The right business intelligence software can unlock opportunities for manufacturers. Sage X3 with Sage Enterprise Intelligence can help you collect and share business insights that drive decision-making.

Opportunities Are All Around

We often feel locked into our typical methods of conducting business simply because we’re focused on the daily needs of our companies. Manufacturers are especially keyed into daily sales quotas, supply chain demands, shipment needs, and so forth. It’s hard to take a step back and look at the big picture.

Business intelligence software like Sage Enterprise Intelligence can change that paradigm. Using the data generated by different points within your company, Sage Enterprise Intelligence can share the data and help you make predictions about where to expand your company, how to grow it beyond current capacities, how to leverage customer relationships, and more.

Sage Enterprise Intelligence can’t, by itself, make your business more responsive and profitable, but the right business intelligence software puts the right tools into the hands of your key team players. They can then use those tools to grow your company bigger and faster. Real-time data, provided to people with the experience, insight, and ability to use it to make decisions, can change how your business performs.

Business Insights Worth the Investment

A new white paper from Sage indicates that manufacturers truly value business insights. Among those surveyed, 100 percent agreed that their investment into business intelligence software saw improvement as a result of those investments. Many cited the information gleaned from business intelligence software as the change that helped them exceed revenue goals.

Typical business insights that you can gain from software such as Sage Enterprise Intelligence with Sage X3 include:

• Real-time updates at every stage of the supply chain so that manufacturers can make informed decisions.
• Insights into customer relationships, so you can grow and expand your customer base from the knowledge gleaned about your existing customers.
• Better information on shipments, orders, fulfillment, and returns so you can plan and forecast more effectively.

The right data can help you make better business decisions. With better insight, you can forecast new markets, improve sales in existing markets, predict trends, and plan on manufacturing new products. It’s amazing how accurate and timely data can transform your business.

Not only can the right data transform current manufacturing processes, it can also improve forecasting. Forecasting is part art and part science, but it always relies on having an accurate picture of past and current performance. With such data, your management team can improve their forecasting ability, leading to lower costs and greater profits.

Businesses Grow Through People

It’s not just the data that are important. It’s the people using the data who are key to building a better business.

Good data must lead to actionable insights or else it’s irrelevant to your business. You want data that are accessible by all, but data that can be used by anyone who needs it. Insights, reports, and data visualization tools can all make data more useful to the end users in your company, the ones who need it the most.

Ready to Grow Your Business? Learn More

IWI Consulting helps businesses select and implement new business intelligence systems that provide actionable, real time data. With good data, your business can grow. Learn how other manufacturers are using Sage Enterprise Intelligence, Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and other software for business intelligence, planning and more.

IWI Consulting can help your manufacturing business grow through solutions such as Sage Enterprise Intelligence, Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and others. These solutions provide powerful data services to help you better manage processes, people and resources for productivity.

Please contact us today or call 1-866-916-3851 for more information.

A whitepaper recently stated that 79 percent of the manufacturers surveyed indicated that new technology dramatically improved their supply chain management. It seems that investing in new technology can yield great benefits. With Sage X3 and Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), among other choices, you can better manage all of the steps in your manufacturing process and improve customer satisfaction and fulfillment speed.

Information Is Power

Having accurate information from all points of the supply chain can provide timely data for decision-making. Managing costs, reducing downtime and inventory excess, as well as demand forecasting, requires access to data from throughout the entire supply chain. Without it, you may miss something important, leading to bad forecasts and poor judgment.

Real-time visibility, along with collaboration from all points of the supply chain, provides you with the information that you need to stay on top of the daily changes in your business. Sage X3 and Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) can help you to do this. Information is power, and with the right system at work for your manufacturing operation, you can use that power to grow your revenues.

Make Better Business Decisions

Data, not guesswork, undergirds important business decisions. When your entire supply chain receives real-time data, you’ve got the information you need that eliminates guesswork.

