Future of ERP Software, Could IS 6.0 or 7.0 cover this?

Wouldn't it be great to have an ERP system that automates your business and also evolves with latest trend and yet be affordable for small and medium business? 

Here are our wish list or wanna have those features in the Software.
We composed these questions or feature list based on our interactions with several ERP customers who are using Interprise or other various ERP software’s such as Everest, NetSuite or simply looking for integrated software to run their business ...

•  Multi Company, Multi currency and Multiple Website all in one easy to use software, truly multiple …
  
• Inventory Controls, Warehouse management, Stock allocation (I mean really stock allocation for orders on web, manage back orders, notify customers and be able to sell sell more …) Kind of amazon.com how they handle their inventory, come on it’s not that hard.
  
•  E-Commerce truly that is evolving by the trends not tiny miny feature but ability to launch new websites with easy from single database, Search engine friendly (SEO), ability to interface with multi-channel, product feeds, social media out of the box, not stand alone ecommerce or open source, I need integrated shopping carts with everything integrated and should not cost me leg or arm.
  
•  How about letting others developers develop what they are good at and let the framework take care of the rest? Yes I’m talking about SDK (Software Development Kit) which can flood  the marketplace and surpasses maybe Apple or  Android marketplace, I mean real apps not crappy game apps, I’m talking abt apps such as Sales order on iPad or Samsung tablet or Motorola Zoom taking orders when I’m in a trade shows, Can I?
  
•  A software that can be hosted on shared or dedicated hosting or one that can be hosted at ISP or on premises or one that can be accessed from China while you talking to your suppliers during your business trip
  
•  A Software which can be learnt easily, not because it has less features, but more support options for customers or end users like ability to walk into product trainings, seminars, or find a consultant or reseller who can guide them in right direction and show them how to scale their business using ERP software, that’s when the true powers lies, a larger community much larger than facebook.

 All of this and much more evolving technologies need to be part of  “One Software” and it shld be available  “Now” and not in 2020 I’m talking about 2011, right before we jump into biggest season of the year, last year's online shopping surpassed 1 Billion in sales just during thanks giving holidays, this year it may surpass those numbers, are you ready?

Can you compete with other business? Can you sell more, ship more …. Well if you are ready then bring your inventory and cup of coffee we are ready to scale your business.

Call us or Visit our Website and learn more why we are excited and how we can scale your business. 

Interprise Update: We were shown sneak preview of "what's coming up in 6.0 Ver" which is scheduled for launch early 3rd Qtr (don't hold me for the dates).

The demo blew our expectations, all our features/wishes are added/granted and it looks way too good to believe and I kept saying "I couldn't believe it's butter/IS" so we are excited with the new developments and enhancements they have made in such a short period, we will be posting more updates as we get our hands onto 6.0 pre-release/beta versions. 


In few more weeks we will try to list all the juicy features coming up in 6.0 and how they can make your business operate more efficiently and allow you to sell more ... Stay tuned ....

Interprise Suite 5.6 Scheduled for release Early Dec' 10

We passed through another year of Cyber Monday with Online sales surpassing Billion dollar mark and as we head into X-Mas Holidays we will see the holiday season trend to continue.

Talking about trends, Interprise has been busy cooking newer versions with some newer features the latest to hit their download section is Ver 5.6 we got in-sight to couple of features that will roll out and one of the interesting feature from SEO point of it is "Item Image Enhancement".


The item image enhancement makes it easier for merchants to create items and associate a file name instead of auto serialized numbers and giving it a proper name makes it even better and stands out in Search engines as engines index images based on filename of the image itself.
So instead of 100.jpg it we could say Canon-powershot-S90.jpg then it would make more sense for engines to index that and most likely show up in image search results on Google, Bing and others.

Here is a sneak peek at the screenshot of IS 5.6 Item Image Enhancement and we will discuss more features as 5.6 gets ready to release in a week's time, so stay tuned...

Dawn of the NEW Interprise Solutions

ERP vendor Interprise Suite is proud to announce their brand new website www.InterpriseSolutions.com breaking away from old management and old website, taking this into new direction and newer heights.

