PDF VersionLetter from the CEO
Dear Business Partner,
Thank you for taking the time to read the Fall 2010 – Achieve IT Newsletter.
I believe you will find a tremendous amount of useful information on our SAP products, recent company announcements and events, as well as upcoming educational classes and seminars. We are also focusing on the importance of making well informed and timely business decisions during difficult economic times.
Helping small-to-midsize companies survive and improve their businesses during the current difficult economy is a very hot topic these days. From local, state & federal government, to business associations, banks and other financial institutions, they all seem to have some kind of pitch or program to offer.
While these various sources can provide some assistance to businesses, the primary component for not just surviving these challenging times, but also positioning an organization to be in a market leader in their industry, is for the executives and managers to make well-timed, well-informed, and accurate business decisions. The executive’s ability to master this task is crucial for the short term survival and long term success of any organization.
I firmly believe that in order to make proactive and proper decisions, today’s executive must have immediate and accurate business facts and figures. From managing your organizations assets, implementing cost control programs to making further investments in sales and marketing, the stakes are high and the decisions need to be right.
To assist our clients in this process, we have expanded our SAP offerings to include SAP Business Objects, a suite of Business Intelligence applications. Kyle Swanson has written a great article in the newsletter that I encourage you to read. If you want to take a look at Business Objects and how we can incorporate the decision support technologies into your current SAP Business One, FACTS or TakeStock environment, please give Kyle a call.
Irrelevant of the current economic climate, Achieve IT will continue the focus of our business decisions on continued improvement and growth of our clients’ businesses. This was highlighted with recent additions to our staff, our Achieve Success Seminars and the release of Achieve One, our productivity applications for SAP Business One.
As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions how Achieve IT can improve or expand our offerings to help your organization reach your objectives.
Respectfully,
Tim Singleton
Employee Summit 2010
Employee education and knowledge sharing was the focus of Employee Summit 2010, held at Danfords Inn in Port Jefferson, NY in May. During this weeklong event, each department of Achieve IT met individually to review current procedures as well as refining our best practices policies in each respective area. During Employee Summit 2010, multiple departments, such as Development, Support and Project Management also worked together to streamline their overlapping activities and further educate the staff on new releases of SAP Business One and SAP Business Objects.
Keeping our staff well educated on the latest technologies from SAP, while providing an organized and efficient methodology of supporting our clients is a core principal of Achieve IT Solutions. This is an area in which we will always evaluate and adjust as necessary to provide our clients the best technologies and related services possible.
Free Upcoming Webinars
Why not invest one hour of your time to stay in the loop with today’s business technology? Achieve IT has free weekly webinars available to you, at your personal computer.
SAP Business One Webinar - Watch and Learn how SAP Business One can help your company become a Best Run Business.
Achieve One Webinar - Watch and Learn how Achieve One software applications can help SAP Business One focus more on your specific industry needs and increase business productivity for your company.
SAP Business Objects Webinar - Find out how SAP Business Objects is designed to help you optimize business performance by connecting people, information, and businesses across business networks. Learn the benefits of real-time dashboard reporting to your personal mobile device can help you make better business decisions.
