Is Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel a fan of this app?

Why Mobile ERP, Why Now?
a blog series by xkzero

In the previous blog, “Establishing Trust with Mobile ERP,” we discussed automobile diagnostics as a metaphor for the evolution of technology, so we’ll continue with the driving theme. Did you know that Chicago, where I live, has the nation’s most expensive parking meters? That’s not the worst part, though. The true source of stress is the lofty ticket prices for expired meters.

Meter-Paul_ScreenAs you might imagine, I get zero sympathy from Mayor Emanuel. He doesn’t mind at all if I don’t pay the fee on time because late penalties mean more cash for the city coffers!

There is now a mobile app, though, that keeps me out of trouble. It’s called ParkChicago and functions like a mind-reading, convenient dream.

How does it work? First, I pre-fund my account, so I only have to tap a few buttons whenever I park, which comes in handy when I’m in a hurry to get to that dentist appointment.

My favorite part—perhaps because it feels so personal—is that it sends a phone alert when my meter is running out! (Can we attach this functionality to regularly used household items like milk or toilet paper, please?)

That means, when I’m parked on a city street while having a nice dinner with my wife, I don’t have to interrupt our date to leave the restaurant and feed the meter. I simply excuse myself for a moment…tap, tap, tap, swipe…and the conversation barely skips a beat.

It’s convenient all year round, but this is the first Chicago winter we’ll have the option of not bundling up to run outdoors and fumble with cold quarters in gloved hands. That is quite exciting to locals and visitors alike!

This mobile app positively transforms the experiences formerly interrupted by manually feeding a meter. It also helps prevent the expensive disappointment of finding that orange and white ticket envelope adhered to the window.

The possibilities of mobile are life changing, for sure. (Is it weird to say that a mobile app “gets me?”)

Lovely Rita, meter maid, our time is up.

Think of all the little conveniences you can provide your business customers with mobile. Want to brainstorm about this? We’d love to hear from you.

Why Mobile ERP, Why Now?
a blog series by xkzero

This article is part of a series based on xkzero co-founder Paul Ziliak’s talk at Sage Summit 2014 called “Why Mobile, Why Now?: A Decision Maker’s Guide to Business Success.”

Paul Ziliak, xkzero Co-Founder

Through our blog, we bring to you some of the ideas initially shared in this talk. We will also continue to add new insights about why mobile for ERP is here to stay and how you can get the jump on your competitors by incorporating everything special about mobile technology into your business now.

You may also like this story from the series: Is your B2B industry about to go mobile?

GetX Versus the Sage 100 ERP Idea Site

Sage 100 ERP (MAS 90/200) Idea Site:  https://www11.v1ideas.com/SageERP/MAS90and200

Maybe you’re not aware of the Idea Site run and monitored by Sage. It’s one of the resources they use to help determine which features to add to future releases.

As of this writing, the community has shared 1,740 ideas and cast 27,464 votes in hopes that Sage will give them ample consideration. (The #1 requested idea? Bring back PDF versions of user manuals: 271 votes. Seriously.)

Well, here’s some news worth noting – xkzero has a universal search app, called GetX, that can single handedly wipe out a good many of the requested features.  You might even find GetX to be the single most valuable feature you could possibly add to Sage 100 ERP.

Consider this:  Out of the 1,740 ideas on the site, 360 of them reference ideas related to “search,” “find,” “locate,” “look for,” “look up” and “access.”

In other words, 21% of the user ideas submitted to improve Sage 100 ERP can potentially be addressed by a universal search application.

Furthermore, those 360 search-related ideas generated 11,889 votes, representing 43% of all votes cast on Sage’s idea site.

I’m not suggesting that each and everyone of these ideas would be solved by universal search. We have not researched each request in that level of depth, but the point is, a great deal of user frustration could be resolved with one solution.

Did you know that universal search functionality is now standard in Sage ERP X3 Version 7? That’s right. Furthermore, Sage chose the same search technology (Lucene) xkzero selected for use with GetX back in 2011. We think that’s pretty cool.