Better business decisions are based on accurate, timely data. With such data, you can:

• Manage inventory better
• Optimize turns
• Reduce overhead
• Control the order process
• Communicate order status
• Procure materials quickly
• Reduce excess production and related costs
• Identify and correct inefficiencies
• Improve staffing by moving workers to key demand spots

All of these benefits are like separate roads leading to one goal: revenue growth.  By reducing costs, selling more, and better managing inventory and shipments, you’ll improve inventory management, order fulfillment, and customer satisfaction. This can lead to repeat business, lowered costs and higher profits. It’s a winning proposition.

The Right Data in the Hands of the Right People

Data by itself, however, is just raw information. It requires interpretation and evaluation before action can be taken. First you need to get that information into the hands of the right people in your organization. Managers who are empowered with data can act quickly and make decisions that can positively impact operations and productivity.

Managing Problems with Confidence

Another benefit from investing in new supply chain management and ERP software such as Sage X3 and Sage 300 is the ability to manage and respond to potential problems with confidence. Recall notice? Not a problem. A centralized system can alert all parts of the supply chain that products must be pulled from inventory and replaced. The same with issues such as product defects, mistakes in packaging, and other typical manufacturing problems.

It’s not whether or not problems will occur, it’s how you handle them when they do occur. But you can’t handle what you don’t know. With the right software communicating throughout your supply chain to managers and other key employees, you can both manage and respond to problems swiftly and efficiently.

Learn More About How Sage X3 and Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) Can Improve Supply Chain Management

Learn more about how Sage solutions, including Sage X3 and Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), can help you grow your business. From supply chain management to people management, Sage’s technology solutions can make your business more efficient and effective.

IWI Consulting can help you choose the right manufacturing ERP solutions for your business needs. From products such as Sage X3, Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), and others—to understanding which solutions fit your business and can help you achieve your goals—our knowledge, skills and experience can help you improve processes, reduce costs, and improve revenues.

Please contact us today or call 1-866-916-3851.

If you’re making an economic case for enterprise software, improved reporting is an attractive benefit. Accurate, timely and reliable data can transform a business’ outlook, and help its leaders make intelligent decisions to steer the business on a course for growth. But if your reports are difficult to understand or not providing the data that you need, you may be missing many opportunities.

Take a look at your current business reports. If you find yourself combining numbers in spreadsheets to make reports you can actually use, it’s time to take a serious look at new business systems that offer easier, more accurate reporting options.

A new white paper from Sage offers insights into conducting a cost-benefit analysis for enterprise software that may be helpful to you. As you study the many benefits and potential costs, improved reporting may be a benefit your company can profit from for many years to come.

How Enterprise Software Improves Reporting

Companies can be awash with data. Good reports translate that data into easily understandable information.

Enterprise systems such as Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) offer customizable, flexible reporting solutions for different types of companies and industries. Departments who may need to paint different data pictures can choose from among a palette of customized reports that suit their needs.

One of the many areas in which Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) add value is in their reporting features. These tools offer many options to customize the reports your teams use. They also enable cross-team features to integrate data in various ways that can help business leaders make important decisions.

It’s not just the information itself that’s so critical to your company’s future. Making information easy to understand is another way that enterprise software improves reporting. If most employees can understand the reports quickly, they can use the information immediately. Training can round out any gaps in their understanding of how to read, interpret and use the reports.

Replacing manual reporting systems with enterprise software makes sense if improved reporting is among your company’s priorities this year. Think of the time, effort and money that improved reporting can save you. Now you understand why this is one of the many benefits included in the white paper’s suggestions for the cost-benefit analysis.

Other Tips Included in the Paper

After conducting an economic cost-benefit analysis, there are other steps to ensure that enterprise system implementation goes smoothly. The whitepaper also provides suggestions for setting and managing employee expectations.

Employees may expect an ERP system to do more than it actually can. It can’t replace creative thinking, for example. It can provide actionable data that may fuel new creative projects, but it takes your staff to make that happen. Setting expectations before enterprise software implementation is important to prevent erroneous assumptions about what such a system can and cannot do.

Lastly, the new paper includes tips for making the most out of your ERP investment. Clear goals, comprehensive training so that people use the system’s many features, and regular assessment of the enterprise software’s value to the organization can help you make better decisions for your company.

