Recently SystemLink has received three prestigious industry awards including the Sage Software President’s Circle, “Technology Pacesetter” by Accounting Today Magazine and “VAR Star” by Bob Scott Insights. “We would like to thank our customers and our team for all the success we have experienced this year,” says Dave Beck, President of SystemLink. “They are our lifeblood and more than ever our thoughts and appreciation turn gratefully to them with thanks for their continued partnership.”

In today’s constantly changing business environment, customer service and customer loyalty are at the top of the priority list for many companies. With corporate restructuring, mergers, and cost cutting – declining customer service levels are a good reflection of the result. Most (if not all) of us have at one time or another needed assistance with a service or product and have had to contact a company for assistance. We may try to look up information online first, and then give them a call if we can’t find what we need. We then have to start from the beginning with the service representative, only to be transferred a number of times ‘to the right department’ being forced to repeat ourselves throughout the process. Siloed and generalized service more often than not leads to poor service. When there is a lack of transparency between the different facets of the organization including phone, email, web, and department; a breakdown in communication is inevitable.

A solution that has become more and more deemed as the best answer to this problem is simply communication. The right CRM application can solve these issues by providing consistent communication methods amongst each of the individual channels of your organization allowing for enterprise-wide visibility. Customer service representatives, (not to mention everyone else in the organization) gains access to real time customer data and information allowing for immediate and thorough service. The best part is: it is affordable. In our current economic climate – many companies are under more and more pressure to rein in spending; however this can often lead to a decline in service. A CRM solution that allows a company to provide integrated service will not only have a great ROI, but it will result in increased service along the way.

Free Live Webinar – Register today!

Wednesday, August 18, 2010
10:00AM PDT / 1:00PM EDT

Over a business’s lifespan, it will face the task of continually replacing, upgrading, or enhancing its business systems in response to changing market conditions, new technologies, and shifting strategies. Consider how your organization approaches ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning).  Are you effectively leveraging your people, processes and software in a way that keeps you operating efficiently and a step ahead of your competitors? 

This FREE LIVE Webinar will help you and your colleagues to chart a course for ERP evolution at your company, and to harness the power of your chosen solutions to achieve and sustain business value over the long term. Sign up now for this educational event and you’ll learn about the critical points for success, including:

• 7 steps to driving total business value using an ERP system
• A step by step approach for evaluating ERP solutions in a way that supports your specific and concrete business goals
• How to factor important benefits typically not reflected in classic ROI/TCO analysis—such as greater flexibility and business agility—into your project in a more formal, institutionalized manner
• How to build business transformation, value, and change management into the foundation of your deployment to ensure a successful ERP outcome

Who should attend:  CIOs, IT and Finance directors and managers, and ERP project managers.

A Chance to Win – Live attendees will be entered for a chance to win an iPod Nano. One winner will be selected from the audience by random drawing.*

If you’re interested but can’t attend the live event, register today and we will send you a link to the on-demand archive when available.

Featured Speakers: 

Eric Kimberling has over 10 years of experience devoted to the field of ERP and IT Benefits Realization, including performance measurement, process improvement, and organizational change management. He is the President and founder of Panorama Consulting Group, a US-based company that provides IT and ERP Benefits Realization consulting to international companies. Panorama Consulting Group also helps clients with ERP vendor selection, project planning, merger integration, third-party quality assurance, and strategy alignment.

Erik Kaas is Director of Product Management for Mid Market ERP products at Sage. He is responsible for managing the product life cycle from strategic planning to tactical activities. Erik manages a team of product managers responsible for specifying market requirements for current and future products. The product management team conducts market research supported by customer visits to ensure that engineering develops and releases products based on the needs of customers. Prior to Sage, Erik was responsible for product management at Pivotal Corporation, a provider of CRM solutions for mid market enterprises. He holds a Master in Computer Science degree from the Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands) and a Master of Business Administration from Simon Fraser University (Canada).