Here is a quick list of 32 of those feature requests for which GetX would pretty much be a no-brainer solution:

  1. Enter customer PO# then directly access the sales order.
  2. Access contacts without first selecting the customer.
  3. Access ship-tos without first selecting the customer.
  4. Access Item Vendor Maintenance more quickly.
  5. Conduct an ad hoc search of UDF fields.
  6. Search by email address in customer masterfile.
  7. Speed up inquiries.
  8. Search within a search (multiple criteria at once).
  9. Access Google search engine.
  10. Search by serial number.
  11. Search vendors and customers with expanded criteria.
  12. Search invoice history by job number.
  13. Simultaneously search across all master records.
  14. When only alias item number is known, conduct an item code search.
  15. Search by check number in accounts payable (AP).
  16. Search by inventory item with enhanced description field.
  17. Search inventory item extended description fields.
  18. Find vendor alias item number.
  19. Search by vendor remit data.
  20. Use quick look ups (default to F2) for inventory, customers, etc.
  21. Look up customer check number.
  22. Quickly look up an item on a particular sale when you know the order number and item number.
  23. Find a part number based solely on the alias.
  24. Look up customer information by number or name.
  25. In accounts receivable (A/R), look up Invoices paid based on the customer check number.
  26. Search customer memos.
  27. Search customer by zip code.
  28. Search customer by phone number.
  29. Search inventory by other fields.
  30. Search for inventory by country (as user defined field).
  31. Search for comments in sales order.
  32. Identify duplicates (customer, vendor, or employee name).

What does this all mean?
One thing it means is there are hundreds of thousands of people that use Sage 100 ERP who spend way too much time looking for data. The good news is there is a solution that can be installed and set up in about 30 minutes that would save a lot of misery.

There is a lot of talk about the cloud and ERP, to the point that this is where most of the industry seems to be spending all of its energy and money. In our opinion, though, there are a great many areas where ERP can be improved to truly help small and mid-sized businesses grow. One of these ideas is universal search. We’re doing what we can to make that a standard feature for ERP. Mark my word, one day people will expect this from their system.

By the way, if you would like to know how many ideas meet the criteria of ‘cloud’ in the Sage site? Two. Cheers!

Would you like a free 30-day trial of GetX to see how many system headaches universal might solve for you? We’d love to hear from you! Contact us at @erp_apps, info@xkzero.com or at 847-416-2009.

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[This article has been updated from its original publication on April 4, 2013, and includes more current statistics.]

 

Omni-Commerce: A Customer First Approach with Mobile ERP

The greatest incentive to migrate to a mobile ERP stems from the powerful impact of creating new processes altogether. It is also a smart way to overhaul a specific business function, such as sales. It makes sense, then, that retailers are so obsessed with a new idea you might think of as “Omni-Commerce.” Marketing and selling to customers whenever—and wherever they are is no longer a nice-to-have feature. It’s an essential strategy.

Give your customer their own app and you they might give you a gold star!

Give your customer their own app and you they might give you a gold star!

To appreciate the business value of mobile technology, we need to pay attention to the way mobility has shaped consumers’ thinking. Keep in mind that carrying smart phones or even tablets everywhere has led us to expect instant gratification.

When a consumer experiences a sight, sound, or smell that triggers a need—real or perceived—mobile devices have the tools to satisfy that urge—right then, right there. To win the sale, a business needs to anticipate this compulsion, and be more immediately accessible than competitors.

Fortunately, this is possible with mobile commerce, which is well within reach for small and mid-market manufacturers. All mobile solutions are not alike, though. Users embrace a mobile ERP and specialized apps when they have a very high level of trust in the reliability of the data presented.

Furthermore, the system needs to be easy to learn and use for individuals with varying levels of technical proficiency. Ultimately, it must create a far better experience than ever before. This takes an app that is a good fit for your company’s needs, which might even found right in the app store, aka “off the shelf.”

