Retailers optimistic as sales up for third consecutive month!

The Distributive Trades Survey of 20,000 company outlets carried out by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reveals that 60 per cent of retailers saw the volume of sales rise during September.

The CBI’s distributive trades survey for September showed unexpected strength as the balance of retailers reporting sales up year on year climbed to a six-year high at plus 49%, compared with plus 39% in August.

The increase is also reflected in the volume of orders placed upon suppliers (39%), surpassing last month’s balance of 29%.

Ian Mc Cafferty, CBI chief economic advisor, says: “The bank holiday weekend, combined with the tail-end of summer sales have resulted in a bumper period for retailers.”

It was the third consecutive increase and followed a decent month for clothing and footwear sales in particular, the business lobby group said.

Retailers also expect sales to be strong next month, but economists warned consumers are likely to find life much harder going as the public spending squeeze and rising food prices weigh on sentiment.

They also noted that the official measure of retail sales showed a much weaker picture during August.

The clothing and footwear & leather sub-sectors saw particularly strong sales growth, which are likely to have been boosted by the arrival of new autumn ranges. Solid sales growth was also recorded in the furniture & carpets sector.

Looking to October, a balance of +47% of firms expect a higher volume of sales than a year ago.

Business Challenges which retailers may face include:

•Ensuring visibility and proper tracking of inventory for multi-variant items.
•Creating item codes for multi variant items.
•Efficiently completing inventory reporting and sales analysis by size and colour

Intelligent Information Systems has developed Intelligent Colour Size Matrix which enables you to create and maintain parent and child items via matrix templates within SAP Business One.

Benefits of Intelligent Colour Size Matrix

•Save time creating item codes by creating child items within user defined templates.
•Quickly set up a product range for a new multi-attribute.
•Beat the competition and capture the market with proper inventory tracking.
•Quickly fulfill orders for multi attribute items.
•Improves inventory reporting and sales analysis by allowing any business in need of tracking by the sizes and colours of their merchandise to do so efficiently.

To find out more visit beabetterbusiness.co.uk/IntelligentColourSizeMatrix or check out our Intelligent Colour Size Matrix Demo Video on Intelligent B1.

Sources: Smallbusiness.co.uk; finfacts.ie; nebusiness.co.uk

Intelligent Targeter

Enables Sales Targeting From SAP Business One

Intelligent Targeter enables users of SAP Business One to set targets for customers and sales employees.

Functionalities

•Set targets for customers.
•Multiple Measurements.
•Progress Alerts and Reports.

Business Challenges

All Business starts with Sales. One of the elements of Intelligent Essentials is Sales Targeter. This solution enhances SAP Business One around the areas of Sales Forecasting and budgeting. This ensures that your business is monitoring sales performance against the initial budget and the ever changing forecast.

Key Features

•Track sales against Budget and forecast
•Set sales targets by Sales rep for Customers, Customer group or customer properties.
•Measure Sales against individual products, product groups or product properties
•Set the targets by one or all of the Qty, Turnover, Gross Profit

Business Benefits

By setting Sales budgets for the year within SAP Business One each sales person can be monitored against actual sales. The system also enables a user to manage their forecasts for the coming months based on feedback from customers or the level of sales quotes being generated. Every business needs to be able to track sales and ensure that the sales figures are on par with the initial company budgets. Sales Targeter enables management and sales people alike to track their sales to ensure the company is on track to achieve its numbers.

Find out more about other Intelligent Essentials elements at www.beabetterbusiness.co.uk or www.beabetterbusiness.ie

Intelligent Essentials, Making SAP B1 Better!

Intelligent Colour Size Matrix

Create and maintain parent and child items within SAP Business One

Intelligent Colour/Size Matrix enables you to create and maintain parent and child items via matrix templates within SAP Business One. The matrix templates define the item code and description to be assigned to each child item created. The module also allows you to optionally copy parent item price list prices to their child items.

Functionalities

•Creates item codes within a user defined matrix template based on two item variables.
•Assign templates to parent items enabling user to create child items for the parent.
•Defines parent and child items in Item Master Data UDF – Colour Size Matrix.
•Assign multiple templates to one parent item.
•Apply parent pricing tab allows the user to copy selected price list prices from a parent item to all of its child items at any point in time.

Business Challenges

•Ensuring visibility and proper tracking of inventory for multi-variant items.
•Creating item codes for multi variant items.
•Efficiently completing inventory reporting and sales analysis by size and colour.