Michael Oliver-Goodwin is a Contributing Editor for Focus. He is a widely published writer and an experienced editor for publications, including PC World, MacWeek and InfoWorld.

Register Now!

*Employees of associated companies are not eligible for drawing. Person must live in the US or Canada to be eligible. Winner is chosen at random. Winner will be notified at the conclusion of the live webinar. One prize will be given out per person selected from the drawing. 

If your company accepts credit cards for payments, PCI compliance applies to you. BV 2009 or any earlier version is not compliant.

Regardless of size or industry, all companies that accept credit cards must adhere to the safeguards mandated by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard—referred to as the PCI DSS. While most companies are aware of PCI, many are unsure what it means for their businesses. As well, companies that use a third party for clearing and remittance often incorrectly assume that PCI compliance does not apply to them.

So, what are the risks of noncompliance? Beyond exposing your customers to fraud or identity theft, your business can be held responsible for the credit card company’s losses. In the event of a security breach or lack of PCI compliance, credit card institutions can assess your company higher credit card processing fees and levy fines of up to $500,000—or even bar your company from processing any credit card transactions at all. Keep in mind that this applies to all companies that accept payment by plastic—even if they don’t store any related data.

The PCI DSS is a multifaceted security standard that includes requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other critical protective measures. This comprehensive standard is intended to help organizations proactively protect customer account data. It is a group of principles and accompanying requirements, around which the specific elements of the DSS are organized:

Build and Maintain a Secure Network

Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data

Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters

Protect Cardholder Data

Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data

Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks

Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program

Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software

Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications

Implement Strong Access Control Measures

Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know

Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access

Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data

Regularly Monitor and Test Networks

Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data

Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes

Maintain an Information Security Policy

Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security

Acquirer audits, which can be carried out at any time, cover the 12 areas of mandatory compliance. The failure rate for PCI certification audits is high; according to recent research by VeriSign in “Lessons Learned: Top Reasons for PCI Audit Failures and How to Avoid Them,” fewer than 30 percent of companies pass these examinations on the first try.

Accpac currently does not have a credit card processing module, so Accpac users do not need to do the approval process.  However, Accpac does have static fields for storage.  If a company is using these fields, there will be a utility supplied by June to scrub those fields of any data stored.  Anyone who uses any other program that stores credit card information will need to check with those providers to ensure they will be compliant by June 1^st.

To learn more and even take a self-assessment questionnaire to evaluate your risk visit: www.pcisecuritystandards.org.

Other helpful PCI resources include:

• www.pcicomplianceguide.org.  A great source for FAQs and PCI Myths, Articles on various PCI topics, explanation of SAQ forms and a section to instant message questions to a PCI expert.
• www.sagepayments.com/pci
• http://usa.visa.com/merchants/risk_management/cisp.html Visa link to CISP site that explains what to do if compromised PCI-DSS basics, PA-DSS definitions, and Service Provider information.
• PCI Webinar: https://trustwave.webex.com/trustwave/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=50082902&rKey=57a7c878c0733489
• PCI for Dummies eBook http://cdn.bestsoftware.com/SageMail/Q3_2010%20PCIforDummies/PCI_Dummies.pdf

For the second consecutive quarter, the percentage of CFO’s who anticipate hiring more Accounting and Finance workers has gone up. While those who plan to hire more employees in the 2^nd quarter of 2010 stands at just 7%, it is still a sign of good news because it is the highest forecast since the 1^st quarter of 2009. In addition, the number of those expected to decrease staff has gone down the past two quarters.

A survey of 1400 CFO’s in the United States found that 84% are ‘somewhat confident’, and 34% are ‘very confident’ of the near future. The survey, conducted by Robert Half International also noted that the Mountain states are expected to hire the most new workers, many of which are in the education and health services sectors. Robert Half International chairman and CEO, Max Messmer said, “While most businesses remain cautious, some companies are beginning to hire selectively to ensure they have the employees in place to capitalize on opportunities that may arise as a result of an improving economy. In some cases, firms are using temporary professionals to help meet workload demands and as a way to evaluate individuals for potential full-time positions.”