When the ROI exceed the TCO, you know you’ve got a winner. Through careful consideration, needs assessment, cost and benefit analysis, you meet your goals with an enterprise software solution.

Enterprise Software Consulting from IWI

If you’re not sure where to start with your cost-benefit analysis, contact IWI today. We offer comprehensive ERP consulting that includes a discussion of the challenges your business faces and potential solutions to those challenges. We can help you uncover many potential benefits and examine the costs of enterprise software for your business.

Contact IWI today: 1-866-916-3851.

Nothing is more frustrating than promising a customer a product and finding out it’s out of stock … all because your inventory data is flawed or out of date. Worse still is telling a customer you’re out of stock on something when in fact you have plenty of it. Is it any wonder that businesses crave better inventory data?

A new paper from Sage called Conducting a Cost-Benefit Analysis for ERP sheds light on the many benefits to consider when implementing an ERP solution. One of the many benefits is greater reliability.

Accurate, timely business data is critical to all departments in your organization, but perhaps it is most critical to the inventory and fulfillment centers. Without accurate data, they can’t fulfill customer orders quickly. They may erroneously report information to sales or manufacturing. These errors can multiply, causing cost overruns, duplicate stock, and excess warehouse space taken up with redundant products.

Better Data Leads to Faster Shipping Times

Consider your company’s data needs when it comes to shipping times. Integrated systems that can share ordering, warehouse, and fulfillment data can provide an accurate picture of possible shipping times. Customers rely upon this information to predict their own business needs. Without reliable data, many links in the chain of information can be broken.

Reliable Information and Happy Customers

Another benefit of ERP systems that leads to higher ROI when calculating your cost-benefit analysis is the benefit of greater reliability and happy customers. Reliable, timely data enables your staff to answer questions quickly and efficiently. When customers hear back immediately from your team, their customer satisfaction improves. The higher the satisfaction level, the more likely customers are to stay with your company and not take their business elsewhere.

Sage Inventory Advisor for Your Business Inventory

Sage Inventory Advisor works with Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) to provide greater data reliability that both you and your customers need. With Sage Inventory Advisor, you can optimize your business supply chain so that you can manage your business inventory efficiently and, in turn, serve your customers quickly and efficiently.

Sage Inventory Advisor can help you avoid inventory glut, that excess inventory that just takes up valuable floor space without adding any profits to your bottom line. It can help you manage stock levels so that you’re rarely out of stock on any one item, leading to more orders fulfilled and happier customers.

Automating tasks is part of Inventory Advisor, and it takes away a lot of the manual labor associated with other inventory products. Reducing manual labor also reduces mistakes, and saves time which your team members can spend elsewhere.

Lastly, Inventory Advisor can also make your warehouse data transparent to other parts of the organization. Looking at stock levels can help your marketing department determine what to promote and when. Sales can work harder to sell excess inventory. Everyone benefits from greater data reliability.

Paint a Picture of Profitability

Choosing an ERP system and inventory reporting solutions isn’t a decision to be made lightly. After all, your company relies on its data for decision making. IWI offers ERP consulting that can walk you through the cost-benefit analysis and add to the information contained in the white paper. With Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) and other ERP solutions, we can help you improve data reliability, transparency, and timeliness.

Contact us or call 1-866-916-3851.

Increased productivity is just one of the many benefits derived from ERP systems, according to a new white paper. The paper, entitled Conducting a Cost-Benefit Analysis for ERP, outlines numerous benefits to companies who implement enterprise systems.

Building the Economic Case for ERP Systems

If you plan to propose an ERP system for your company, it’s important to build a solid economic case for its implementation. Conducting a cost-benefit analysis can help you easily articulate the financial benefits to your company in return for their investment.

The first step in the process is to gather the costs of implementation. Obvious costs include acquiring the system, customizing it, testing it, training the staff to use it and upgrading it as necessary. Cost should be calculated on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis for comparison.

Next, assess the economic returns. The paper suggests that the returns on investment include:

1. Streamlined procedures
2. Greater intelligence
3. Increased productivity
4. Greater reliability
5. Improved reporting

One way to build your case is to focus on any one of these issues that may be exceptionally germane to your company. For example, if your current system lacks a robust business intelligence reporting system, emphasizing the benefits to your company of greater intelligence may help you build the best economic case for implementing new enterprise systems.

