Step up for optimal performance & features

Step up to another version
Have you ever seen these fitness machine at your local gym, its called step up or climbing exercise. If you step on this for 30 minutes everyday you will have fat burning, calorie burning and resulting in great shape and performance.

In software world we do practice exercising, its called stepping up to higher version.
You start on Version 1 and work your way up to next available version. You need to upgrade when its most required for your business, identify the problems that you are facing with current version and if the new version resolves that problem or has new features then consider to upgrade.

We recently upgraded our client Quilters Warehouse from 5.3.1 to 5.3.2 and john at Quilters is very pleased with the new update for top 3 reasons.

1. The upgrade fixed memory leak problem thus allowing them to load data 3 times faster
2. It fixed issues with "Add to Wish list" feature for his e-Commerce & other fixes
3. Their business is in compliance with Payflow pro changes

With Hips & Curves we upgraded their website to 5.3.2 R2 fixes to keep them current with some important features required for their website so it performs better.

At every stage you need to consult your trainer they can identify problems and come up with work out session that fits your body & rhythm, just because there is a new workout machine doesn't mean you need to try it out.

Know your problems, discuss with your solution provider and come up with a plan to migrate to higher version, this would keep your business performing, it's your body, it's your Company but we are the trainers who can train you, so step up and feel better.

*On a side note 5.3.3 will be released shortly, another step up again ...

Email Communication can be made effective & pretty

Communication is “key” in any business, especially if it’s e-Commerce business; your ebusiness model expects that your customers order online and find answers for everything that they are looking for to make their purchase and avoid any phone calls.

Now that you have your customer list you might communicate weekly or monthly newsletter and keep them engaged on new products using email marketing software such as Constant contact/iContact, but what if you could communicate one-on-one with your customers regarding their recent order, or about failure of credit card or delay in shipment or other million things you can think of using Interprise Suite.

Interprise Suite makes it easy for you to communicate with their built-in Email feature, you can now email your customers, prospects, suppliers or employees from their ERP system and its all tracked within the single database.

If you plan to communicate via email why not use the html formatting for your emails so it looks nicer and puts your message across, since most of the email clients such as MS outlook, Google Mail, Yahoo and others support formatted html emails, and here is how to send formatted html emails out of Interprise suite.

How to send formatted emails from Interprise Suite

• Click on CRM tab in Interprise Suite and under tools menu double click Mail
• In your mail window click new "mail message", make sure to check if the format of the email is set to HTML and not to plain.
• Prepare and save your formatted html web page with relative links, we are going to make use of this in our html email
  
• With the new window dialog opened spot the "open folder icon" (3rd icon from left), click on it and it will prompt you to select the html that was saved, let it load it may take few seconds
  
• Now your formatted html is loaded, choose the recipient email address and click send, this shld send the formatted html emails, how cool is that
  

Also if its a generic email like newsletter or thank you note etc make sure to keep such email copies accessible online just in case your viewers weren't able to read via their email client they can always click the link and visit online and read about it, it’s a good practice and also helps in search engine optimization too.

Spend Less, Make More is Mantra of Interprise Suite and Hips & Curves believes in it....

With growing economy crisis, some decide not to spend, some spend it wisely and they grab the opportunity to scale their business, awaiting to grow as the economy picks, so is our client Hips and Curves located in Santa Monica, California selling plus size lingerie in e-tail (eCommerce) world, targeting niche market of plus size lingerie, hoisery, bras & panties.

Rebecca at Hips and Curves had few challenges with their existing warehouse management erp system before switching to Interprise Suite, they took advantage of Interprise Suite licensing deals by signing on early and having experienced resellers (TechXor and InfoSourcing) take care of their implementation, customizations and support.

Hips and Curves had enoromous challenges moving away from their warehouse erp system and needed a custom Interprise Suite solution.
We were able to customize their website look and feel, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), integration with Cybersource payment, real time stock availability of matrix items, EDI integration and other much needed features to run their ebusiness.

They opened up their business to the rest of the world (www.HipsandCurves.com) this morning, proven by the fact that their first order came from literally the other side of the world, and Rebecca rejoiced saying "Already the new site is paying off :) ..."

We are pioneers in implementing integrated e-Commerce solution for small, medium and large business and our motto is "Bring your web design and coffee, we will do the rest..."

If you want to Spend Less, Make More like Hips & Curves, contact us for a FREE demo and quotes....

SEO Optimization Tips for Interprise Suite E-Commerce

Interprise Suite E-Commerce engine powered by AspDotNet Storefront is powerful integrated e-Commerce package bundled right into Interprise Suite, its real time inventory and order management system makes it easier for business owners to conduct their online business, wait you could do few more extra steps and draw ton of organic traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others ....

It's called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and here are few tips on how to optimize your ISE to be listed on organic search results.