We like this new website much better than the old one since the new website delivers all the promises such as:

1. Creating a Marketplace for developers, resellers and solution providers to interact with prospect & customers.
2. Forums to interact with members of Interprise Suite
3. Ability to create your own Groups helping customers and keeping them engaged on topics often missed by the IS team or not able to serve on time - It's cool we created a new group called "E-Commerce - Niche Marketing on the web" do join if you are eBusiness owner.
4. Blogs, Webinars and more ...

With new website IS is also offering the product in different flavors to keep the spectrum of Small and Medium Business being addressed. with Interprise Small Business eCommerce (ISBE) for just $99 per month hosted solution and Interprise Suite, here is link to full feature comparison

We also have our plugin's listed on their website which can be viewed at http://www.interprisesolutions.com/index.php/Marketplace/

So all in all, this is a great new beginning for IS and wish them best of luck.

New Changes within IS for 2010

InterpriseSuite had new announcement that we were expecting for past few months, they announced today (Mar 8th, 2010) that they were internally acquired by group of private investors from Taylor Corp to kick start what was started earlier by Gary Harrison, to provide a great ERP product for customers and partners.

We look forward to work with new team (Gary, Curt and Yossi) as the work together to take this project to next step. With the change in management we have changes in physical locations too, the head office is moved from North Mankato, Minnesota to Culver City, California and relocation of support team from Cebu to Makati city.


We wish IS team that they bootstrap and get back on track to help its customers, partners and developers.

Several updates to our product line

• Release of “Version 5” (5.4) which will include…
• A number of new and improved features
• Support for Paypal and Google checkout on the cart
• Nearly 300 bug fixes
• Version 5.5
• Improved Inventory Posting
• Bug fixes
• Version 6.0 (Summer)
• Serial / Lot number Tracking
• Bin Tracking
• Plus much more…
• …and a few nice surprises.

eBay Plugin for Interprise Suite - Coming soon, eBay lowers listing fees

If you ever listed your products on eBay you would have come across eBay's expensive listing fees that had to be taken into consideration for listing your products with markup or having lesser profits.

But come March 30th 2010 eBay is dropping its listing fees lower allowing business owners to list more products and attract more traffic and more sales, a move that is welcomed by business.

Our eBay to Interprise custom utility will allow you to list your products from Interprise Suite on to eBay's site fully automated no need for double entry of  listings, it saves time, with eBay's new prices (Check their Fee Illustrator link) and our custom plug in you can now list all your products/ SKU's and drive more sales.

Call us for FREE demo of our innovative product to list your inventory on eBay and stay connected with Interprise Suite at all times.

Source: Read more about this eBay fees article on TechCrunch

Step up for optimal performance & features

Step up to another version
Have you ever seen these fitness machine at your local gym, its called step up or climbing exercise. If you step on this for 30 minutes everyday you will have fat burning, calorie burning and resulting in great shape and performance.

In software world we do practice exercising, its called stepping up to higher version.
You start on Version 1 and work your way up to next available version. You need to upgrade when its most required for your business, identify the problems that you are facing with current version and if the new version resolves that problem or has new features then consider to upgrade.

We recently upgraded our client Quilters Warehouse from 5.3.1 to 5.3.2 and john at Quilters is very pleased with the new update for top 3 reasons.

1. The upgrade fixed memory leak problem thus allowing them to load data 3 times faster
2. It fixed issues with "Add to Wish list" feature for his e-Commerce & other fixes
3. Their business is in compliance with Payflow pro changes

With Hips & Curves we upgraded their website to 5.3.2 R2 fixes to keep them current with some important features required for their website so it performs better.

At every stage you need to consult your trainer they can identify problems and come up with work out session that fits your body & rhythm, just because there is a new workout machine doesn't mean you need to try it out.

Know your problems, discuss with your solution provider and come up with a plan to migrate to higher version, this would keep your business performing, it's your body, it's your Company but we are the trainers who can train you, so step up and feel better.

*On a side note 5.3.3 will be released shortly, another step up again ...

Email Communication can be made effective & pretty

Communication is “key” in any business, especially if it’s e-Commerce business; your ebusiness model expects that your customers order online and find answers for everything that they are looking for to make their purchase and avoid any phone calls.

Now that you have your customer list you might communicate weekly or monthly newsletter and keep them engaged on new products using email marketing software such as Constant contact/iContact, but what if you could communicate one-on-one with your customers regarding their recent order, or about failure of credit card or delay in shipment or other million things you can think of using Interprise Suite.

