Business intelligence software adds considerable value to business environments in which complex streams of data must converge in order to be analyzed and used. CRM systems, ERP systems, inventory management systems and more all provide a high volume of data. A good business intelligence system such as Sage Intelligence can take that data and make it easy for decision-makers to understand and use.

Sage Intelligence offers an Excel-based method of sourcing, integrating, and manipulating data so that it can inform decisions. Sage Enterprise Intelligence is web-based. Companies using business intelligence tools are 5x more likely to make swift decisions, possibly because they have the data they need at their fingertips to empower them to make choices.

The Benefits of Business Intelligence Software

There are many benefits of using business intelligence software.

• More accurate forecasts: With better business data, you can forecast sales and manufacturing needs closer to actual. This tightens up your processes and helps to eliminate wasteful spending.
• Better decisions: Accurate, timely data feeding into a business intelligence system can help you make better decisions throughout your company. When you have confidence in your data, you have confidence in your decisions.
• Tighter alignment with the market: Confidence in sales data, production facts, and customer data inspires improvements. Improvements made to product offerings and prices aligned with the marketplace can help you sell more, which in turn improves revenues.

Adding business intelligence software to your company isn’t just about using data. It’s about better, smarter data use. When that happens, productivity and profitability soar.

Sage Enterprise Intelligence: A Better Business Intelligence System

Sage Enterprise Intelligence offers a web-based portal for all your business intelligence data. Web or cloud-based business intelligence use is widely recognized as a great tool for businesses of all sizes. Forbes recently reported that 78% of companies are expecting to increase their use of cloud business intelligence, and nearly 43% of business are using some form today. If you are not yet using a web-based business intelligence system, you could be losing a considerable amount of time massaging your data just to get insights and reports. That’s time that could be better spent on creating new products, cultivating customer relationships, and growing your business.

Sage software is launching an updated version, Sage Enterprise Intelligence Version 8, that features many new items for its users. Some of these items include:

• An intuitive user interface which adapts to desktops, smartphones, tablets, or any mobile device which can run iOS, Android, and Windows
• An advanced dashboard with 100+ visual controls. You choose which view of the data you’d like to see
• Enhancements to the data warehouse feature, which consolidates data from multiple systems into one easy and efficient system
• Budgeting and forecasting expanded so that it isn’t limited by the web interface
• Excel add-in
• Single sign-on
• Simplified navigation interface
• Dynamic filtering

Lastly, because Sage Enterprise Intelligence is part of the Sage software family, it integrates seamlessly with its “family” members: Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), and more. It also integrates with other ERP products.

If you haven’t seen Sage Enterprise Intelligence, we’d love to show you a demonstration of it and introduce you to the great features it provides. It’s a business intelligence system that lives up to the Sage reputation for excellent, intuitive business software, and version 8 takes it all one step further.

IWI Consulting Group

IWI Consulting Group helps businesses gain insight into their operations, inventory, and profitability. We provide software and support for a wide range of industries throughout Canada. For more information, please visit IWI Consulting Group or contact us today.

Sage software offers many specialized packages to help companies in various industries maximize their products. Sage Fixed Assets provides accounting features with multiple methods of tracking and calculating asset depreciation. Because it is a Sage software product, it integrates easily with other packages include Sage ERP versions.

Why is Sage Fixed Assets valuable for wholesale distributors? Let’s take a look at a few distribution challenges wholesalers may face, and how Sage Fixed Assets helps them respond to such challenges.

Challenge 1: With so much data available, it can be challenging to collect and analyze it all.

Wholesale distributors need to collect data on their fixed assets to make better business decisions. Just because a forklift or truck is several years old doesn’t mean it needs to be replaced. A two-year-old forklift that breaks down constantly requiring costly repairs may justify replacement before a five-year-old workhorse that needs only routine maintenance.

Through Sage Fixed Assets, you can track many data elements for better business decisions. Track book value, replacement value, and depreciation of each asset. Use this data along with maintenance records and other data from your Sage software to analyze assets in a logical manner. Because it integrates with your general ledger system, you can also assess its impact on your finances easily and quickly.