Key Features

•Customisable user defined colour/size matrix templates to meet your inventory needs.
•Multiple colour/size matrix templates can be assigned to one parent item to create multi-variant child items.
•Apply parent pricing to child items when applicable.
•Leverage standard order processing capabilities of SAP Business One such as special pricing, warehouse, availability check, etc in combination with colour/size matrix as items are processed through ordinary SAP Business One processing cycle.

Business Benefits

•Save time creating item codes by creating child items within user defined templates.
•Quickly set up a product range for a new multi-attribute.
•Beat the competition and capture the market with proper inventory tracking.
•Quickly fulfill orders for multi attribute items.
•Improves inventory reporting and sales analysis by allowing any business in need of tracking by the sizes and colours of their merchandise to do so efficiently.

To find out more about other Intelligent Essentials elements visit www.beabetterbusiness.co.uk or www.beabetterbusiness.ie

Intelligent Essentials, Making B1 Better!

Online sales - the barriers are smaller than you think with Intelligent Ecommerce!

Today’s consumers expect to be able to find everything they need or want online.
Despite this 69% of entrepreneurs have not yet made the move to e-commerce in the UK despite it being an extremely lucrative marketing channel. Many small businesses in the UK have failed to capitlise and enter the online market because they fear the unknown, they don’t know where to begin and a lot of them feel that the market is “out of their league” so to speak.

The most obvious benefit to trading online is that it gives you greater reach to customers and drives sales. In PayPoint.net’s recent report, Powering Small Business Britain, 59% of the over 800 entrepreneurs surveyed identified this aspect as the biggest pull to e-commerce. Consumers look to buy everything online, from their groceries and taxi bookings, to their insurance.

Clearly there are many advantages to e-commerce and this is recognised by small businesses in Britain; the issue, is that entrepreneurs want to go online, but feel that this is not possible for various reasons, such as cost, fraud, or simply apprehension.

With SAP Business One and Intelligent Ecommerce your small to midsize business can enter the world of online trading with ease.

Intelligent Ecommerce provides users of SAP Business One with a robust and easy to use solution to provide information to customers. Using Intelligent Ecommerce companies can provide their customers with an on-line portal. Customers can log onto the website, enter their username and password and view products on offer.

To find out more about SAP Business One, Intelligent Ecommerce and other Intelligent Essentials add-ons which take SAP B1 further visit www.beabetterbusiness.co.uk or www.beabetterbusiness.ie

Intelligent Deferrer

Easily defer income or expenditure in SAP Business One

Intelligent Deferrer provides additional functionality that will allow users to easily defer financial income & expenditure.

Functionalities

•Defer Income. Within SAP Business one, users will be able to select an existing Sales Invoice and for each line item decide to defer the income.
•Defer Expenditure. Equally when it comes to Expenditure, users can decide to defer any line on a Purchasing Invoice.

Business Challenges

•Need to defer income & expenditure to reflect best practice accounting.
•Currently this is a manual & time consuming process in SAP Business One.

Key Features

•Being able to defer both Income & Expenditure easily.
•All postings done correctly and automatically.
•Easy to review deferrals created.

Business Benefits

•Put best‐practice accounting in place.
•Ease of use for users

To find out more about other Intelligent Essentials elements visit www.beabetterbusiness.co.uk or www.beabetterbusiness.ie

Intelligent Essentials, Making SAP B1 Better!

Intelligent Back 2 Back

Enhanced Back to Back Processing Including Real Costing in SAP Business One

Intelligent Back 2 Back provides enhanced functionality to the standard SAP Business One back to back Sales to Purchase Order process that will allow users to handle real world scenarios and improves the link between the Sales and Purchase elements of the process.


Functionalities

•Create a Sales Order.
•Generate a Back to Back Purchase Order.
•Update and Change Purchase Orders –and the effect on Sales Orders.

Business Challenges

•Inflexible and limited back to back process in SAP Business One.
•No strong link between Sales and Purchase Orders.
•Stronger Batch control.
•Customer information.

Key Features

•Direct link between Sales cost & Purchase pricing.
•Handles Split –and alternative Supplier scenarios.
•Allows for real costing on Sales Orders.
•Fully integrated with SAP Business One.