Interprise Suite makes it easy for you to communicate with their built-in Email feature, you can now email your customers, prospects, suppliers or employees from their ERP system and its all tracked within the single database.

If you plan to communicate via email why not use the html formatting for your emails so it looks nicer and puts your message across, since most of the email clients such as MS outlook, Google Mail, Yahoo and others support formatted html emails, and here is how to send formatted html emails out of Interprise suite.

How to send formatted emails from Interprise Suite

• Click on CRM tab in Interprise Suite and under tools menu double click Mail
• In your mail window click new "mail message", make sure to check if the format of the email is set to HTML and not to plain.
• Prepare and save your formatted html web page with relative links, we are going to make use of this in our html email
  
• With the new window dialog opened spot the "open folder icon" (3rd icon from left), click on it and it will prompt you to select the html that was saved, let it load it may take few seconds
  
• Now your formatted html is loaded, choose the recipient email address and click send, this shld send the formatted html emails, how cool is that
  

Also if its a generic email like newsletter or thank you note etc make sure to keep such email copies accessible online just in case your viewers weren't able to read via their email client they can always click the link and visit online and read about it, it’s a good practice and also helps in search engine optimization too.

Spend Less, Make More is Mantra of Interprise Suite and Hips & Curves believes in it....

With growing economy crisis, some decide not to spend, some spend it wisely and they grab the opportunity to scale their business, awaiting to grow as the economy picks, so is our client Hips and Curves located in Santa Monica, California selling plus size lingerie in e-tail (eCommerce) world, targeting niche market of plus size lingerie, hoisery, bras & panties.

Rebecca at Hips and Curves had few challenges with their existing warehouse management erp system before switching to Interprise Suite, they took advantage of Interprise Suite licensing deals by signing on early and having experienced resellers (TechXor and InfoSourcing) take care of their implementation, customizations and support.

Hips and Curves had enoromous challenges moving away from their warehouse erp system and needed a custom Interprise Suite solution.
We were able to customize their website look and feel, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), integration with Cybersource payment, real time stock availability of matrix items, EDI integration and other much needed features to run their ebusiness.

They opened up their business to the rest of the world (www.HipsandCurves.com) this morning, proven by the fact that their first order came from literally the other side of the world, and Rebecca rejoiced saying "Already the new site is paying off :) ..."

We are pioneers in implementing integrated e-Commerce solution for small, medium and large business and our motto is "Bring your web design and coffee, we will do the rest..."

If you want to Spend Less, Make More like Hips & Curves, contact us for a FREE demo and quotes....

ERP Migration - Do's, Don'ts and Tips

Ever tried to migrate your ERP system or tried migrating your non-integrated systems into an integrated ERP s/w, you would have faced with frustration and not knowing what steps to take to go live.

In this segment we will talk about

• What to Migrate?
• What not to migrate?
• How to schedule your migration?
• Testing, testing and testing, remember this is a integrated product
• Go live, finally

What to Migrate?

You would certainly migrate all your master tables such as Customers, Products/SKU's, Categories, Manufacturers, Brands, departments/locations, suppliers/vendors and website data if any for your e-commerce needs.

What NOT to migrate?

Over years you might have transactional records such as Invoicing, payables, receivables, order information, accounting transactions and lots of other transactions that occur under the hood of an ERP system, you won't be able to migrate and never should you focus too much on this either, stay away from transactional records, at the most you can provide some kind of linking between your new & old ERP for example having a customer number stored from your previous ERP system so you could link between two systems if needed. So yeah stay away from migrating transactional records.

Migration Schedule

The most important part in your ERP implementation is how to schedule your list of activity for migration, what comes first and what comes last in terms of data, who does what and when? A detailed Implementation checklist is a must and walk through the checklist with your clients and keep them updated with your tasks and work towards them, and always accept delays in your schedule due to un-avoidable circumstances, have some buffer in your schedule.

Testing, testing and testing...

It's an integrated ERP product, so "garbage in garbage out" make sure to allocate time in your schedule for testing, every time you import data into your ERP system test it, test it again. If you imported customers make sure to create a test order, RMA/returns, Invoicing, CRM communication and if you have e-Commerce website logon and place test web order, request password and check if emails are working, so its really impt to test before you decide to go live.