WEB STORES FALL SHORT

To illustrate how omni-commerce might work, let’s say a consumer named Sally is driving down the boulevard and spots a billboard advertising a pair of heels that would look absolutely amazing with the dress she’s wearing to a big party the next day. She pulls off the road (of course), then uses her smartphone to do a Google search for these perfect pumps. In a flash, she finds the shoes on the retailer’s website! Sally is smiling, and so is the retailer. You, not so much. Why not? Your company doesn’t have page 1 ranking, so you didn’t get that sale.

Hold on, though. Sally hasn’t submitted payment yet. There may be another way to be the retailer of choice. Sally sees the overnight shipping cost, and can’t justify it. If your store has a good mobile app, you can enable her impulse purchase and get the sale! The app can help her find the closest location with the right color and size in stock. Even better, with a tap on a map, she automatically links to directions to pick them up now. Sally is one happy customer, and you both win!

WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTORS & THEIR CUSTOMERS CARRY SMARTPHONES, TOO.

Mobile ERP can provide similar opportunities for small and mid-sized distributors and manufacturers. Here’s an example: Suarez Brothers (a fictional name) is a wholesale distributor of beauty supply products serving approximately 600 retail and re-distribution customers scattered far and wide throughout Central and Southern California. The sales reps support their customers with a direct sales force of 8, each assigned a territory of customers who they visit on a regular basis, with the primary purpose of taking new orders.

Our company, xkzero, equipped Suarez with iSales 100, the native iPhone-iPad sales app for Sage 100 ERP a couple of years ago. iSales 100 allows sales reps to place orders on the spot, which are electronically fed directly into Sales Order Entry for next-day picking and delivery. While the mobile sales app led to increased productivity, after this process was in place, a consistent theme of business problems became apparent.

Suarez had been struggling to keep the shelves stocked with inventory demanded by customers. They simply did not have enough salespeople on the street to visit every single customer each week. Consequently, they were losing orders—and market share. (One might say they were a day late and a dollar short.) A logical solution could have been to hire another salesperson or two, forcing higher labor costs. It would have also worsened another problem—the increasing travel costs to visit customers located in remote, rural areas.

CHARTING AN OMNI-COMMERCE SOLUTION

Suarez’s goals were clear. First, hold the line to maintain customers. Then, increase customer loyalty and market share. Also, reduce costs. To achieve these goals, the owners turned to xkzero for help. We were able to solve their problems in a way that didn’t require the customer to buy any additional software.

Suarez merely took advantage of the flexibility inherent in iSales 100 and moved toward an omni-commerce approach, providing the customer with unprecedented freedom in the way they purchased goods. They could now buy product without the distributor’s assistance, and no longer had to wait for a customer sales rep to visit or even give them a call.

Here’s what Suarez did to meet their market share, loyalty, and cost goals:

  • Assigned a user ID and password to each store
  • Restricted customer information access to their own account only
  • Filtered the list of inventory items available to each particular customer
  • Changed settings to indicate that a customer cannot override calculated price (The app already follows pricing rules established in the ERP.)
  • Set preferences to require customer signature
  • Set defaults for each customer’s available warehouse(s)
  • Set a default to automatically place customer-initiated orders on hold
  • Orchestrated a campaign to orient targeted customers to the new ordering option

iSales 100 provided every necessary control to give Suarez’s customers access to the mobile app. Suarez was even able to implement everything on the back-end set up in Sage 100 ERP within a few short hours. Now, with iSales 100, customers have the independence to make purchases from Suarez directly from the store aisle, using their smartphone or tablet.

The results are restored customer loyalty and improved market share, with the added bonus of reduced travel and sales costs. These small steps make it easy for retail customers to reduce or eliminate out-of-stock situations, and keep inventory levels just right–for final consumers like Sally. Customer freedom to shop and purchase from anywhere, anytime—that is the essence of omni-commerce. That is the promise of iSales 100.

To learn more about how xkzero can help you develop a mobile ERP strategy to fit your business, please contact us at info@xkzero.com or 847-416-2009.

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Establishing Trust with Mobile ERP

Why Mobile ERP, Why Now?
blog series by xkzero

In this technology-driven society, we have high expectations for our business software. That certainly holds true with mobile apps for ERP too. We need both our systems and apps to have the capacity to handle dynamic information, the sophistication to enable analyses, and the credibility to have trustworthy accuracy.

