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

Social Media Best Practice

Our efforts at Intelligent Information Systems have been noted in relation to our social media practice. Within this months SAP Social Media Webinar broadcast to channel partners the spotlight was put on Intelligent Information Systems as we were given a mention for our endeavours.

Our Social Media Best Practice has thus far has involved the following:

Establishing the platforms that we wanted to create a presence.

Forming a Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn company page as well as a LinkedIn company group.

Finding our customers and competitors on the various platforms.

Setting up a company blog and you tube channel and regularly updating it with relevant and insightful content.

Integrating all the social media platforms, and using Tweetdeck to update them all at once.

Ensuring that our posts across the various platforms and sites remain consistent.

Joining and interacting with groups and blogs within our customer verticals, as well as within areas of interest to us most notably SAP and SAP Business One.

Our next step is to begin to make use of the free online tools to monitor our social media presence; we shall keep you updated!

There are lots of integration tools and apps available on the different platforms and branding options. We have put a lot of effort in to ensuring that we have made use of everything that is available. Check out or presence on the various sites via this blog page. Feedback, insight and tips are all very welcome!

Climbing the social media ladder – listening and learning

As promised we said we’d share our learning and insight gained from SAP in relation to social media and how to fully embrace every aspect of it, or as much as is relevant to your business. As an SME ourselves our learning couldn’t be more applicable to our partners and we feel it’s our duty to help you along the way!

The focus of the most recent webinar was on listening and learning. A recent area which I myself have been interested in, in terms of measuring our social media presence and improving and building upon it. We endeavour to become even more responsive to our customers and are seeking to use social media tools and the web as a whole to proactively engage with and stay in touch with our customers’ needs within the various verticals.

Evidently what has been brought to my attention is the fact that you can also use free online tools to determine how successful other marketing activity you have or are carrying out is by actively listening to the conversations that are being held across the web in relation to it. This insight could be even more valuable than asking customers direct questions and seeking feedback as it isn’t limited by specifics.

Are customers/businesses talking about their passions, pain or are they giving praise? The key buzz metrics to consider are noise and the level of it, sentiment, topics, where in terms of geographical or online locations, and who, whether it is users, industry experts or journalists involved in the conversations.

Some key tools which we are set to test and will provide feedback on once we have done so ourselves are Google Alerts, Social Mention, Delicious.com and Blog Pulse.

These are all free tools. There are paid for tools available from and including cymphony, visible technologies, radian social media monitoring and Nielsen buzz metrics. Though the insight from these may not be immediate they potentially provide more insight and support you in ensuring that you don’t just acquire data, you acquire information; interpreted data and knowledge!

ERP and BI combine forces and yield stronger benefits for SMEs

ERP’s role in providing visibility across functions and departments is where there is seemingly a strong connection with BI.

Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analysing, and providing access to data to help enterprise users make better business decisions.

ERP software is multi-module application software that integrates activities across functional departments, from product planning, parts purchasing, inventory control, product distribution, to order tracking. ERP software may include application modules for the finance, accounting and human resources aspects of a business.

So why do we need both?

ERP systems are known to produce a lot of data but not a lot of information. Data is facts and statistics where is information is data which is converted to knowledge; it’s interpreted data. BI facilitates the transformation of data to information.

Businesses are operating at an accelerated pace today forcing the need for speed in decision making but decision makers are also forced to work with an increasing amount of data.

In 2009 Aberdeen’s annual report revealed that 32% of those SME’s that have implemented their solution have extended their solution with BI or some analytical tool. Of all the SME’s surveyed, 31% had invested in some sort of BI or analytical tool, of which 51% had no ERP.

Both BI and ERP individually bring value to a business, but when married together the two produce a synergy by which the total value exceeds the sum of the parts.

As an SME the ideal solution is SAP Business One designed specifically to meet the needs of SMEs which can be integrated with Crystal reports.

The SAP Business One application together with the Crystal Reports offering from the SAP Business Objects portfolio, delivers compelling reporting functionality and information access to small businesses. With these offerings small businesses can get up to date intelligence to drive decision making.

To find out more visit: http://www.sap.com/solutions/sap-crystal-solutions/index.epx

Intelligent Information Systems are an SAP Gold Partner, delivering SAP Business One and Crystal Solutions. To find out more visit: www.beabetterbusiness.net

SMEs acquiring more customers with Twitter and Facebook

Small and midsize companies are figuring out how they can use social media to gain customers. Small businesses are acquiring more customers using Twitter and Facebook than large companies, even though large companies spend more money on so-called “social marketing.” This is recording to research carried out by Nielsen Co.

To ensure your small business doesn’t miss out get started by setting up a Twitter account, find your customers and ask them what they want. It’s that simple.

Small businesses know there customers which helps when it comes to your tweets and knowing what to say. You can also undergo market research by soliciting feedback about a new offering or design that you are considering.