| SAP Business One | 9/16/10 | 11am - 12pm |
| SAP Business Objects | 9/28/10 | 10am - 11am |
| SAP Business One | 9/30/10 | 11am - 12pm |
| SAP Business Objects | 10/12/10 | 10am - 11am |
Welcome New Clients
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Company: American Defense Systems, Inc. World leader in the design, fabrication, and installation of transparent and opaque armor, security doors, windows and curtain wall systems. ADSI transforms the designs of Architects & Engineers into innovative, functional and aesthetically pleasing security applications for the physical security industry. Location: Hicksville, NY Solutions: SAP Business One 8.8; Business Objects Edge Series with 10 CAL License Package |
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Company: HP Selections Harry’s Café & Steaks of Hanover Square in downtown Manhattan has been a Wall Street institution for years, serving up some of the best steaks and fine wines in the area. Owned by Harry Poulakakos and his son Peter, Harry’s operates numerous other establishments in the area including the Financier Patisserie and, more recently, HP Selections, a wine importing and distribution company. Location: New York, NY Solution: SAP Business One |
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Company: Controls For Automation Founded over 35 years ago, servicing the needs of New England based manufacturers with a full range of over 40 product lines. CFA is the fastest growing Fluid Power distributor in New England. Location: Dedham, MA Solution: SAP Business One, 21 Users |
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Company: Charles Leonard, Inc. Founded in 1946 as a distributor of pencil sharpeners and stationery specialties. Soon after that, CLI opened their own factories, producing an even bigger selection of office supplies and eventually expanding their sources of supply throughout Southeast Asia and beyond. They now offer over 1,000 products that are used daily in offices, schools and homes. Location: Hauppauge, NY Solution: SAP Business One |
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Company: ElDorado Coffee Roasters Began selling 100% Colombian coffee in Queens, NY to the locals back in 1980. A year later, ELDorado started their own roasting facility in Brooklyn. Today, ELDorado is a full line vertical roaster who roasts and packs for several hundred coffee services and food distributors in over 42 states. Location: Brooklyn, NY Solutions: SAP Business One, 9 Users; Achieve Document Delivery |
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Company: Rize Enterprises Rize, a division of DuroDyne Corporation, has steadily grown into one of the leaders in the distribution and manufacturing of cable joiners and accessory products for the construction market. Their products are used around the world from New York to London and Tokyo to Madrid. All of their products are thoroughly tested at their Long Island facility and by independent testing laboratories. Location: Long Island, NY Solution: SAP Business One |
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Company: Spinewave A growing organization serving the spinal surgery industry, expanding their use of SAP Business One to manage the equipment and parts that are used in spinal surgeries. The first step is to upgrade to the latest version of SAP Business One, Version 8.8. Spinewave will immediately take advantage of several features found in 8.8 including the integrated Crystal Reports application, thus eliminating older versions of Crystal add-ins for B1. Spinewave will then work with Achieve IT Solutions towards more efficient processes in managing their warehouse and inventory functions, taking advantage of our experience within their industry as well as our expert personnel that provide SAP Business One development and business consulting services. Location: Shelton, CT Solution: SAP Business One 8.8 |
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Company: Utilicom Supply Associates, LLC Stocking distributor of communication & utility products for the telephone, DOT, CATV, military, power/utility and water markets. Whether your company is a contractor for the Department of Transportation, Comcast, AT&T, or ILEC, Utilicom Supply Associates will fill the order. Location: Norcross, GA Solutions: SAP Business One; Achieve One Inventory Control |
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Company: Vintage Food Corporation Leading wholesale distributor of domestic and imported specialty food products from all around the world, especially from Turkey. Vintage serves both American and ethnic markets with the finest confectionery, cookies, coffee, tea, edible oil, dairy products, dried fruits, nuts, olives, beverages, pasta, pickles, preserves, sweets, Turkish delights, bakery and pastry, and dietary goods. Location: Brooklyn, NY Solutions: SAP Business One, 33 Users; Achieve Container Management; Achieve Warehouse Management |
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Company: Zoetek Specializing in the sales and service of all types of medical and lab equipment, the purchasing and selling of used equipment, refurbishing used equipment, and the inspection and repairing of medical equipment. Locations: New York (Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse) Solutions: SAP Business One, 11 Users; XL Reporter; Crystal Reports |
Welcome New Employees
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AnneMarie Bloomfield – AnneMarie has taken the role of Corporate Controller at Achieve IT Solutions. Her 25+ Years of accounting experience and attention to details have made her a perfect fit for Achieve IT. AnneMarie is based in our Corporate Office in Port Jefferson, NY. |
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Adam Fisher – A highly skilled SAP Business One and Web Developer, Adam brings his expertise to our growing Development group. Adam is part of the Achieve One Product Team, focusing on the development of Achieve AR Collections and the AR Web Portal. Adam is based in Achieve IT’s regional office in Boston, MA. |
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Jan Lawrence – Bringing more than 25 years in the Wholesale-Distribution ERP Industry, Jan is expanding Achieve IT’s reach into the Southeastern United States. For the past five years, Jan has been a Business and Sales Support Analyst at SAP Business One Partner in Atlanta. Prior, Jan held the same position at Infor Global Solutions, in Duluth, GA for more than 12 years. Jan is based in Achieve IT’s regional office in Marietta, GA. |
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Shawn McGuire – Shawn is an experienced Marketing Representative, who is focused on expanding Achieve IT’s market share in new regions with SAP Business One & SAP Business Objects. Shawn’s high level of enthusiasm and creativity has already resulted in numerous opportunities for Achieve IT. Shawn is based in our Corporate Office in Port Jefferson, NY. |
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Lindsey Singleton – Lindsey has joined Achieve IT as an Administrative & Marketing Assistant. Lindsey splits her time at Achieve IT, between the Administrative Team responsible for our internal systems upgrade and our Sales & Marketing Team. |
Achieve Success 2010
This year, Achieve IT decided to lay the foundation to success by taking action with the Achieve Success 2010 seminars. In a world where most people think reactively, we have proactively handed our clients the tools to assist them in their journey to success. These tools came in the form of events, filled with industry education, proven business methodologies and innovative technologies. We believe that it is through education and technology that our clients will improve their business decisions, gain control over their operations, set realistic goals and work to achieve them.