Increased Productivity Improves ROI

Let’s take a look at one of the five returns: increased productivity. Enterprise systems such as Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) and Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) can help you enhance productivity in many ways:

• Reduce time-consuming manual tasks by automating the most common ones.
• Use automated workflows to accelerate business tasks.
• Provide employees with information to solve customer problems and answer questions proactively.
• Track data for compliance and risk management.

All of these factor into increased productivity. Automated workflow management tracking compliance issues and easily accessed customer data helps employees work faster and smarter, not harder.

Costs Down, ROI Up

How long does it take your employees now to find crucial information? Do they have to access several systems, or spend time calling employees in different offices who have access to those systems?

Think about how that sounds from your customer’s perspective. While they’re on hold waiting for your employees to get back to them, they’re wondering why the “computer” doesn’t just give the employee the information she needs. Mentally, they are comparing their experience with your company with their experiences in the past with other, similar companies. If your company is found lacking, they may just take their business elsewhere.

Is It Time for a Change? Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3)

Increased productivity also means breaking down silos and improving access to information companywide. That’s where Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) can help.

Through improved transparency, business data becomes available to all employees. Every part of your organization can become more productive when they have the right tools. With Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), you can empower your employees to work smarter, not harder, and improve productivity.

It’s a smarter way of doing business.

Contact US

We’d like to invite you to see for yourself how a cost-benefit analysis can help you build a case for an ERP system for your company. Whether you choose Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), or Sage BusinessVision to provide accurate, timely data, the more information you have, the more opportunities you’ll find to increase sales, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce costs. And all of that translates into improved ROI.

For more information on ERP consulting and the many other business solutions, please contact IWI. We understand business systems and how they can impact productivity. Call us at 1-866-916-3851.

You’ve heard the old saying, “Knowledge is power.” But did you know that better business intelligence can actually improve your company’s ROI? Knowledge is indeed power, and greater intelligence from your business systems can lead to increased profits over time.

These three examples of how better information derived from your business systems can lead to increased ROI may intrigue you. At the end of this information, we present to you a free white paper from Sage Solutions called Conducting a Cost-Benefit Analysis for ERP. Download the paper to learn more about how enterprise software can improve your company’s ROI.

Better Business Intelligence, Greater Profits: Three Examples

Good business systems provide data that can be used to create new business models, understand current problems, and set new objectives. The following three examples of how better business systems and greater intelligence improve ROI may spark your thought processes on how you can use your ERP tools to greater advantage.

#1: Develop new business models.

When you look at the same data week in and week out, your mind becomes habituated to the picture it paints, and it’s hard to look beyond it to find something new. Often companies become entrenched in existing business models simply because no one has looked carefully at the data undergirding the assumptions behind the current models. Freshly generated data may paint a surprising picture, leading to new ideas and a new business model. These new business models may, in turn, boost profits and ROI.

#2: Find revenue drivers.

“Everybody knows that Widget XYZ is what sells the best!” It’s easy to fall into the habit of quoting institutional knowledge as if it were gospel. When you hear “everybody knows that”, it’s time to run a new report from your business systems and see if the data matches the assumptions.

Running reports using Sage Enterprise Intelligence may be an eye-opener. Instead of the assumptions driving decisions, data can now drive decisions. When you see the facts, you may find new revenue drivers or areas to exploit for add-on sales or additional revenue. The facts don’t lie. When you find something that’s selling well, you’ve found your revenue drivers.

So forget about everybody knowing everything. Let your Sage Enterprise Intelligence system provide you with the data that you need to find new revenue drivers and stay competitive.

#3: Understand your best customers

The customers who generate the most revenue for your business are more than your best customers. They’re also the model for future marketing and sales campaigns. By analyzing the features of your best customers such as the industry they’re in, their annual revenue, decision making process, problems your company solves and more, you’ll be able to derive a model for future marketing programs.

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems such as Sage CRM can provide you with customer data that’s invaluable for creating robust customer profiles. Good customer profiles can help you refine your targeting, improve marketing messages, and discover untapped markets.