Part of that precision comes from accessing the rich and even visceral story beyond spreadsheets with raw numbers. This means building a narrative with product images, customer feedback notes, contact information and geo-tags. Using the video chat functions native to our mobile devices, we can not only communicate but gather sights and sounds from remote locations. This data can be used, for example, to assess the source of a machine malfunction, or to walk through a store to approve a product’s placement.

Even outside the realm of business, we have enjoyed the capabilities of sophisticated technology. When driving to the airport recently, two colleagues IndicatorLightsnoticed a pair of icons were lit up on the dashboard. The passenger used her iPhone to search the manufacturer’s web site and quickly matched up these images with a list of warning signs. “This means your tire pressure is low,” she said. The car had been driving smoothly, and none of the tires were overtly flat, yet the built-in system was designed with safety in mind. Its functionality was proactive; it provided the driver a warning before she even suspected a problem.

tom-car-talk1_wide-15bb9342fed4fd6096a487f920eb216b8f590241-s5-c15

“Car Talk” Hosts Ray & Tom Magliozzi, aka Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers (photo courtesy of NPR)

It’s a good thing automobiles weren’t always so sophisticated, or we may have never enjoyed “Car Talk,” the brilliant call-in show hosted by Tom and Ray Magliozzi, known as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. It first aired in 1978, at a time when cars were simple enough that many people did their own repairs.

Although these guys had the brains to graduate from MIT and enough auto expertise to run their own fix-it shop, their diagnostic methods were laughable. Click would answer a call like this, “Ziliak with a Z… How are things in Chicago?”

Humans making car sounds got a lot of air time. A typical caller might say, “I crank the ignition and it goes, ‘RRRRHUURRHRRRCHSHH.’”

Clack would disregard the reason for the call and impart his philosophies about deep dish pizza, and his sudden craving for a large pepperoni pie. Click, unfazed by the interjection, would inquire about loyalties to the White Sox or the Cubs. Amidst the rolling tangents, one of them would announce, “It must be the transmission!”

These goofy guys earned an impressive following in the 15+ years the show was live, and fans still tune in to listen to previously unaired episodes. They set the tone with sibling razzing, marked by the catchphrase, “Don’t drive like my brother.” They also thrived on settling bets—especially those between a husband and wife—about questionable DIY repair methods, or how to tell if the animal living in the engine is a muskrat or a chipmunk.

While people continued to call Click and Clack to get their on assessment of the auto ailment associated with their impressions of squeaks, creaks, and whirrs, the real takeaway was the duo’s hilarious spin on the problem and Tom’s infectious laugh. That said, they were actually spot-on when troubleshooting your 1980 Dodge Dart based on a few suspicious sounds.

However, cars have evolved, and so have our diagnostic methods. Today, you wouldn’t trust a mechanic with your brand new fuel-efficient European sports car who listens to your funny noises, replies, “It’s the transmission!” then pops open the hood and gets to work (on your dime).

These days, when shelling out the cash for auto repairs, car and truck owners can expect a comprehensive diagnostic process conducted with precise electronic measurements. Mechanics often use mobile devices to collect information from the car’s computer system, which gives the customer confidence that their data is scientifically based—and meant to be taken seriously.

~~~
Tom Magliozzi died November 3, 2014 from complications related to Alzheimer’s disease. Coincidentally, we discussed the content of this blog on that very day, before learning of his passing. We extend our sympathies to his loved ones.

NPR, November 4, 2014: “‘We have learned absolutely nothing,’
Tom Magliozzi on Decades of Car Talk”
~~~

Why Mobile ERP, Why Now?
blog series by xkzero
This article is part of a series based on xkzero co-founder Paul Ziliak’s talk at Sage Summit 2014 called “Why Mobile, Why Now?: A Decision Maker’s Guide to Business Success.”

6x6_150+aPH_PZ-WhyMobile_300714_0053b-crop

Paul Ziliak shows off his new invisible smart phone to an incredulous Las Vegas audience.