As you know, to be successful is to learn new things and make well informed business decisions. Kevin Hanville boldly spoke about his failures and successes. He challenged us to forget everything we already know (or thought we knew) about business. Times have changed. If you aren’t brave enough to make the necessary changes within your company, your company will not survive this economic climate.
Keeping yourself up to date with the latest in cutting edge technology is so important in this journey. The success seminars helped us to gain a better understanding of the Order-to-Cash Process and how (by taking control of these customer-facing functions) you can improve Cash Flow, Reduce Operational Costs and Improve Customer Service. Our clients learned how SAP BusinessObjects Explorer & Web Intelligence can give immediate insight and better understanding of your business data to make faster more informed decisions. Also discussed, the benefits of SAP Business One and our new (SAP Certified) product, Achieve One, which extends the feature and functionality set of SAP Business One. CoreSystems also joined us to demo their exciting new web commerce for iphone and social networking integrations.
Are you adapting best to your environment? Or do your competitors have the upper hand? Being competitive requires accurate and timely access to information, and it also demands that wasteful processes be eliminated from the tasks performed each day by a lean staff of employees. Achieve Success 2010 encourages the stripping out of redundant effort, minimizing extra paper, shutting down re-entry of data, preventing erroneous reports, and scaling down time and effort spent with unprofitable customers.
Achieve Success 2010 also means leveraging SAP technology, and the experienced professionals at Achieve IT Solutions, to optimize workflows, move information electronically, share real time, accurate data across your enterprise and identify those customers that generate the profits you deserve to keep building your business.
Achieve IT Solutions, already enjoying an energetic and positive first half of 2010, understands that our customers and prospects are searching for SAP based solutions that will form the foundation of their business growth going forward. These companies need to shed the outdated software and processes that have been in place for years because business as usual no longer works.
Achieve Success 2010 was attended by many business professionals in the New York and Atlanta regions, all of whom benefited from an informative and diverse agenda which included:
- Keynote Presentations from Kevin Hanville: Author of Change or Go Broke
- Timothy Singleton: Order to Cash Processing and Achieve One modules for SAP Business One
- Kyle Swanson: SAP Business Objects and Achieve One Business Insights presentations, detailing Achieve IT’s integrations of Business Objects with SAP Business One
- Marcia Weissman: Effective Inventory Management with Achieve Inventory Control
- Neil Swanson: Overview presentations of SAP Business One 8.8 and the SAP Roadmap for B1
- CoreSystems: demonstrations of the CoreSuite applications for Business One
- Ask the Experts: roundtable and technical demonstrations
Achieve IT Solutions continues to lead the SAP Business One channel in our ability to delivery integrated technology for SAP Business One, Business Objects and the Achieve One suite of modules.
For questions about SAP business technology, contact Neil @631.543.3200, extension 107
ASUG
On August 4 – 6, Kyle Swanson and Tim Singleton participated at the first ever ASUG (America’s SAP User Group) Business One Users Summit at Nike’s World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. More than 300 companies, from SAP customers, partners, employees and software solution providers throughout North America came together for two full days of technical and educational sessions dedicated to SAP Business One.
The event included numerous breakout sessions that provided SAP Business One customers the opportunity to provide feedback and ideas to SAP on the future releases of the product as well as numerous educational sessions on the latest release of SAP Business One Version 8.8.
Achieve IT Solutions was honored to be one of the sponsors of the Summit, participating at the Solution Fair, as well as holding an educational break out session on how the Achieve One suite of applications can make companies Order-to-Cash process more efficient and profitable.