But you can’t do it without good data. Greater business intelligence and accurate data are the foundation for customer profiles, which can in turn help you refine targets, decrease marketing costs and improve marketing results. Translation? Better ROI.

Learn More About the Cost-Benefits of Business Systems

Enterprise systems can be of great benefit for your business. A new white paper from Sage entitled Conducting a Cost-Benefit Analysis for ERP Systems demonstrates the many ways in which ERP solutions can boost revenues and decrease costs.

IWI offers Sage Enterprise Intelligence, Sage CRM and other Sage enterprise software that improves business intelligence to enhance your company’s ERP systems ROI. If you’d like to learn more, please contact us:  1-866-916-3851.

The Link Between Streamlined Procedures and Profits

It may sound strange to link enterprise software with customer satisfaction, but the two are actually closely linked. Enterprise software can reduce errors, shorten the time it takes to discover mistakes, and help team members respond quickly to problems. The results can be improved customer satisfaction, an important part of any business.

Happy customers are return customers, and repeat business is the engine that drives profitability. The more you can reduce turnover or churn, the better. Acquisition costs can skyrocket if your churn rate soars. The more you can streamline procedures, the better you can reduce turnover and improve your company’s ROI.

Enterprise software can help by streamlining procedures and improving customer satisfaction.

Faster Response Time with Enterprise Software

Many companies suffer from slow response time. Your sales team will tell you that slow response to customer inquiries or complaints can seriously impact renewals and continued business. To remain competitive, you must meet or exceed customer expectations. That includes exceeding expectations for response time.

Enterprise software such as Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) or Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) can help. Formalized processes, procedures and tasks make it easier for your teams to respond quickly and efficiently to every contact. Secure, real-time connection enables your entire team to access important customer data and respond quickly no matter where they are.

Reducing Mistakes

It’s not just slow response times that frustrate customers. Customers are also frustrated by mistakes, especially easily avoided mistakes. When you streamline procedures using enterprise software, you tighten up steps in the process that can lead to costly mistakes.

Although mistakes are inevitable, too many mistakes, or mistakes that go on too long without correction, can lead to high customer turnover rates. Dissatisfied customers also tell other customers, which may increase your company’s overall churn. That raises the cost of customer acquisition and decreases your overall ROI. Reducing mistakes and retaining customers improves ROI.

Where do mistakes in your business occur? They can occur in any department from manufacturing to accounting. A good ERP system, such as Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) or Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), can help you pinpoint those mistakes by providing accurate, timely and actionable data. The more you have accurate data at your fingertips, the more you’ll be empowered to make positive changes that correct and prevent mistakes.

Customers don’t expect your company to be perfect. They do, however, expect you to correct mistakes quickly, apologize, and rectify the situation. With better data management, improved and streamlined procedures and integrated systems, you’re well on your way to preventing or fixing mistakes.

ERP Consulting and Improved ROI

Faster response time improves customer satisfaction, which in turn improves retention. It’s an old saying that it costs more to acquire new customers than it does to serve existing customers. With this in mind, think about how faster response times, accurate data, and better processes can reduce customer turnover.

One way to assess the ROI of reduced turnover or customer churn is to work with your sales, marketing, and finance teams to determine the acquisition costs of new customers and the customer lifetime value. Determining how much each customer is worth, then comparing it to the investment in ERP consulting and ERP systems, may convince you that both can improve your company’s ROI and overall profitability.

Find Out for Yourself: Get the White Paper

A new white paper called Conducting a Cost-Benefit Analysis for ERP provides many examples of how enterprise software may benefit your business. Streamlined procedures and improved customer satisfaction are just some examples of the many positive benefits of ERP consulting, ERP software, and systems such as Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) and Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300).

Sage enterprise software from IWI Consulting Group are robust and comprehensive business tools that can improve productivity throughout your business. Knowledge is power, and when you have accurate business knowledge, you can better control costs, inventory and more. This scalable solution grows with your business too, making it extremely cost effective over time.

IWI Consulting Group offers ERP consulting, enterprise software and more to help you improve your business systems. Contact us today for more information: 1-866-916-3851.

