional and versatile, an increasing amount of businesses are seeing the benefits of including smartphones in their day-to-day operations. However, mismanagement of smartphone work usage, and improper handling of these resources, could cause problems if you’re not careful.

Using smartphones for business purposes can indeed lead to increased efficiency and improved productivity, but if left mismanaged and unregulated, smartphone usage can cause more trouble than it’s worth. Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of mobile devices:

1. Formulate a Specific Policy For IT: One common mistake many businesses make is that they lack a policy specifically for the use of mobile devices. This is where you determine whether employees can use their own personal devices for work or not, indicate reimbursable expenses and other costs, and control networks where business-purpose devices can connect to.
2. Have a Security Action Plan: Data security is a major issue for any IT device, especially one that employees can take outside of the office. It is then imperative that any device used for business has the proper security to protect it from online attacks, and remote access features that allow it to be completely wiped, or “bricked” if said device is stolen.
3. Consider Developing Your Own Applications: Customized applications that employees can use for their business needs can prove to be much more secure, and more efficient than other third-party apps. As they’re made specifically for you, you can be sure that tasks done through mobile devices and the corresponding output are better tailored to fit into your organization’s work flow.

If you would like to know more about how to better manage the use of mobile devices for your business, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. We’d love to sit down with you and discuss a possible blueprint that addresses your business’s specific needs.

Many companies realize the benefits of virtualizing their systems, and some have even started the process. In the current economies around the world, businesses are looking at ways to save money and streamline processes. A recent report on virtualization found that some organizations achieved investment returns of up to 269%. Read on to learn more.

What is Virtualization? Virtualization is the creation of a virtual computing environment, where one hardware system can run multiple virtual environments. Common types of virtualization include servers, storage devices, or networks. The benefits of virtualization include lower costs, improved IT management, and reduced energy consumption.

The Survey A report published by CDW-G focuses on government organizations in the United Sates. Many SME owners and managers like yourselves are probably asking, “How do study results involving the government help my business?” Well, if you look closer you can see that what the government organizations did can easily be replicated by SMEs, just on a smaller scale.

Results In recent years, many companies have had to tighten their belts due to economic difficulties. Government agencies are no exception. The results of the survey found that agencies and organizations realized investment returns as high as 134 to 269%. The survey found that if IT managers invest in Server Virtualization, Document Management, Storage Virtualization, and Cloud Computing in that order, the returns on Server Virtualization alone can help pay for, if not totally cover the cost of, the other three processes. CDW-G found that on average, the total cost of implementing all four separately is over USD 1.1million, but when implemented in order, the average cost was around USD 400,000.

While it is unlikely that SMEs will see a return on investments of this magnitude, it is highly likely that they will see increased returns if they follow this method of re-investing returns from Server Virtualization into the other three steps. In times of economic stress, this could be a huge boost to your bottom line.

Helpful Recommendations From the results, CDW-G offered some useful recommendations that all businesses can use:

• When budget cuts are needed, first look for ways to increase efficiency without service cuts.
• Review technologies and processes to identify inefficiencies.
• Consider savings and efficiency opportunities in all new solutions.
• Leverage available savings into new projects.

As with any new process, it’s equally important to ensure that you educate the users of the processes and stay on your toes to keep updated.

Hey, it's nowhere near the gargantuan status of Facebook or Twitter, but lesser-known Pinterest has a following, and especially if your target market is females, it can be a very versatile and unique online marketing tool – that is, if you use it the right way.

What is Pinterest? In a nutshell, it's something like a social media scrapbook, album, and bulletin board combined. Each interest / theme has its own 'Pinboard' where you put photos, videos, or other media that interest you.

What makes Pinterest unique is its concept, which has been consistently growing in popularity, especially with female audiences. And while Facebook and Twitter are more open to overt advertising, Pinterest takes a more conservative stance. While advertising isn't exactly prohibited, the marketing should definitely be more subtle and more consistent with a personal Pinterest profile. Here are some basic tips that will help you utilize Pinterest to your advantage.

1. Understand your market. The first question you should ask yourself is if Pinterest is something worth your time investment. Since the majority of Pinterest users are female, ask yourself if your products and services appeal to them directly.

2. Invest time. As in many other social networking sites, you need to put a personal and human touch to your Pinterest profile and in the way you interact with your audience. Log in often, update regularly, and respond quickly to any kind of feedback. Let your audience know that you're there.

3. Use other social media to augment Pinterest. Since Pinterest is less known, use your other social media accounts to point people your way in Pinterest, such as Tweeting or updating your Facebook status with your most recent Pinterest profile update.

4. Talk about what you represent. As mentioned earlier, since Pinterest isn't big on overt advertising, you need to market yourself in a different way. Talk about what your brand is all about. What do you represent? What content can you provide that would inspire your audience to share on their own Pinboards? If you're a furniture company, for example, you can try giving some tips on basic interior design and picking the right furniture pieces for spaces, with pictures or videos. What's good about Pinterest is that it challenges you to be more creative, and thus, more appealing to potential clients.

If Pinterest interests you, give us a call so we can discuss how you can maximize this new social media platform for your business.

As your company grows, so does your use of specialized business applications that serve your industry. Manufacturers and companies serving the medical, hospitality, or educational markets often depend on line-of-business (LOB) applications built to serve the unique needs of the industry or specialty. Connecting you to vendors and customers, LOB applications save time but also can separate the information that you depend on to make decisions.