Ultimately, this may be a good sign of things to come in our economy. To read more about this, click here.

Social media and networking have changed the way people relate to each other and to the companies they like and dislike. In a new world where people can express their opinion on any subject at any time, it’s more important than ever that Customer Relationship Management Solutions adapt and keep up. But studies and statistics show that they’re not. In a recent report by the Altimeter Group titled, The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management, Jeremiah Owyang discusses this subject in great detail.

Ultimately, consumers and their ever expanding channels of communication will always outnumber the marketing, sales and support employees within a company. How do you combat the problem? “Through an organized approach using enterprise software that can connect your business to the social web, allowing you and your staff to respond in near-real time.”

The report also states, “Social CRM does not replace existing CRM efforts – instead it adds more value…Social CRM enhances the relationship aspect of CRM and builds on improving the relationships with more meaningful interactions.” Paul Greenberg, a well known CRM expert said, “We’ve moved from the transaction to the interaction with customers, though we haven’t eliminated the transaction – or the data associated with it…Social CRM focuses on engaging the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.”

The report goes on to list 18 use cases in which companies can move from reactive to proactive programs. Some of them include:

• Social Marketing Insights. “Listen before you talk.”
  • Companies must listen to their customers, thus giving them relevance when they deploy their social marketing efforts.
• Rapid Social Marketing Response. “Defending the brand.”
  • An angry blogger can trigger a PR disaster and companies can no longer afford slow response times. You need to be able to identify what’s being said, determine the severity of the information, the influence of the person and the context of their previous interactions an d ultimately respond quickly.
• Social Sales Insights. “Finding your prospect’s watering holes.”
  • Organizations must identify both where their key prospects and customers interact, but also what their key needs are (that their brand can help them with.)
• Innovation Insights. “Catching innovation trends right under your nose.”
  • Companies must capitalize on innovation trends that can range from product fixes and enhancement requests to feature and solution suggestions. The goal is to capture, organize and prioritize ideas.
• Extended Collaboration. “Help me help you.”
  • Extended collaboration provides organizations with the ability to effectively listen and educate their extended networks with social learning tools.
• Seamless Customer Experience. “Customers don’t care what channel or department you work in.”
  • Customers view a company as a single entity, and if you can present a consistent face to them, you’ll increase their satisfaction.

To read the report in detail you can sign up for a free account here.

Don Thomson is one of the co-founders and lead developer of  the former Accpac Internationl now Sage Accpac ERP. An insightful blog article from Don is is referenced here:

Today’s press releases, such as “MySpace dumps server hard disks for flash drives” may not seem to have any relationship with Accpac. It does. If you follow certain lines of reasoning, flash drives could mean massively faster performance characteristics for Accpac.

Use of solid state technology (flash drives) is another example of a sea-change in the software industry being driven by iPod users’ insatiable demand for more storage. The personal computer (IT) industry no longer drives storage technology. It is all about iPods capable of storing more music and more movies – using solid state (flash drive) technology.

You may say that new technology is also driving down hard drive prices. Yes, you can get a terabyte drive for a few hundred dollars. Who uses tape backup systems anymore? Just kidding – half of our customers still do. But Accpac users don’t typically need a terabyte. Many of our clients run Accpac quite happily with 2Gb or 4Gb or 10Gb databases. Hello – you can buy a 16Gb flash drive for less than $200. Okay, MySpace is not using $200 data-sticks – but the technology is the same.

Why has MySpace switched to solid state? They have a need-for-speed. Rather than bulking up on RAM caches for their databases, why not just have faster solid state storage? The RAM can only really speed up queries – database updates still need to be “written through” to non-volatile storage – and at some point, a larger cache means slower, not faster performance. Does it make sense to have 16Gb of RAM for a 4Gb database?