1. Always fill in Page Title for your Caetgories, Products, Manufacturers, departments and topics. For eg: "Canon Powershot Digital Camera SD870 | Canon Digital cameras | Yourwebsite.com"
2. Specify pretty good Meta description containing few highlighted keywords or keyphrases that you are targeting for your business. For eg: Buy Canon powershot SD870 digital camera and accessories from YourCompany, lowest price and fast shipping
3. Meta Keywords are not mandatory unlike page title and meta description but its worth adding few keywords like " Canon powershot SD870 digital camera, digital cameras, SD870 reviews, Powershot digital camera accessories"
4. Generate a sitemap for Google, Yahoo and Bing/MSN and submit them so all your product related pages are indexed
5. Make sure to check Robots.txt file exists on your website and its accessible for search engines, robots.txt file specifies whether the website grants/blocks access to engines, and luckily ISE ships robots.txt

Now you might have 1000's of SKU's or products in your catalog and might be thinking its difficult to populate values for each product and its time consuming, wish you could automate the entire process, InfoSourcing's SEOptimizer (Search Engine Optimizer) does this automation for you within an hour you can have your entire catalog search engine optimized, sitemaps generated and ready to submit to engines and you would be amazed with its optimization techniques.

Test drive today SEOptimizer from InfoSourcing and see for yourself how easy it is to optimize your e-Commerce catalog and be listed on search engines and attract traffic like never before and compete online.

ERP Migration - Do's, Don'ts and Tips

Ever tried to migrate your ERP system or tried migrating your non-integrated systems into an integrated ERP s/w, you would have faced with frustration and not knowing what steps to take to go live.

In this segment we will talk about

• What to Migrate?
• What not to migrate?
• How to schedule your migration?
• Testing, testing and testing, remember this is a integrated product
• Go live, finally

What to Migrate?

You would certainly migrate all your master tables such as Customers, Products/SKU's, Categories, Manufacturers, Brands, departments/locations, suppliers/vendors and website data if any for your e-commerce needs.

What NOT to migrate?

Over years you might have transactional records such as Invoicing, payables, receivables, order information, accounting transactions and lots of other transactions that occur under the hood of an ERP system, you won't be able to migrate and never should you focus too much on this either, stay away from transactional records, at the most you can provide some kind of linking between your new & old ERP for example having a customer number stored from your previous ERP system so you could link between two systems if needed. So yeah stay away from migrating transactional records.

Migration Schedule

The most important part in your ERP implementation is how to schedule your list of activity for migration, what comes first and what comes last in terms of data, who does what and when? A detailed Implementation checklist is a must and walk through the checklist with your clients and keep them updated with your tasks and work towards them, and always accept delays in your schedule due to un-avoidable circumstances, have some buffer in your schedule.

Testing, testing and testing...

It's an integrated ERP product, so "garbage in garbage out" make sure to allocate time in your schedule for testing, every time you import data into your ERP system test it, test it again. If you imported customers make sure to create a test order, RMA/returns, Invoicing, CRM communication and if you have e-Commerce website logon and place test web order, request password and check if emails are working, so its really impt to test before you decide to go live.

By testing it helps you to understand the ERP system so you can operate your business efficiently.

Go Live

Something that you were looking fwd too "Go Live", well with couple of months into this project you are now ready to hit the road and expect everything goes smooth.
Having an expert implementation specialist besides you would dramatically reduce your ERP implementation cost and you can feel the ownership of the ERP system for your business

Business owners make the mistake of not scheduling enough time to understand the system, importing non-integrated data, not able to configure the system, no testing mechanism and planning to hit the road will eventually result in frustration and hatred towards the ERP s/w, so spend your money wisely for ERP implementation, spend 50% in buying the ERP software and another 50% for Implementation , Support and training.

Find your niche market, ours niche is Integrated e-Commerce

In downhill economy one has to be innovative with your business and strive to success and such is a story of American's best automotive manufacturer "Ford".

Ford unlike GM or Chrysler has been focusing on what consumers want instead of just heavy gas guzzler vehicles, they recently launched a new vehicle called Ford Transit Connect which is geared towards cargo management for small and medium business such as Maids, plumbers, food market and others they all have special needs in terms of transportation and also be able to afford a vehicle for their business and the cool factor is its internet ready, got built in wireless keyboard, LCD dashboard and even a wireless printer so if you are on the road and want to invoice your clients you got all tools handy.

It's also packed with RFID scanners and you could connect remotely via LogmeIn to your IS servers and update your ERP system if you ever wanted to do so. Ford has really picked this niche market in providing not just consumer cars but also deliver niche automotive.

We at (InfoSourcing Inc) consider our "niche market" as "Integrated e-Commerce/e-business" for small and medium business who would like to move their business online and succeed, they can be rest assured we have answers for all their ebusiness challenges, whether its integration with backend system like Interprise Suite or Search Engine Optimization to attract traffic from search engines or improve Search Engine Marketing through pay per clicks, integrate with business partners like amazon, ebay and other feed partners - we can do it all.

IS advances to 5.3.2 version

With the new version around the corner, its time for upgrade for our existing customers. The new version brings few enhancements to base product with optimization done to web services for faster delivery of data, bug fixes, minor tweaks here and there.

Not much of change in ISE (E-Commerce) module but we did learn they are setting the base for intergating Google Checkout and PayPal integration with ISE, have to wait if it makes it in 5.3.2 or it gets pushed onto IS 2009 version.

Your Partner for Success in Interprise Suite ERP Implementation

QuiltersWarehouse.com specializes in providing one of the largest selections of books and quilt patterns over the web and retail store. Quilters Warehouse replaced their ERP system from Everest Software with Interprise Suite to scale their business with lower software cost and cutting edge technology.

Read more about our implementation and customization services delivered for Quilters Warehouse, find out how we tackled some of the challenges during this project, click here