As a member of the SAP Business One Partner Advisory Council, Tim Singleton also participated in the council’s meeting with SAP’s Management team, discussing a variety of new programs, product positioning and suggested features for future releases of SAP Business One.
Signs that Your Company Needs a Business Intelligence Solution
Many companies still struggle with the gathering and analysis of the business data necessary to make sound decisions based on timely and relevant information. From the tremendous amount of time and labor spent generating the reports; to the high probability that the final reports is either lacking key data, is outdated, inaccurate or a combination of all of the above; the entire process can be very costly to a company – in many ways!The following scenarios represent typical situations that could benefit from improved business intelligence (BI). Do any of them sound familiar?
- Multiple versions of the truth. Interdepartmental meetings frequently turn into shouting matches as participants argue about whose spreadsheet has the correct figures. The final conclusion – all of the spreadsheets are already outdated, since additional transactions have occurred since the generation of these documents.
- Inability to perform in-depth analysis. Your company knows which of its region or salesperson has the greatest sales volume, but it doesn’t know which products have the highest sales or which items are trending down and run the potential to become ‘dead stock’.
- Unable to locate important information. Fred in accounting mentioned that a report showing year-over-year growth for each customer has been posted to the company’s intranet. But it takes forever to actually find it and once you do, it now takes more time to get more details on the reported information.
- Lack of data privacy and security. Fred also mentioned that a report showing quarterly bonuses was recently posted. While you know how to find this report, you’re shocked to discover you can view everyone’s bonuses, not just your own—and those of the employees that report to you.
- Business users shouldn’t have to become technical experts. One of your more technical business users in the payroll department thinks he has mastered SQL. However, when he runs a query attempting to find all products with selling prices “less than $5 and greater than $1,000,” the entire system becomes slow and he doesn’t understand why no products meet this criteria.
- Need for simple-to-use production reporting technology. Your accounting department uses a word processor to generate customer invoices. Customers frequently complain about being invoiced twice for the same purchase or shipment. You’re profit margins are being eaten away by the amount of labor required to go through this daily process.
- Existing BI technology is too difficult to use. Your company’s sales manager used analysis tools at her former job that she insisted be used in your company as well. Although your company has invested in several licenses, users who have tried to use these tools have given up in frustration and rely exclusively on spreadsheets instead.
- Historical values are not being retained. The sales department is conducting account reviews and wishes to compare each customer’s sales-to-date this year with its sales-to-date at this time last year. Sales maintains a spreadsheet for this year’s results, but the person who maintained the spreadsheet last year has left the company—and no one has any idea what happened to last year’s spreadsheet.
- Weak or nonexistent BI technology limits your company’s operational flexibility. Your company has grown to the point where its customer base has expanded to the hundreds. While it values every customer, it would like to identify the top 10 in sales volume each month and offer them extra attention and special incentives.
- Inability to comply with government reporting requirements. While your company is still relatively young, it hopes to one day go public. In your role as IT director, you want to take steps now to provide proper audit trails and data lineage to ensure that your CEO and CFO have confidence in the accuracy of your company’s financial numbers.
- Lack of proper tools is negatively impacting IT productivity. As your company’s IT director, you’re proud of your department’s ability to quickly respond to business user requests. However, you’ve started to hear complaints from your users that their report requests are not being resolved in a timely manner—and by the time they receive their reports, they no longer need them.
- Inability to consolidate data from multiple sources for integrated information access. Reports that require data from multiple operational systems are especially difficult to generate and frequently involve generating separate reports from each system, and then combining the results in a spreadsheet.
Why Printed Reports and Spreadsheets Are Not Enough
While printed reports from your existing ERP System are often useful for the reporting of static historical data, if you are attempting to use them for comparative analysis of year-to-date or other daily transactional information, by the time you print the reports they are often outdated. What do you do if you want to further analyze some of the numbers on the report? Most likely, go back to your ERP System and begin the fun search of gathering the information and writing it on the report.
There is no arguing that spreadsheets are a flexible and useful tool for organizations. However, how your business spreadsheets are developed and ‘fed’ data from your ERP System is a crucial factor when determining if it is the best solution meet your reporting and analytical requirements. A common use of spreadsheets is the creation of Salesperson Commissions Reports. If you’re dumping the data from your ERP System into Excel, it is likely a long process creating formulas, totals and exceptions. With Business Intelligence applications, such as SAP Business Objects, that have a live data feed, you can create templates inside of the spreadsheets that are instantly updated as transactions occur in your ERP System.