How much faster could Accpac be in a flash drive configuration? It could be a lot – as well as hardware transfer speed and latency, there is another line of reasoning based on relational database optimization strategies. Times are changing and it’s always fun to watch”

Source: Thomson, Don. “Faster Accpac Performance.” donthomson.wordpress.com October 20, 2009.

Cloud computing represents a fundamental change in the way consumers and businesses are using their computers and mobile devices, and it is a trend that small businesses cannot afford to overlook. “Cloud” is just another name for the Internet, and thus cloud computing really refers to any services and applications that are hosted and accessed via the web.  Cloud computing allows small businesses to remotely manage and store information, and access customized software or services from virtually any device with Internet access. Small businesses can also use cloud computing technology to boost their storage capacity via online storage services and create online backup and archiving accounts.

SaaS applications involve customer relationship management, finance and accounting programs, human resource management and document collaboration. Small businesses can also use Saas to increase their storage capacity

Cloud computing allows small businesses to save on expensive hardware, software, and maintenance costs since data and applications are being held on remote servers. Users can access their business services and applications through almost any device with an Internet connection including laptops, mobile phones, and PDA’s. It is also easy to add new users to the system when you need them.

The two biggest concerns for small businesses are downtime and security. If your service provider’s network is down, it can bring your whole business to a grinding halt. And many are still wary about the security of data stored and accessed in the cloud.

For more information read PC Magazine’s article What Does Cloud Computing Mean For Me or for a practical guide on cloud computing click here.

Adapted from Hidden Benefits are Key to CRM, published in CRM2day.com. Roger Cole, Business Software Specialist, CPiO

Improving customer information through Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can result in surprising hidden benefits, but organizations need to target operational focus to leverage the opportunity. To date organizations have approached CRM with the single goal of improving customer knowledge to drive sales strategies. Understanding your customer has meant, in essence, easy access to consistent information about sales history. As a result, too many companies have been sold CRM as an extension to the ‘contact management’ concept, and have therefore focused on delivering customer information to sales people.

This information of course has value. However, this exclusive focus on sales not only constrains the scope of the project, it also significantly undermines the potential benefits and overall value that can be gained.

This is particularly relevant in the current challenging economic environment where making the business run as efficiently as possible can be as much an operational focus as retaining and increasing sales. For CRM provides a platform for information visibility across the organization. By pulling information from finance, sales, marketing, even support into a central, customer focused database, an organization can attain significant insight into business performance and attain attendant benefits including enhanced financial control; improved forecasting; and in depth business understanding.

The hidden benefits of CRM are demonstrated by design technology provider Stanford Marsh, which is using CRM to deliver a single, detailed customer view across its product sales, support, training and financial contracts businesses. In addition to boosting the effectiveness and efficiency of service and support engineers, this single view provides sales staff with both financial and stock information as well as up to date sales and support call history.

Credit risk is flagged in red to ensure awareness of problems and enforce credit limits, while immediate access to stock information enables them to place orders immediately for the customer and set delivery time expectation. This information has also significantly reduced internal calls, particularly to finance, further improving efficiency and effectiveness. The integration of CRM to its financial software has enabled Stanford Marsh to improve utilization of its engineering staff and enhance financial management, as well as providing excellent information to sales personnel. Customer service has improved and the company has expanded its service contracts by 60% in two years. Implementation and equipment sales have increased by 24 percent and debtor days have reduced by approximately 20%, releasing $500,000 back into the business.

It is clear that CRM offers so much more than the contact management systems of the past – but only for those organizations that can successfully embrace an open culture underpinned by access to the key business systems. Visibility across finance, sales, service and marketing provides an organization with the collective business understanding required to achieve a positive return on investment while supporting the CRM objective of enabling improved customer value.

To learn more about integrating your ERP solution with CRM click here.