Smart decisions require full information

Typically LOB applications provide excellent functionality, fulfilling the operational needs of a specific business requirement. LOB applications support everything from engineering drawings to patient management to student services, delivering functionality that is critical to the organization.

But there is a price for that tailored functionality. The data gathered and stored by the LOB application is not connected to your ERP system. Summary data often has to be reentered from one system to another, with accompanying loss of detail and productivity. Manual processes to import data from one system to another are error prone and not real time.

Integration is the answer

In today’s fast-paced economy in which customers’ needs change on a dime, your organization can’t afford to have limited information to drive decisions. Only real-time integration between your LOB applications and ERP system will give you the information you need — when you need it.

While most ERP systems can be programmed to automatically import information from other systems, few are easy and inexpensive. The ERP system that you choose should offer multiple options for integration of disparate systems to meet the varying requirements of LOB applications. You may require integrations from web-based applications as well as those housed on your own servers.

With full integration across all the applications in your organization, you can serve customers better and respond quickly to change. Let’s get started today, connecting your systems for better insight.

In late February 2012, Twitter hit 500 million users. This milestone has cemented Twitter as a major Social Media player. With this large user base, companies should be seriously considering integrating twitter with their marketing strategies. Benefits of integration include increased followers, brand awareness, and potentially a better bottom line. Here are some tips for increasing your followers.

Search for companies and people you know While it’s easy to use the search function in Twitter, it can be time consuming to search for people one by one. Instead:

1. Log into your Twitter account
2. Press the # Discover button at the top of the page
3. Press Find Friends
4. Log into the various accounts available
5. Add people as followers

This is a great way to rapidly increase your followers, and reconnect with customers and contacts you may have lost contact with.

Combine your Twitter and Facebook feeds You can combine your Twitter and Facebook feeds easily:

1. Log into your Twitter account
2. Select Profile Settings
3. Select Profile
4. Select Post your tweets to Facebook
5. Follow the instructions provided

Within minutes, your Tweets will show up in your Facebook status, enabling you to reach two platforms simultaneously. Be warned, this could spam your followers, causing them to stop following you - so it’s best to keep your Tweets or status updates to the most important information.

Join Twitter Ads for Small Business This recently announced service will be up and running soon, allowing small business owners to advertise on Twitter through Promoted Tweets. This service will be released in the near future, enabling businesses of all sizes to advertise.

If you are not on Twitter, would like to join, or know more please contact us.

On one hand, social media is simple enough that a child can use it – which nowadays, is happening literally. But when it comes to business and social media, it's a different ballgame entirely. Sadly, this concept is lost on many businesses, who unknowingly commit all sorts of mistakes that actually hinder growth, rather than help speed it up.

Social media is booming. Since its introduction a few years ago, social media platforms have not only changed the way people connect on the internet, it's also changed the way business is done. When applied correctly, it's a cost-effective tool that helps businesses connect with a much larger audience and client base, as well as potential clients. That is, however, IF it's used properly.

One common mistake businesses make is the failure to draw the line between personal and professional. While showing a human aspect of your business isn't bad at all, doing it too much makes you less consistent as a business entity and makes followers or audiences lose touch of what you're really about.

Another common error is the failure to handle bad feedback correctly. More often than not, one negative comment can balloon into a full blown argument that will only give people an even more negative impression about you and your business. While you should acknowledge even bad feedback, more detailed discussion should be done privately and only between the parties concerned.

Social media is not a "set it and forget it" kind of thing. You need to constantly update and monitor your social media platforms so they don't become stagnant. People will be more encouraged to follow you on Twitter or visit your Facebook page if they have something new to look forward to every once in a while. Make sure, though, that you don't post too frequently – or worse, fall into the trap of making it too promotionally-driven, which comes across as self-serving and impersonal.

If you're interested in knowing more and drawing up a comprehensive and effective social media plan for your business, please don't hesitate to contact us so we can discuss things and better respond to any issues or questions you might have.

Is your accounting department wasting valuable time creating reports using spreadsheets and manual processes? If so, it may be time to check out a centralized reporting system to reduce costs and wasted time. With better business intelligence provided by a robust reporting system, you’ll be in a better position to make sound decisions based on accurate, timely information – as well as easily comply with business regulations – and that's always good for business.

While Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) can transform your business in many ways, the time savings that your accounting department will realize may be the most surprising. As organizations grow, the need for coordination of resources and departments is clear. An ERP system supports that growth.

But smaller organizations often spend as much time on accounting as large ones. An ERP system may return productivity rewards more quickly that you imagined.

Automate reporting

It's no surprise that your accounting team spends many hours each month reporting profit and loss. But how much time are they spending on manual spreadsheets for each of the following?

• Making adjustments to inventory and vendor pricing
• Maintaining budgets for multiple departments
• Providing individual reports to departments with data from payroll to supply costs

A centralized ERP system can automate all these time wasting activities so your accounting team can focus on ways to make and save money.

Assure compliance

No one wants the IRS or any other regulatory agency looking over their shoulder. The best way to keep them out of your business is to provide prompt, accurate reporting to meet all agency regulations your industry requires. Most starter accounting packages don't give your finance team the flexibility to build the reports they need to comply.

To determine if it is time to evaluate ERP systems, have your accounting team track the time spent searching, compiling, and manually entering compliance report data for each of your required filings. The time savings with an automated system that pulls data from multiple sources to consolidate information could be well worth the investment.

Microsoft Dynamics ERP provides more options for reporting than any other ERP system on the market. Let us show you how flexible reporting can be.

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.