By testing it helps you to understand the ERP system so you can operate your business efficiently.

Go Live

Something that you were looking fwd too "Go Live", well with couple of months into this project you are now ready to hit the road and expect everything goes smooth.
Having an expert implementation specialist besides you would dramatically reduce your ERP implementation cost and you can feel the ownership of the ERP system for your business

Business owners make the mistake of not scheduling enough time to understand the system, importing non-integrated data, not able to configure the system, no testing mechanism and planning to hit the road will eventually result in frustration and hatred towards the ERP s/w, so spend your money wisely for ERP implementation, spend 50% in buying the ERP software and another 50% for Implementation , Support and training.

IS advances to 5.3.2 version

With the new version around the corner, its time for upgrade for our existing customers. The new version brings few enhancements to base product with optimization done to web services for faster delivery of data, bug fixes, minor tweaks here and there.

Not much of change in ISE (E-Commerce) module but we did learn they are setting the base for intergating Google Checkout and PayPal integration with ISE, have to wait if it makes it in 5.3.2 or it gets pushed onto IS 2009 version.

Your Partner for Success in Interprise Suite ERP Implementation

QuiltersWarehouse.com specializes in providing one of the largest selections of books and quilt patterns over the web and retail store. Quilters Warehouse replaced their ERP system from Everest Software with Interprise Suite to scale their business with lower software cost and cutting edge technology.

Read more about our implementation and customization services delivered for Quilters Warehouse, find out how we tackled some of the challenges during this project, click here

Plug-in architecture will increase user base and retains customers in long run

Customizable Plug ins the best you can witness in an open framework architecture, third party developers and system integrators can bring their best creativity to enhance the product, this is good news for customers so they are less dependent on ERP vendors to cook up every single feature and wait for next release, now they have the ability to get it done or buy plugins developed for their industry.

Interprise Suite plugin architecture is cutting edge technology in ERP software, where one can write customizable plug-ins and plug it to mother ship and it works seamless, this attracts customers, resellers and developers in creating a software community.

Plugins such as DS Data Explorer from Dimesoft, US payroll from Lerryn, Products Attribute Plugin from Digital Group, SEOptimizer from InfoSourcing are some of the examples of custom solution developed by partners.

We at InfoSourcing have developed our own custom "SEOptimizer" tool, this powerful search engine Optimization tool compliments the e-Commerce module and helps business owners rank organically on search engines.

So in nutshell ERP vendors need to create platform for growing their user base and create a community experience to satisfy the market needs and truly Interprise is sailing in this direction.

myERPhelp.com is now LIVE for all IS customers

Note: myERPhelp.com is available ONLY for InfoSourcing and TechXor Customers who are using Interprise Suite or Everest Software ERP solutions and this is offered as a service to our existing customers and not for any other customers, sorry for the confusion if other users registered for help ....

If you are not our customers and still need help from us, please email us info@info-sourcing.com and we will create a new support account for you and you could choose per incident basis or monthly or yearly or block time hrs for support.

--------------------------------------------------------

We at InfoSourcing truly understand the need for supporting our clients after they go live with our ERP solution, we help several small and medium business in evaluating, implementing and customizing ERP solutions and often faced with support issues and thus resulted in launching our new support portal website for Interprise Suite Customers.

myERPhelp.com is support portal geared towards supporting not only our own customers but we also support other reseller's customers its a platform for us to engage with our clients and track all incidents, issues and resolve them in timely fashion.

myERPhelp.com is open only for our customers and it requires activation for us to assign the project and technican once signed up, this is offered as FREE service part of our support contract so we can bring value to our customers.

IS Premier Retail 2009 Hot Fix 2 Released

IS Premier POS recently released 2009 Hot Fix 2 with few enhancements and fixes to its 2009 edition version. Some of the highlights in this hot fix...

1. POS is now compatible to install on Windows 2008 Server
2. Enhancements done to Online Event Management system
3. The very much needed enhancement for our client "decimal quantities" is now part of the solution
4. and Improved speed of the transactions

For more detailed release notes click here

We at InfoSourcing are currently implementing Premier POS hot fix2 with Online Event Management system for non-profit organization currently selling events and membership programs, we are also parallely implementing POS along with IS and e-Commerce in fabric industry.