For some small business owners, traditional advertising channels such as television, radio and newspapers are prohibitively expensive.
For others, the web is a medium more in tune with their potential customers. It provides an opportunity for small businesses to advertise on a level playing field with their larger counterparts.

While large companies usually try to accumulate a lot of Twitter followers, small businesses tend to be smarter and use the service to build relationships with people. A Twitter relationship means that you reply to all tweets to you, and you encourage your followers to send you private direct mail or “DM” messages whenever they want.

Another advantage small companies have over larger ones is that they can usually respond to Tweets more quickly. Larger companies normally have to go through layers of management to make a public comment, but smaller companies can respond on Twitter within a day or so, which means if something needs fixing, you can get to it faster than your larger competition.

You can also let some of your firm’s personality shine through. You don’t have to sound generic and overly professional like the big guys. Be friendly and personal. Research shows that the Twitter world is conversation-obsessed. Consumers spend almost half of their tweets on conversational messages.

Build up your relationships with your customers on twitter and when they are happy with your business, products and service they are sure to tweet their followers about it and potentially retweet your business tweets which will bolster word of mouth communications for your business.

SAP and StreamServe sign reseller agreement

SAP® Document Presentment by StreamServe Helps Companies Increase Operational Efficiencies While Enabling Enhanced and Targeted Communications With Customers

In an effort to help companies around the globe increase operational efficiencies while enhancing the way they communicate with customers. SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and StreamServe, Inc., a leading provider of business communication solutions for document presentment and personalized customer communications, have agreed to offer StreamServe’s leading document automation solution as a solution extension from SAP. Available today, SAP is reselling StreamServe’s solution under the name “the SAP® Document Presentment application by StreamServe.”

SAP Document Presentment is an innovative solution that fully automates the generation and personalization of documents (e.g., billing statements) and communications from multiple enterprise applications to multiple output types, including print, e-mail, fax and mobile. With SAP Document Presentment, customers can deliver highly targeted communications to their customers, thereby providing an opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell new products and services.

“We have had much success using StreamServe’s document presentment software with our SAP system, and have found that the solutions work perfectly together in helping us to achieve our customer communication needs and improve the customer experience,” said Richard O’Brien, Marketing and Services manager, EDF Energy. “We are thrilled by this agreement, which we view as a natural one. By uniting the strengths of both companies, this offering further simplifies the process of whom the customer contacts regarding the sale, support and maintenance.”

To read the full press release visit the SAP Newsroom.
Source: SAP AG

Difficulty remembering your catalogue of passwords? You’re not alone!

Lost passwords are the biggest headache for IT helpdesks, according to a survey by
Diskeeper and research firm Vanson Bourne.

The survey showed 55% of 100 IT directors across the financial services, manufacturing and retail sectors cited lost passwords as the top cause for complaints to IT helpdesks.

The retail, distribution and transport sectors have the highest number of lost password complaints with 60% of IT directors citing the problem as the most common. Computer freezes and crashes were the biggest grievance for 60% of those surveyed in the financial services sector.

Nigel Stanley, practice leader in security at Bloor Research, believes passwords should be replaced with pass-phrases. "The key problem [for IT helpdesks] is the Monday morning reset menace. This is made worse by companies forcing resets every month or so on cycle. Some self-help password reset programmes are quite useful but the uptake isn't massive" he said.

Source: Computer Weekly

Tips for ensuring you never forget your passwords

Keep a top passwords list
Make a short list of the top 5-10 passwords that you need in case your computer crashes. These are the passwords which are crucial for you to remember. Keep the list in safe yet convenient place away from your computer, perhaps in your wallet. You should also make sure someone you trust—for example, your spouse, or a business partner—knows how to find this list. If anything happened to you, it might be necessary for a loved one or an associate to access your accounts.

Keep a copy online
Keep a copy of passwords on a secure location online. As long as you use the OS X keychain or 1Password files, your passwords are securely encrypted, so you can safely store them online without worrying that someone could get at them without your permission—as long as the password you used to secure your keychain is a good one!

Access Passwords from anywhere
1Password lets you export your data as an encrypted Web page. If you put this page in a location where you can access it online, you can get at all your passwords from anywhere in the world while still keeping them safely encrypted.

Avoid gibberish or bizarre character combinations
While character combinations such as “dfFe#*23” might be hard to guess, they are also difficult to remember. These passwords are less susceptible to brute-force attacks, but such activity will be combated in other ways, such as limits on incorrect logon attempts.

Don’t change the password too frequently
You are more likely to forget a password if you only use it for a short period of time. A good average for changing your passwords is 90 to 120 days.

Don’t use an excessively long password
Try not to use the entire alphabet or the preamble to the Constitution as a password. Depending on the system, some passwords have a maximum and minimum length. Pick something that you can easily remember and type.