While the live data feed from your ERP System to spreadsheets is often a good first step for smaller organizations looking for simple data analysis, it can easily hit it limits on providing drill down information, performing ‘what-if’ scenarios and performing multidimensional analysis.
Understanding the Importance and Concepts of Business Intelligence
While a down economy might not seem like the ideal time to implement a Business Intelligence solution, running an organization without one is a risky decision. The inability of companies to align costs with falling sales revenues, increased pressures from customers for lower prices and higher service levels have put many companies out of business. Many of these organizations could have survived or even gained competitive market share, if they had the right Business intelligence tools to make timely and well informed decisions regarding their organization.
Business intelligence, also referred to as ‘decision support,’ allows organizations to better understand, analyze and even predict what’s occurring in the overall business environment and in their company. Business intelligence helps your organization turn data into useful and meaningful information and then distributes this information to those who need it, when they need it – so that they can make timely and better informed decisions.
SAP Business Objects Edge, our recommended Business Intelligence application, consists of a variety of components that provides users immediate answers to important business questions, instant access to relevant information and numerous means of drilling into data for further analysis.
With advanced analysis functionality, users can view data across multiple classifications or dimensions, (such as product, customer, region, salesperson, etc.) and slice and dice the data to look at various combinations, such as sales in each region for a time period, by customer – product level – location and time period. Drilling down further the user can view data by salesperson, state or item.
Using dashboards, a business executive can have a single screen that provides him/her with a real time summary view of the company. Including open orders, YTD sales, open AR, cash, inventory levels, sales trends, etc. With a click of the mouse, the user can drill down into more detailed information on any of the information to make well informed and timely decisions.
Achieve IT Solutions – Business Intelligence Options
Achieve IT Solutions is an authorized SAP Partner for SAP Business Objects. We have developed a real time integration between SAP Business Objects Edge and SAP Business One, offering the 28,000 organizations utilizing Business One a comprehensive BI Solution at an affordable price. For companies using other ERP applications, we can use a variety of preexisting datamarts (integrations) from SAP to bring your valuable business data to life inside of SAP Business Objects.
Do you have an SAP Business Objects question that would be of interest to our readers? Kyle can be reached by dialing 631.543.3200, extension 116.
Customer Success Story
Auto Parts Distributor IDIR Spa Using Business Intelligence to Support Innovation Challenge
IDIR Spa is a specialist auto parts distributor in Southern Italy. ISO 9001:2000 certified with a turnover of €25 million, the company has been a member of the Independent Distributors Automotive Group (IDIA), a national group in the sector, since 2000. For more than 10 years, an electronic commerce portal serving 500 of its 1,000 clients has been used to exchange electronic invoices and display sales statistics.
To make data analysis and statistics of sales data remotely available to its sales force, IDIR chose the BusinessObjects™ Edge Standard package from Business Objects, an SAP company. At the end of the first phase for the commercial sector, the solution will be implemented for other company functions in order to extend it to the national group IDIA. The IDIA group is also part of the Temot International Autoparts group, a European leader in the aftermarket.
“We had already developed a system in-house to analyze sales data, but we wanted something more. Our objective was to make information available to our sales force over the Internet, so that they could perform data analyses remotely at any time,” says Maurizio Tramontano, IT manager at IDIR. Thanks to business intelligence (BI) from Business Objects, the company’s 14 sales agents can now access all the data for their portfolios and use their Blackberrys and laptops to perform all the necessary drill-downs on the Web.
Sergio Monzeglio, chairman of the board of directors of IDIR Spa, says, “This way, each agent has more knowledge about the customer. They can display not just the product portfolio (with details of individual orders), but also revenue, cost of sale, and therefore the margin, both in absolute and percentage terms, for an individual customer profile and a selected time period.”
Approach
Initially developed to satisfy commercial requirements, IDIR’s BI solutions are being extended to support all the company functions. Tramontano states, “Our objective is to create a data warehouse at the group level, to have all the data consolidated to support group purchasing initiatives. Since we are talking about a purchasing volume of about €125 million a year, you can see how important it is to develop these sorts of policies: we are able to make in-depth analyses and get even better terms from the suppliers.”