Interprise Suite Marketplace - Needed Tools from small busienss

Interprise Suite Marketplace

One Stop Shop for all your Interprise Suite Plug-ins and Customizations.

• Desktop Plug-Ins
• E-Commerce Plug Ins
• POS Plug-Ins
• ERP Plug-Ins & Customizations
• Affordable, reliable and practical

What is Interprise Suite Marketplace?
Interprise Suite Marketplace allows Interprise Suite Customers, prospects to find/shop for utilities, plug-ins, tools and tips that can streamline your business. We are constantly adding new product add-ons, plug-ins and other customizations that could be purchased saving your time and money.

Read more about our offerings by visiting Marketplace

Premier POS, truly its POS 2.0

Premier POS, truly its POS 2.0 (2.0 signifies the second generation in Point of Sale software's) most of the POS does the functionality of cash register of checking customers out at retail store but Premier takes it to next level.

Premier POS not only performs cash register but allows you to customize the look and feel of cash register, greater security, can automate other parts of your business, integrate with their Online Event Management (such as golf tee times, online courses, event ticket mgmt etc) and integrates with Interprise Suite backend Inventory, Customer and Order management.

Here is a video demonstration of Premier POS highlighting all the features, its functionality and be wow'ed with POS 2.0




For bigger view visit this link http://www.screencast.com/users/PremierPOS/folders/Tutorials/media/9f166103-84fe-41c4-a451-f9d7cb94bfa3

Support and Maintenance Plan for ERP Softwares

At times we get hit with this question from our clients "What is Support Plan? What is Maintenance plan? What is the difference between the two? and why am I charged again and again? blah blah .."

Those are valid questions, but I would prefer prospects/customers to learn bit more while purchasing the software.

Let me give an example here, if you decide to buy BMW or Merc for $50k you always get maintenance free (only with bmw) up to a yr or so during this time you get oil change etc etc and then once your maintenance period is over, you get into "support" mode where you get support from mechanics who are authorized by BMW for any fixes or patches or you buy insurance to protect your car.

Similarly when you purchase software from ERP vendors, they offer 1st yr Maintenance free (few of the vendors not all) its part of the license like "Interprise Suite", this provides you access to downloads so you can get any updates or fixes/service packs and apply it onto your system, you can access their forums and other valuable information .... After a year you pay a fee usually 8 to 12% of the license cost, now that’s a maintenance plan.

Now onto support, if you need helping hand from day one or if you can't figure out how the integration works or the integration is not working the way it should be or you have messed up some data anything where you say SOS then support kicks in here, if you have a support plan then SOS team will jump in and try to resolve it, if they find its a "bug", then you should get a fix/patch for it, its like road side assistance. Your support plan usually cost 15% to 25% of the license cost approx.

So its critical when buying software always see what vendors offer, and its always worth buying maintenance and support plan since the road you are travelling is not perfect and weather conditions may vary, so for safer ride always buy protection plans for your investment/business.

• Interprise Suite 1st yr maintenance is inclusive (free)
• Premier POS 1st yr you have to buy
• Interprise Suite 2nd yr onwards you have buy maintenance plan else you won’t get any software updates.
• Interprise Suite Support plan is annual
• Premier POS Support plan is annual
• Interprise Suite e-Commerce module if you have purchased then that’s extra.

Now you can proceed to buy BMW or Merecedes 2009 edition with protection plan.

SaaS Model For Interprise Suite, Coming Soon

With time we change, yes we do, Interprise Suite is working on the final specs of introducing the SaaS model (Software As A Service) for their ERP Suite for Small and Medium Business.

SaaS model has been in use for several years by Companies like Salesforce.com and NetSuite vendors, but Inteprise Suite would be the real ERP vendor to posses both models desktop (thick) and web (thin client) version, ofcourse we had the capability of using smart client to connect to remote data, but with this new model it can target other customers who are looking to rent instead of buying/purchasing the software.







Who should look for SaaS model?
Business owners who are thinking of switching to intergated ERP application for Small and Medium should consider SaaS model because of two main reasons.
1. Affordability, lower initial investment on hardware and software
2. Maintenance of the ERP system and its usage

Does it Fit my business?
Customers who are starting new business or those who have less number of user licenses or those who don't want the hassle of installation & maintenance are the ones who will like this model and may fit their business plans.