Few companies wish to spend money on product integration solutions, but with Sage 300cloud (formerly Sage Accpac), your investment will pay for itself in terms of accurate, timely data that can be used to inform decision-making.

Better Data, Better Decisions = Higher Profits

What could your company do with better business intelligence? That’s the question many manufacturers are asking themselves this year as they consider investing in integrated software solutions that will help each of their business areas work together efficiently.

The ever-increasing competition among global manufacturers has caused a revolution in how information is used in the industry. Today, manufacturers must produce quality goods at the lowest costs just as they did yesterday. But in order to achieve this objective, they must have accurate, timely data, and an easy way to get it. This improved business intelligence enables companies to make better decisions and improve the bottom line.

Manufacturers Face Daily Data Challenges

A white paper from IDG Research Services and Sage provides some insights into where manufacturers intend to put their money. Among those surveyed, 63 percent say that challenges to daily operations include collecting business insights to drive business decision-making.

Data has always been the lifeblood of the manufacturing process. Knowing costs at each level of the product cycle, understanding fixed and variable costs, and calculating supply chain variables that can increase profitability are all part and parcel of the manufacturer’s world.

But today, manufacturers want more than just the cost of the components of their widgets. They want to know not just the numbers, but how changes in one part of the system impact the whole. They want the flexibility to run models that help them gain insights into how costs impact profits. More importantly, they demand accurate data that can be used to inform decision-making.

The Ramifications of Unsolved Product Integration Challenge

Unsolved system integration challenges pose many risks for manufacturers. As more components are added to a system, there’s greater potential for error. Mistakes in data entry (and re-entry), for example, can lead to incorrect data. This data, if used to make decisions, can lead companies into poor decision-making that can negatively impact profits. Beyond poor decision making, every time data is re-entered into the system, it costs more money that could be much more useful invested elsewhere.

Integration Shouldn’t Be Painful

Today manufacturers are placing a priority on system integration so that they can gain a comprehensive, single view of the entire business. Although such investments may be substantial, they do pay off. Manufacturers who invest in systems integration see improvements as a result of the investment. Clearly, when product integration is comprehensive and accurate, it offers useful information that can improve business.

Integrated Systems That Work Improve Decision Making

Among the manufacturers surveyed in the Sage study, 74 percent said they had made investments in integration. These investments took the form of integrating new technology with legacy systems so that they would gain a comprehensive, single view of the entire business.

Although such investments may be substantial, they do pay off. Every single one of the participants in the study who said they had invested in integration agreed that they saw improvements as a result of the investment. Clearly, when system integration is comprehensive and accurate, it offers useful information that can improve business.

Other Important Consideration: Sage 300cloud (Accpac) Found Easiest to Use

One thing that many companies fail to consider as they examine ERP solutions is how easy they are to use. If solutions aren’t easy or intuitive, adoption within your company will be difficult, and the learning curve steep.

Among the many product integration solutions available for manufacturers, Sage 300cloud (formerly called Sage Accpac) offers an easy to use package for mid sized business. Users cite the quality of the data and ease of use as some of the top features for Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300).

Other features of Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) cited by users as important to their business include:

• Smooth integration among systems
• Accurate data
• Upgrades performed during downtimes so they do not interfere with operations
• Excellent reporting capabilities
• Short learning curve
• Good support and training

The Bottom Line: Integrated Business Systems Investments Pay Off

Any investment made into software must provide a good return on investment. With Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and system integration challenges solved, your company will have access to instantaneous and accurate data from myriad systems. It’s systems integration that pays off.

For more information about Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), Toronto-based IWI offers Sage solutions and more for your growing business. Talk to us today about solutions for business systems integration, supply chain visibility, CRM and more. Call Sage 300 Toronto-vendor IWI at 1-866-916-3851 today.

“Going mobile” with your enterprise software may be one of your top concerns this year. It certainly reflects one of the most important trends in manufacturing.

According to an IDG survey conducted on behalf of Sage; among manufacturers, the top concerns are integrating new technology with legacy systems, automating business processes to better manage cash flow, and using mobile technology to make sales and customer service more efficient.