IDIR chose BusinessObjects Edge, the BI solution for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Tramontano explains, “We had been interested in BusinessObjects software for some time, but the decision came when we found a competent BusinessObjects supplier who could transfer the potential of a sure market leader platform into our reality.” IDIR considers the partner’s capacity to present the product competently and to offer solutions to specific requirements an important factor in the choice – but costs cannot be overlooked either.
Tramontano enthuses, “The possibility of having a 25-user package at reasonable cost, with commercial reports and dashboards for the top management, is obviously workable.”
Results
Care is required when dealing with the SME market. Products have to be adaptable to various types of commodities, and suppliers must have a flexible approach. “Unlike large companies, projects have fewer licenses,” says Pasquale Testa of Nettuno Solutions, the supplier company. “Remember that margins are reduced compared with a larger sales force. We have to show that a complex and flexible product can be accessible to medium-sized businesses.”
Medium-sized businesses have the advantage of direct and faster access to top management, but they do not have much in terms of IT resources. They therefore need a supplier to be present on the ground and in whom they can rely in case of need. Testa explains, “It is very important for us to reassure the client, and Business Objects is a great help with this. In this way, the company is pleased to have chosen a reliable supplier and a leading company that will not let it down.”
Tramontano observes, "Our Business Objects business intelligence project was started to satisfy internal information requirements, but it is more ambitious: we want to make information available at the group level in order, for example, to create consolidated purchasing initiatives.”
A Nettuno Solutions survey shows that many mid-sized companies are not aware of how BI is accessible to their company. Testa concludes, “There is a need for SMEs to be trained and informed about the fact that access to business intelligence methodologies is no longer the exclusive prerogative of large companies – it is also an opportunity that they can grasp.”
SAP Business One 8.8
Did you know that the vast majority of SAP’s customers are considered small and mid-market businesses? Most business people recognize SAP as providing business software solutions to only large enterprises but they have a long history of serving smaller companies as well. As a matter of fact, at a recent meeting, SAP senior management made it very clear that the small and mid-market enterprise (SME) is their prime focus and that SAP will continue to make significant investments in applications that serve the needs of this business segment. SAP Business One 8.8 is proof that SAP has delivered on their commitment to the more than 28,000 SME type companies that use Business One every day.
SAP Business One 8.8 builds on over 8 years of development success, adding features that expand the productivity and ease of use of the application, while delivering unprecedented access to critical business information, reports and dashboards.
Features that clearly differentiate SAP Business One 8.8 from other applications for the SME include:
- Navigation through “The Cockpit” a centralized portal where the user can drill down to the details of their reports, transactions and other Business One functions.
- Integration of Crystal Reports, now part of the SAP Business Objects suite of business intelligence applications.
- Integration of Business Objects Xcelsius Dashboards and Business Intelligence tools.
- Available to Promise drill downs on Inventory and Sales Order documents.
- Multiple Units of Measure for Inventory, Sales and Purchasing.
- Remote health monitoring for the SAP Business One server.
SAP has also expanded productivity for companies that are within the “SAP Ecosystem” with B1i. What is B1i? This communication tool, embedded in SAP Business One, enables the exchange of business documents and financial information with companies that are using SAP at corporate and at subsidiaries. Following a “hub-spoke” model, B1i ensures that your corporate parent receives the information that they need without the burden of extra paper, data exports or manual labor.
How fast will your business grow? SAP Business One 8.8, designed for the SME, scales to support high volume, transaction intensive businesses as well. Achieve IT Solutions has many customers using SAP Business One that started small and now have user counts of 70, 80, 90+ and more, shipping hundreds of orders per day while using our expanded suite of Achieve One modules for Warehouse Management, Document Delivery, Freight integration (UPS, FedEx, USPS), Container Tracking and others.
SAP Business One 8.8, with continued investment from SAP, along with expert business knowledge and Professional Services from Achieve IT Solutions, is the right solution for companies that have outgrown Quickbooks, Peachtree, MAS90 or need more flexibility that is being provided by numerous other, outdated business applications.
Do you have an SAP Business One question that would be of interest to our readers? For more information (or questions about SAP Business One) contact Neil Swanson, VP Sales, at 631-543-3200 x107.
Customer Success Story
Rize Enterprise is a small privately owned company based in Long Island, New York. Since 2002 they have steadily grown into one of the leaders in the manufacture and distribution of cable joiners and accessory products for the building Industries. They have recently migrated their system from NBS software to the latest 8.8 SAP Business One software application. SAP Business One offers them single management business software that integrates all business areas into a single data source. This will improve operational efficiency with the powerful tool of drill downs to get faster real time value thus allowing them to make more powerful decisions. This also makes their system growth ready with better financial management.