Through our blog, we bring to you some of the ideas initially shared in this talk. We will also continue to add new insights about why mobile for ERP is here to stay and how you can get the jump on your competitors by incorporating everything special about mobile technology into your business now.

We carry the auto theme into an article about mobile technology’s role in parking meter payments, “Is Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel a fan of this app?

 

Re-imagine Your Selling Processes for Mobile ERP

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Your Sales Process Can Be Re-imagined

Your Sales Process Can Be Re-imagined

 

In a recent post we talked about how you can initiate a cultural shift in your organization by empowering the sales team with off-the-shelf apps that integrate with your ERP system.

By doing so, you improve your sales team’s ability to respond and react to situations that build customer confidence. However, it’s likely that this won’t help you create any substantial competitive differentiation since many of your competitors have easy access to the same or similar apps.

To truly disrupt the competition and win more marketshare, you need to make an honest evaluation of your current processes, systems and opportunities. This is a creative effort that can be accomplished through good old fashioned business process re-engineering.

Re-imagine a Common Sales Process

Let’s consider the challenge of a fictitious company called Seeson’s Greetings. Seeson’s Greetings sells Christmas and other holiday ornaments through wholesale distribution. Their industry is considered to be very competitive.

A major part of Seeson’s Greetings sales come from active participation at industry trade shows. From the trade show floor, Seeson’s team of sales reps need to provide quotes, orders and invoices, and in some cases, accept payment on the spot from their B2B clientele.

The current sales process for Seeson’s Greetings is manual, and looks something like this:

  • Confirm pricing for the customer in a printed catalog.
  • Prepare handwritten invoice/order form, and obtain a signature from the customer.
  • Call the office to provide credit card information.
  • Fax or physically deliver the handwritten invoice/order form to the office.
  • Enter sales activity into the ERP.
  • Send email order confirmation to the customer.
  • Document the transaction; either file the signed customer invoice in a cabinet, or manually scan and attach it to the invoice record in the ERP.

INEFFICIENCY MANIFESTED

This process is wrought with inefficiencies, and potential for mistakes, information delays, and effort duplication. In short, it is ripe for an overhaul. Here are some of the problem areas:

  • Trade show activity is not available to management in real-time.
  • Salespeople have no access to a customer’s prior sales history while interacting at a trade show.
  • Revenue and credit card receipt postings to accounting are delayed.
  • Warehouse inquiries are inaccurate because inventory quantities in the ERP don’t reflect trade show sales until later.
  • Excess labor costs are incurred by having additional staff enter the transactions.
  • Risk of error increases when entering after-the-fact data based on a hand-written form.

Seeson’s has some real opportunities to re-engineer the trade show selling process in a way that provides measurable benefits. These improvements include increased salesperson and customer confidence, reduced order processing labor costs, and greatly accelerated visibility of trade show activities at any moment in time.

BETTER PROCESSES ENABLE MORE SALES.

When engaging in process re-design, imagine all the benefits of making trade show sales with a smart phone or a tablet app designed for your ERP:

  • A salesperson can now review the customer’s history—on the spot.
  • Customer specific pricing is available, current and accurate.
  • Product bar code scanning speeds up customer checkout.
  • Swiping credit card data speeds up checkout, too.
  • Electronic signature capture improves accountability.
  • Photographic proof of delivery is captured.
  • Invoice receipt is automatically printed or emailed, saving time.
  • Geo-coded, time- and date-stamped transactions improve visibility.
  • Sales data, including the signature, the photo, the geo-code info, etc. is fed into the ERP immediately, increasing confidence.
  • Show activity is completely backed up. Re-keying of data is no longer necessary.

You’ve just re-imagined a process that, when acted upon, will likely increase the satisfaction of your customers, salespeople, customer service reps and most likely, management and ownership. Best of all, with this imagined process, you created documentation suitable to help evaluate software developers and determine who has the best technology and experience to satisfy your needs.

To learn more about how xkzero can help you develop a mobile ERP strategy to fit your business, please contact us at info@xkzero.com or 847-416-2009.