In fact, fully 72 percent of respondents indicated they’ve shifted their priorities to include integrating mobile channels and ecommerce to improve sales and customer service. It’s a big priority, and an important one in an era in which real-time anywhere access via mobile devices has become commonplace.

Going Mobile: The Challenges for Enterprise Software

A Wasp Barcode Survey of small to midsized businesses indicated that if business owners had unlimited cash to invest in technology, 10 percent would choose implementing a cloud-computing solution. This is probably to address enterprise software needs for mobile access.

Cloud computing technology has made real-time anywhere access a reality for enterprise software. Gone are the days when your team was tied to their terminals to answer customer calls, take orders, or respond to customer queries. Today’s sales and customer service teams may be on the road trouble shooting, visiting vendors or stopping by manufacturing plants, but they’re still fully connected to the home office via mobile enterprise software.

How Mobile Enterprise Software Boosts Customer Service and Sales

When customers call, they don’t want their message to go to voicemail. They expect to speak immediately with their salesperson. They want to deal with someone they know, not an anonymous customer service rep working in a call center miles away from your building. It’s not just a matter of answering the phones, either. People demand answers – now!

Fortunately, with mobile enterprise software, those answers are at all employee’s fingertips. New cloud-based enterprise software can be accessed anywhere, anytime. As long as you have internet access, you can look up an account, check on payments and delivery dates, and confirm information for anxious customers.

Success for Those Who Invest in Mobile Enterprise Systems

The IDG survey also asked manufacturing leaders who have invested in mobile upgrades whether or not such upgrades were a smart investment. Among the 70 percent who invested in mobile systems to make sales and customer service more efficient, fully 78 percent saw an improvement as part of that investment.

Some improvements you may potentially see include:

• Faster response times to customer inquiries and complaints
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Enhanced retention rates among existing customers
• Increased reorders among existing customers
• Lower complaint volume as customers receive better information

Clearly, investing in mobile enterprise systems to improve sales and customer service is a win-win for most manufacturing businesses. When your sales and service teams have real-time information at their fingertips, they can do a better job serving customers. And that translates into satisfied customers who will return to order more.

Mobile Enterprise Systems and Solutions from IWI

Going mobile doesn’t have to be a challenge. With IWI by your side, you’ve got a business partner who focuses on the right sized solutions for your business.  From enterprise software to business systems and more, when it’s time to go mobile, contact us. Call IWI at 1-866-916-3851 today.

Sage Summit is the premier annual conference that Sage hosts for its customers and business partners. This year’s conference will be held at McCormick Place in Chicago from July 25th – 28th. With expected attendance of nearly 20,000, Sage Summit 2016 is being touted as the world’s largest gathering of entrepreneurs and small to mid-sized businesses. 

There are more than 300 planned sessions and this summit is open to everyone, not just Sage partners. Don’t miss your chance to network and learn; you can even get certified right there at the summit! Register to design and personalize your Sage Summit 2016 experience.

The current line-up of speakers for Sage Summit 2016 is exciting and impressive:

• Stephen Kelly – Sage Chief Executive Officer
• Sir Richard Branson – Founder of Virgin Group
• Zooey Deschanel – Actress, singer-songwriter, and cofounder of HelloGiggles
• Gwyneth Paltrow – Oscar®-winning actress, founder and chief creative officer of goop
• Robert Herjavec – Founder and CEO of Herjavec Group and investor on ABC’s Emmy Award-winning hit show “Shark Tank”
• Daymond John – Founder and CEO of FUBU, star of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” and CEO of Shark Branding
• Ashton Kutcher – Actor, entrepreneur, tech investor, and producer.
• Yancey Strickler – Cofounder and CEO of Kickstarter.
• Evan Carmichael – Entrepreneurial expert
• Todd Connor – CEO and founder of Bunker Labs
• Barry Moltz – Speaker, entrepreneur, consultant, and author
• Justin Packshaw – Cofounder and CEO of De Roemer, explorer, philanthropist, and speaker

Learn more about the featured speakers, agenda, sessions, sponsors, and schedule here.

Register for Sage Summit 2016.