With the new 8.8 SAP Business One, Rize will benefit from Crystal report management being directly accessible through the user interface delivering enhanced drill down links. Data archiving will improve their system performance, multiple units of measure will optimize their inventory flow, and personalized work centers with give them the tools need to manage their business model. SAP Business One offers them CRM, warehouse and production management, financial management, service management, and most importantly will eliminate entry redundancies by offering process flow of documents in the Procurement and Sales modules.
Tips & Tricks
The Queries and Alerts features of SAP Business One, provide users a flexible and powerful tool to gather business data and help users make well informed and timely business decisions. Below are some free Queries, from Achieve IT Solutions, that you can add to your SAP Business One System to gain greater visibility to Past Due Sales Orders, Past Due Purchase Orders, Back Orders by Dates, Average Days to Deliver, Customer Price List as well as Daily Incoming Payments. To start off, I recommend that you create a new Query Category in the Query Manager
a. Select Query Generator
b. Hit Execute Button
d. Select the Pencil Icon in Upper Left Corner of Window
g. The New Query now will be available to run by Authorized Users.
4. Using New Query as Alert
a. Open Alerts Management
b. Create New Alert
c. Give Name and Assign to User
d. Open Saved Query Button
e. Choose Frequency to Send Alert
f. a. Hit ‘Add’ Button to Save
Past Due Sales Orders
SELECT T0.CardCode, T0.DocDate, T1.ShipDate, T0.DocNum, (T1.LineNum +1) as 'Line Number', T1.ItemCode, T2.ItemName, T1.Quantity,(T1.Quantity - T1.OpenQty) as 'Shipped Quantity',T1.OpenQty, T1.WhsCode FROM ORDR T0 INNER JOIN RDR1 T1 ON T0.DocEntry = T1.DocEntry INNER JOIN OITM T2 ON T1.ItemCode = T2.ItemCode WHERE T0.DocStatus ='O' AND T1.OpenQty > 0 AND T1.ShipDate < getdate()
Past Due Purchase Orders
SELECT T1.DocNum, T1.CardCode, T1.CardName, T0.LineNum, T0.ItemCode, T0.Dscription, T0.Quantity, T0.OpenQty, T0.ShipDate FROM POR1 T0 INNER JOIN OPOR T1 ON T0.DocEntry = T1.DocEntry WHERE T0.OpenQty >0 AND T0.ShipDate < GETDATE()-3
Average Days to Deliver
SELECT T0.CardCode, T0.CardName, (AVG(DateDiff(d, T0.DocDate, T1.ShipDate)) * -1) as 'Days Late' FROM ODLN T0 INNER JOIN DLN1 T1 ON T0.DocEntry = T1.DocEntry WHERE T0.DocDate > DateAdd(m, -12, getdate()) GROUP BY T0.CardCode, T0.CardName HAVING AVG(DateDiff(d, T0.DocDate, T1.ShipDate)) <> 0 ORDER BY 'Days Late' desc
Daily Incoming Payments
SELECT T0.[DocNum] 'Doc Num', T0.[DocDate], T0.[CardCode] 'BP Code', T1.[CardName], T0.[DocTotal] 'Payment Amt' FROM ORCT T0 INNER JOIN OCRD T1 ON T0.CardCode = T1.CardCode WHERE T0.[DocDate] < getdate() and T0.[DocDate] > (getdate() - 2)
Customer Price List
SELECT ITM1.ItemCode, OITM.ItemName,
CASE
WHEN OSPP.Price IS NULL THEN ITM1.Price
ELSE OSPP.Price
END
FROM ITM1 INNER JOIN OITM ON ITM1.ItemCode = OITM.ItemCode INNER JOIN OCRD T0 ON ITM1.Pricelist = T0.ListNum LEFT OUTER JOIN OSPP ON OSPP.ItemCode = ITM1.ItemCode AND OSPP.CardCode = T0.CardCode
WHERE T0.CardCode =[%0]
Back Orders by Date
SELECT distinct T0.[ItemCode],T1.[DocNum], T1.[DocDate], T1.[CardCode], T1.[CardName], sum(T0.[OpenQty]) as 'Units Backordered' FROM RDR1 T0 INNER JOIN ORDR T1 ON T0.DocEntry = T1.DocEntry WHERE T1.[DocStatus] ='o'
And T0.[LineStatus] ='o' and T0.[ShipDate] <='[%0]' GROUP BY T1.[DocNum], T0.[ItemCode], T1.[DocDate], T1.[CardCode], T1.[CardName] ORDER BY T1.[DocDate], sum(T0.[OpenQty]) desc,T1.[CardCode]
Do you have an Achieve One question that would be of interest to our readers?
