Monthly Archives: March 2013

5 Critical Success Factors: How To Convert Your Mobile ERP Sales App Into a B2B Customer Selling Machine

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[How to enable mobile sales app for Sage 100 ERP to be a B2B app for your customers.  03:27]

Wouldn’t it be awesome to offer your customer a B2B mobile sales app for their smartphone or tablet to allow them to do business with you whenever and where ever they are? You provide your customer with an app, give them a private login and password – and voila – your customer is using an app on their mobile device to query orders, query inventory, place new orders and so on.  If that day is not upon us yet, why not?

Here are 5 critical success factors we think are necessary in order to make that happen:

  1. Your mobile app needs to have a back end that allows you to assign user logins that map to one specific customer record in your ERP.
  2. The back end should also allow you to restrict inventory
  3. The app should follow the pricing rules you’ve built in your ERP
  4. The app should be simple, simple, simple for your customer to obtain
  5. Last but not least, enabling this technology should be inexpensive for you.  Technologies are changing rapidly – especially in the mobile space – so investing in something expensive does not seem prudent.

It begs the question, if a B2B mobile app that works with your ERP is available and fits these criteria, are there benefits to a manufacturer or wholesale distributor suggesting that now is the time to get ahead of your competition and offer B2B mobile apps to your favorite customers?

xkzero is passionate about mobility especially as it relates to ERP systems.  If you have a thought or comment please drop us a line at info@xkzero.com or visit our website at www.xkzero.com.

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Rule #1: When Choosing a Mobile Sales App, Know Your Industry

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Mobile Field Service for Sage 100 ERP by MSI Data

Mobile Field Service for Sage 100 ERP by MSI Data

If there is one thing we at xkzero all agree on, it’s that in the emerging mobile apps world we’ll see products increasingly targeted toward unique market segments. With Sage on the verge of releasing mobile apps for its North American ERP packages, we have been receiving increasing inquiries about how our iSales 100 app compares. The fact is we don’t know much of what Sage will be offering at this point, but we are certain that whatever it is, it will be different from our offering.  By their very nature, mobile apps need to be more stratified—as Pascal Houillon emphasized at the Sage Summit conference in Nashville last year—more focused. There will be no one size fits all sales app.

Here are some examples: A salesperson in the food and beverage space may need a mobile app to know exactly what their customer normally orders—perhaps to even copy one order from the last one. A construction company, however, wants a mobile app to provide job information—work in progress, approved revisions, cost overrun data, job profits and the like.  Someone selling textiles wants to know what pricing to offer when diving in the bins with a key customer at the Merchandise Mart.

Executives want what they want, and Customer Service Reps just want their customers to be happy and these days they need to have the tools, day or night, to make that happen.

We saw a demo earlier this week by Ray Thomas of MSI Data. He showed us a nifty app of theirs, native for either Apple iOS or Android, addressing the Mobile Field Service industries and now with integration to Sage 100 ERP (formerly MAS 90/200), done by Bob Richter and his team at ROI Consulting.

http://msidata.com

If you provide mobile service, require inspections, provide depot repair or have warranty work, contract work, technician scheduling and other field related requirements—and especially if you own Sage 100 ERP, it seems worth a good look.

The choices for mobile ERP will be expanding rapidly. And while there are many important considerations, the ability to meet your industry functional and intelligence needs is a good place to start.

Improved Work Flow And Search With Sage 100 ERP Version 2013 Visual Process Flows And GetX Search

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By Paul Ziliak

Are you as aware of your processes as Jennifer Lawrence?

For those you you familiar with Sage ERP X3, you’ll recognize the Visual Process Flows added to Sage 100 ERP Version 2013.  Visual Process Flows are a pre-defined set of diagrams and work flows guiding the user from one system ERP task to the next.  They can be modified or you can add news ones as well.  In X3 training we learned that the Visual Process Flows are very useful particularly for new users.  (With X3 this makes a lot of sense because there are a lot of new users.)  With Sage 100 ERP version 2013 we now have a handful of new processes pre-defined as Visual Process Flows and I do think it they be useful in reducing some training costs for new users.  You should note that Visual Process Flows don’t really seem to save that much time for existing users when processing a new order. The jury is still out for how likely existing users are to adapt Visual Process Flows.

For that we recommend GetX Search for Sage 100 ERP by xkzero.  GetX takes a data first approach to Sage 100 ERP and the results a three dimensional:

  1. You can more quickly start a new Sales Order or Purchase Order by entering in anything fairly unique about that Customer or Vendor and then click ‘New Order’.  The result is reduced time processing orders, and happier customers because of it.
  2. You can find things in your system that otherwise might take forever, or you may never find at all.  In other words, GetX can save your back side.
  3. And also makes training new users easier.

When you are planning your upgrade for Sage 100 ERP version 2013 we hope you will consider downloading your free 30 day evaluation copy of GetX.  The trial is fully functional and it adds no real time to the upgrade so the risk for everyone is zero.  Any Sage 100 ERP reseller can get a one year license copy for free just by downloading, installing and registering GetX.  If you feel really ambitious then please watch this 4 minute 45 second YouTube video to learn everything you need to know about installing, configuring and benefiting from GetX.

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