Business Benefits

•Actual costing. Accurate GP.
•Lower stock on hand.
•Flexibility.
•PO’s easily matched to customers

To find out more about other Intelligent Essentials elements visit www.beabetterbusiness.co.uk or www.beabetterbusiness.ie

Intelligent Essentials, Making B1 Better!

SAP ranked 26th in 2010 top 100 Global Brands poll!

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”

Jeff Bezos

SAP has been ranked 26 in the latest Top 100 Global Brands poll. They have moved up one place from last year, and have moved up from 31st place since 2008.

The value of the SAP brand has risen 5% since last year. There latest campaign, “It’s time for a clear new world” clarifies their shift to customer needs, showing how SAP solutions offer business transparency and accountability. It remains one of the most globally integrated among big IT firms with most of its 50,000 employees now working outside of Germany. SAP has also put a lot of effort into developing their social media community which also reflects and supports their shift to being truly customer centric.

The message behind the SAP brand is "SAP helps to make work become a more personally enjoyable and rewarding experience." This was their mission statement in 2000 which reflects the spirit of SAP and describes how they wanted their customers to see them.

SAP recognised the value and importance of their brand back in 2000.

“SAP's brand strategy has strengthened the ties between users and the software, while uniting the company internally in a mission everyone can support. The SAP brand sets the stage for the development of a community of users who respond to SAP's core values and personality, thus enabling them to find greater satisfaction in their software and their work.”

Intelligent Information Systems recognises the importance of branding and endeavors to reflect the best practices that companies like SAP employ.

The Intelligent Information Systems mission is “to offer the SME market ONE innovative piece of software that will cater to their distinct business needs and provide them with long term profitable benefits; continually creating solutions for our customers, building relationships with them and earning their lifetime loyalty.” From this we have developed our range of standardised add ons for SAP Business One, designed to make it even better. They are akin to the Apple Apps in the SAP Business One world!

To find out more about Intelligent Essentials and IIS visit: www.beabetterbusiness.co.uk or www.beabetterbusiness.ie

Do you have a company or product brand? How has or does your brand contribute to the success of your company? All feedback and insight is welcome!

Sources: SAP AG; Article in relation to brand development 2000
Interbrand

Intelligent Essentials - Licensing

Find out more about Intelligent Essentials Licensing.You can readily access information with regard to the licenses you possess with regard to the different elements of Intelligent Essentials and allocate these to specific users within your organisation.

Intelligent Essentials - Making SAP Business One even Better!



Visit www.beabetterbusiness.co.uk or www.beabetterbusiness.ie to find out more about Intelligent Essentials and SAP Business One!

Intelligent Colour Size Matrix for SAP Business One

The latest addition to the Intelligent Essentials Add Ons from Intelligent Information Systems (IIS)!

Intelligent Colour Size Matrix is ideal for any company who manages inventory with colour/size variables.

The ability to bind together products that vary only in size or colour
is essential for the purchasing and maintenance of apparel for many wholesale or retail operations.

Intelligent Colour/Size Matrix enables you to create and maintain parent and child items via matrix templates within SAP Business One. The matrix templates define the item code and description to be assigned to each child item created. The module also allows you to optionally copy parent item price list prices to their child items.

Functionalities

•Creates item codes within a user defined matrix template based on two item variables.
•Assign templates to parent items enabling user to create child items for the parent.
•Defines parent and child items in Item Master Data UDF – Colour Size Matrix.
•Assign multiple templates to one parent item.
•Apply parent pricing tab allows the user to copy selected price list prices from a parent item to all of its child items at any point in time.

Business Challenges

•Ensuring visibility and proper tracking of inventory for multi-variant items.
•Creating item codes for multi variant items.
•Efficiently completing inventory reporting and sales analysis by size and colour.

Key Features

•Customisable user defined colour/size matrix templates to meet your inventory needs.
•Multiple colour/size matrix templates can be assigned to one parent item to create multi-variant child items.
•Apply parent pricing to child items when applicable.
•Leverage standard order processing capabilities of SAP Business One such as special pricing, warehouse, availability check, etc in combination with colour/size matrix as items are processed through ordinary SAP Business One processing cycle.

Business Benefits

•Save time creating item codes by creating child items within user defined templates.
•Quickly set up a product range for a new multi-attribute.
•Beat the competition and capture the market with proper inventory tracking.
•Quickly fulfill orders for multi attribute items.
•Improves inventory reporting and sales analysis by allowing any business in need of tracking by the sizes and colours of their merchandise to do so efficiently.