Kevin can be reached by dialing 631.543.3200, extension 103.
SAP Approves Achieve One as SAP Business One Certified Integration
On August 16, 2010, SAP completed its evaluation and testing of Achieve One and provided the application the status of ‘SAP Certified – SAP Business One Integration’.
To reach SAP Business One Certification status, Achieve One was thoroughly evaluated by SAP to ensure that the solution architecture and database design met the technical requirements set in place, as well as an assessment of both technical and user documentation and overall functionality.
“Having Achieve One approved as an SAP Business One Certified Integrated application, is a proud moment for our organization. It reconfirms our ‘Built for Business One’ commitment to the SAP Community of developing high quality apps with superior business functionality.”
-Timothy Singleton, CEO of Achieve IT Solutions.
Achieve One is a suite of comprehensive applications, ranging from Advanced Inventory, Warehousing and Logistics to Document Delivery, Credit and Collections and Vendor Sourcing. All of the Achieve One apps are built specifically for SAP Business One, utilizing the advanced technical architecture of the SAP Business One Software Development Kit.
Achieve One Promotion
Purchase any Achieve One ‘Gold Module’ before December 16, 2010 and receive any ‘Silver Module’ for FREE!
| Achieve One ‘Gold Modules’ | Achieve One ‘Silver Modules’ |
| Achieve Business Insights | Achieve AR Collections |
| Achieve EDI Control | Achieve AR Factor |
| Achieve Inventory Control | Achieve Container Management |
| Achieve Order2Cash | Achieve Document Delivery |
| Achieve Warehouse Management | Achieve Freight Control |
| Achieve Style | |
| Achieve Vendor Source |
Terms:
- Achieve One only available for SAP Business One 8.8 or higher
- Customer must purchase Achieve One user licenses at $100.00 each
- Promotion does not include Annual License Fees, customer will be billed for the license fee for both the Gold and Silver modules.
- Offer expires December 16, 2010
For more information call Neil Swanson, VP Sales, at 631-543-3200 x107.
Achieve One for Wholesale Distributors
Over the past few years, dozens of business software applications developed specifically for the Wholesale-Distribution Industry have been acquired by just two software companies. This consolidation has drastically limited the options available for distributors seeking a new industry specific application.
The Wholesale-Distribution Industry now has a new option for business software! Introducing Achieve One, a suite of apps developed specifically for SAP Business one and built specifically for the Wholesale-Distribution Industry.
For more than 20 years, Achieve IT Solutions has been developing and implementing business solutions within the Wholesale-Distribution Industry. We have taken our industry knowledge and technical expertise of SAP Business One and have developed Achieve One. With a customer base exceeding 28,000 SAP Business One is one of the fastest growing ERP applications on the market. Over the next few weeks, Achieve IT Solutions will be holding a series of on-line webinars demonstrating the rich distribution functionality of Achieve One.
The Achieve One suite consists of the following applications:
| Achieve AR Collections Management |
| Achieve AR Factor |
| Achieve Business Insights (BI) |
| Achieve Container Management |
| Achieve Document Delivery |
| Achieve EDI Control |
| Achieve Freight Control |
| Achieve Inventory Control |
| Achieve Order2Cash |
| Achieve Style |
| Achieve Vendor Source |
| Achieve Warehouse Management |
We invite you to attend these free seminars to learn how Achieve One can benefit your distribution organization.
Please click any title to review schedule details.
Wondering how to make the most of your SAP Business One solution? How to increase employee productivity? Check out our B1 University website! We offer executive overviews and interactive classes for users of all levels (beginner to advanced), taught by our very own certified solution consultants. These live, interactive classes can enable everyone to use SAP Business One more effectively and improve the efficiency and profitability of the entire company. Let our experts answer your specific questions and give you the individual attention that you deserve. Becoming an expert in your SAP Business One solution is our goal.