How Much does it cost and who can resell it?
Good question, the pricing is being addressed and will be announced shortly, they are working on the e-Commerce hosting options, since hosting your ERP/E-Commerce application means you would be taking their disk space, bandwidth and other resources so pricing would be based on those parameters so if you use more of your cell phone minutes you get charged accordingly, so you rent it and never own it.

Once released we (InfoSourcing Inc, Interprise Suite resellers) will be able to resell to our customer base or offer to any new clients as part of the implementation of the ERP strategy.

AspDotNet Storefront is Now "Inteprise Suite E-Commerce"

A month long issue now laid to rest, AspDotNet Storefront E-Commerce has evolved into "Inteprise Suite E-Commerce" (ISE) integrated module, this means we don't have to deal with Aspdotnet storefront Company and their support and this brings one platform within the system (IS).

It also means that ISE has to ramp up their development and support to carry on the features, issues etc. But this move to have exclusive licensing options from Aspdotnet to IS makes it easier for resellers like us and for our customers.
Aspdotnet storefront will continue to develop its own ML versions and sell it as "stand-alone" ecommerce shopping cart so it benefits them too.

We look fwd for product roadmap and new integrated features from ISE team.

Happy New Year To Inteprise Suite, its upcoming version 2009

Happy New Year to Everyone who are visiting my blog to find out the latest and greatest news about Interprise Suite.

I had a very long official vacation in month of Dec starting from Thanksgiving holiday, I was visiting Bangalore, India office and my home town ... Now back in States and back to work my first blog for this year 2009.

We heard recent changes have occurred in Interprise and this info was shared with all resellers and customers and here is glimpse of those changes that I felt you readers should know about and get to hear the new changes ....

It's an extract from the email I received from Interprise Suite

Our Successes
I would like to share with you some of the exciting trends we have been experiencing since the acquisition:
 Since April, we have more than tripled our development resources
 New prospect inquiries have grown by 285% in the last three months
 Interprise is currently 25% ahead of year-to-date earnings and sales projections
 Our reseller base has grown by 67% in the last seven months

While this represents just a few areas of our business, we continue to invest time and resources into other new projects designed to increase customer and partner satisfaction. This includes:

 Upcoming 2009 Product release
 Our new online product demo site, and upcoming online marketplace
 Increased training, documentation, and support offerings

and here is short listed of features that you can expect in 2009 version ...

Here is a “sneak peek” of some of the features that we are already have in development for this release. We hope to have a complete roadmap available to our partners shortly…

• Order and shipment Acknowledgments – ability for the system to automatically send
out email notification of a new customer order and notification of shipments to
customers. Email would include order verification document, shipment document
would include items shipped and tracking information.
• Hold Code processing – system will allow user defined hold codes for customer, orders
and A/R. Will control workflow of orders based on the hold code associated with the
transaction. Codes can put a customer account on hold that would stop all open orders
from processing or single orders or line items.
• Time Zone Management – system will properly recognize time zones when processing
call queues for outbound call lists
• Payment Types assigned to G/L accounts
• Payment types and Source can have order dollar limits
• Inventory locations will be able to be flagged as a pick location or stock only
• Inventory will have ABC classification functionality
• Inventory will now track – quantity fields for on pick, on reserve, future ship, allocated
• Flag an item as exempt for freight calculation
• Enhanced receiving and put away processes for inventory management
• Inventory location replenishment reports
• Physical inventory counting will allow cycle counting
• Outbound telemarketing will have enhance call queue processing
• CRM will allow the assignment of the earliest time of day a contact can be called
• User role security to be enhanced to allow users to belong to multiple roles
• System management password override to allow privileged access to make changes on
operator machines where the operator does not have the authority
• System control flag to determine if tax should be calculated on shipping and handling
• Ability to capture customer tax exempt information
• Ability to view and manage orders on user hold
• Support expiration dates on quotes
• Associate Batch numbers to picking tickets for better warehouse control
• Batch processing of re-authorizing expired authorizations and gathering of new
authorization codes for partially shipped orders.

and few more features ...