Intelligent Essentials the Apps of the SAP Business One World!

Intelligent Essentials are comparable to the Apps for the iPhone; they supply you with new ways to make your SAP Business One solution even better!

SAP Business One is just the beginning. The Intelligent Essentials range is being continually developed to ensure that there is no limit to what SAP Business One can do for you.

The core functionality of SAP Business One is retained and Intelligent Essentials standardised add ons can be readily incorporated into your solution depending on your needs as and when they arise.

Intelligent Essentials provide a hassle free way for you to customise your SAP Business One solution, extending and building upon the functionalities which already exist.

The development of Intelligent Essentials has been, and continues to be driven by our customers. They are designed to meet the varied and distinct needs of small to midsize companies operating in today’s dynamic business environments.

Browse our range of Intelligent Essentials add-ons and see how we can take your SAP Business One solution even further.

Visit: www.beabetterbusiness.co.uk or www.beabetterbusiness.ie to find out more!

Intelligent Scheduler - Schedule and assign your activities within SAP Business One

The latest Intelligent Essentials element, Intelligent Scheduler is now available!

Intelligent Scheduler allows you to schedule your activities and updates them within SAP Business One permitting you to manage your diary more efficiently and cross check your schedule against those within your department or across the whole company.
As with all Intelligent Essentials elements this a standardised enhancement designed to make your SAP Business One solution even better.

Functionalities

•Uses your SAP Business One Login to connect to the database.
•Calendar allowing to you to select a single or range of dates to be displayed.
•Filter employees that are presented by department or turn on and off by individual employee.
•Creates a list of activities that are open, scheduled and those within the specified date range.
•Colour coding of activities according to due date.

Key Features

•Easily assign activities to employees from a predefined, user created list.
•Assigned activities automatically updated in SAP.
•Notification of conflicting appoints to user before activities are scheduled.
•Scheduled activities are displayed in a different colour depending on their status.
•Choice of daily, weekly or monthly view.

Business Benefits

•Efficiently manage multiple employee diaries.
•Readily access information regarding your own or employee activities.
•Schedule activities for employees without having to request information regarding their schedule.
•Promptly organise team meetings without having to individually consult employees individually.
•Saves you time by automatically updating SAP Business One with any changes made to activities and schedule.

To find out more about Intelligent Scheduler and other Intelligent Essentials elements visit www.beabetterbusiness.com, or contact michelle.hunt@iisystems.net for a brochure!

Achieve your ERP goals with these key considerations

There really isn’t a short list of factors which need to be considered when implementing an ERP solution but there are key factors which should be reflected upon at the very least.

Treat ERP as a major business investment. Rather than view it as a purely technical project, even though ERP relies on technology, the primary function of any ERP system is delivering business value. Remember this during every aspect of the ERP process, from vendor selection through implementation and go-live. Always ask, “What are the business benefits of this investment?” Without defining concrete and specific business benefits, any investment in ERP is a waste of money and time. More than anything else, ERP is about improving your business.

Business fit is paramount during software selection. It’s easy to get caught up in the technical aspects of software selection, but pay close attention to the business results you hope to achieve. Discuss this at length with the software vendor and any consultants you have engaged to help with the selection process. Put them on the spot and make sure they help identify concrete areas in which the software will make your company more efficient, profitable, and so on. At IIS we have experience across almost every business sector; our customer testimony’s and case studies depict our knowledge and expertise, as well as highlighting the benefits that SAP Business One and Intelligent Essentials can specifically provide you based upon your industry sector.

Prepare for transformation. One of the great benefits of ERP is the opportunity to improve how your business operates. Although change is hard, automating old, inefficient processes generally makes little sense. It’s far better to use the implementation as a vehicle to streamline processes and simplify, or improve, workflows.

Embrace change management. ERP is all about transformation and improvement, making change management one of the most important determinants of implementation success. Communicate project goals and status frequently out to the organization. And don’t forget training and documentation, which receive insufficient attention on many projects. Going back to point one in this list, communication should focus on business goals and concrete benefits, rather than just reciting schedule dates.

See related blog posts:
ERP and Change Management
Cultural Change an upshot of SAP technical prowess

Source: Focus Article

Enhance SAP Business One with Intelligent Email

Intelligent Email provides email functionality for SAP Business One.

Customers are becoming more Internet focused and web dependent and are more and more likely to reach out to you via email. By utilising online communications you can reduce service costs of your business and enhance customer relationships by speeding up response times and providing documents requested by them in a timelier manner.

The key features include:

Single and Batch Delivery of Statements via email

Email of Marketing Documents quickly and easily

Batch Delivery of Marketing documents

Update of status field to email once document has been sent

Intelligent Email will support you and your business in driving down the cost of sending out statements, allowing you to quickly send out copy statements and invoices, as well as facilitating batch advance delivery notification and various other documents to improve customer service.

Intelligent Email works with a substantial number of marketing documents and statements which include the following:

Sales Quote Purchase Order
Sales Order Good Receipt
Sales Delivery Purchase Return
Sales Invoice Purchase Invoice
Sales Credit Note Purchase Credit Note
Sales Return Purchase Payment
Sales Statement Service Call
Sales Receipt Service Contract

To find out more visit: www.beabetterbusiness.net
Or Check out our Intelligent Email Release 1 youtube demo video on our youtube channel Intelligent B1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHHJT63aOVE

Intelligent iPhone Sneek Peek!

The latest addition to Intelligent Essentials is on the way.

The Intelligent iPhone App is making rapid progress. Here's a few sneek peek images of the App. Let us know what you think, and don't hestitate to pose any questions or queries you might have.

Hope your as excited as we are!

Improve your SAP Business One Solution with New Intelligent Essentials Elements

Intelligent Essentials is a range of enhancements from IIS that improves SAP Business One in key areas. Essentials provide one add-on that allows you to select the functionality that you require in your SAP Business One implementation.

Two new innovative Essentials Elements, Intelligent Email and Intelligent Colour Size Matrix are now available from IIS further building upon our dedication to making your SAP B1 Better.

Intelligent Email provides email automation functionality for SAP Business One. Automatic and Batch emailing of statements and marketing documents has never been so simple.

It allows you to drive down the cost of sending out statements, accelerating the process and moreover improving customer service by permitting you to send out batch advance delivery notification and numerous other documents.

To get a copy of the Intelligent Email Brochure contact michelle.hunt@iisystems.net or copy the link provided!

http://www.beabetterbusiness.ie/Essentials/e4.pdf

Intelligent Colour Size Matrix enables users to create child and parent product codes. Within CSM you can create a master product which will then create a matrix of child products related to it. This solution is perfect for companies in the clothing or footwear sectors and any business where products come in variable shapes and sizes. The Intelligent Colour Size Matrix Brochure will soon be made available but in the meantime any one interested in gaining more information should contact us!

sales@iisystems.net

SAP Business One, Customisation without the Pitfalls

At IIS we understand and are committed to providing tailored solutions to meet the diverse busienss needs of organisations in a vast array of industries. Customisation of ERP solutions bears even more precedence for SME's as their unique requirements can be even more diverse, limited or specialised than larger organisations. Customisation allows for a smoother transistion between old and new processes and ultimately ensures a better fit between the ERP system and the end user.

Customisation by its nature suggests time delays and more money having to be spent. With ERP systems it also inherently implies these issues having to be dealt with incessantly in relation to both the maintenance and updating of the system.

"SAP Business One is one of the most versatile SME packages available on the market today. The software provides a complete solution to many lines of business. One of the key advantages of the product is its seemingly endless capacity for customisation to suit (almost) every need. This catalog is designed to aid persons who sell, implement, customise and use SAP Business One. You will find precise descriptions of otherwise lesser known functionalities with examples of how to apply them, detailed instructions on how to set up specific business processes, workarounds for presently unavailable features and much more. The content is derived from business consulting requests from partners to SAP and relates to the currently supported versions of SAP Business One (2007 and 8.80). All future content will relate to version 8.8x and future versions only. Content based solely on SAP Business One 2007 can be accessed in the EoP Wiki until the version goes out of maintenance.The articles are real life answers to real life questions!"

Learn more at :http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/webcontent/uuid/2015042b-e6bf-2c10-88bc-f52b878d2895

Intelligent Essentials have been developed by IIS to compliment and build upon what is already available from the SAP Business One platform. These standardised enhancements provide one single add on which can be attuned to cater for your distinct business needs. Adaptation of software has never been so easy with the enhancements conveniently having the capability to be turned on or off according to the businesses individual needs.

To find out more visit our website: http://www.iisystems.net/

Focusing on the upside of customisation; overcoming the obstacles!