Challenge 2: Wholesale distributors need one system to handle all of their business needs. It’s difficult to cobble together disparate systems to handle accounting, finance, assets, and more.

Sage software offers much more than a solution to one problem. Sage Fixed Assets, for example, provides a comprehensive package of accounting, finance, purchasing, inventory, fixed asset management, and much more in just one package. Because it is all in one package, there is no need to fuss with getting all of the different systems to “talk” to each other. Sage integrates them all into a package built for wholesale distributors.

Challenge 3: Wholesale distributors need mobility as part of a software solution. Fixed assets may be in multiple spots such as warehouses, offices, and loading docks.

Mobility isn’t just a nice thing to have these days. It’s a must-have for almost every industry, and that goes for wholesale distributors, too. Sage Fixed Assets offers a mobile solution that allows your team to work anywhere, anytime. It’s flexible enough to work on the back of a truck as you scan items into receiving as it is in the warehouse to scan items going out to customers.

Sage software like Sage Fixed Assets includes barcode readers. These readers can scan and update records on your assets, like scanning barcodes on trucks, forklifts, shelving or other equipment. It doesn’t matter if such equipment is on a loading dock, a warehouse, or in the office. You can take your interface to Sage Fixed Assets and your barcode scanner with you wherever you go.

Other Great Features for Wholesale Distributors

In addition to these helpful features for wholesale distributors, additional features include an import/export assistant to help you manipulate existing data; custom reporting and formatting options, so you always get the report that you want and need; historical tracking; and alerts when inventory is overdue. Windows Mobile barcode readers enable multiple users to use the system at the same time, with simultaneous synchronization of data.

Wholesale distributors may feel like the hidden partner in many systems, without software to support their needs. Sage software heard your needs loud and clear and developed Sage Fixed Assets just for you. It’s a great way to streamline your business, improve efficiency and enhance productivity.

IWI Consulting Group

IWI Consulting Group helps businesses gain insights into their operations, inventory, and profitability. We provide software and support for a wide range of industries throughout Canada. For more information, please visit IWI Consulting Group or contact us today.

Some companies run on gut instinct. Others run on data. If your company falls into the latter camp, welcome to Sage X3 Data Management and Analytics, a comprehensive analytics solution for insights-driven organizations.

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) Data Management and Analytics offers a comprehensive portfolio of analytics with the ease of an out of the box solution. Deep integration with other Sage software enables Sage X3 Data Management and Analytics to manage data and extra insights without cumbersome technical programming. It’s easier to set up than many other data analytics programs, making it a favorite for companies who crave data but have little time for custom programming.

Let’s take a look at some of the features Sage X3 Data Management and Analytics offers.

• One analytics solution: The software takes multiple data inputs and generates outputs through dynamic role-based dashboards, Sage BI dashboards and reporting, and other BI tools, as required. It’s one solution to the problem of multiple BI needs.
• Easy deployment: One pre-packaged solution makes deployment a snap. Various models include cloud, on-premise, and hybrid models. Pre-set data models for Sage X3 and other ERP and CRM applications offer better deployment options.
• Seamless integration: This tool is built to integrate with other products—especially Sage products—but other systems, as well. Out of the box integration with almost any data source makes it quick to set up without a glitch. You can also add additional data sources later.
• Data modeling: Powerful data modeling capabilities enable you to make customized data reports, automate data cube and warehousing, and much more.
• Data governance: Govern data carefully without intrusive systems through its built-in data governance tools. Enterprise-quality controls enable you to securely set permissions, adjust access and permissions, and control who sees and changes data.
• Fast analysis: Self-service reporting puts you in control of outputs. Role-based dashboards, industry-standard best practices and more are all built into the system.

These features make Sage X3 Data Management and Analytics a must-have tool for companies set on growth. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and lack of available data makes it difficult for companies to set a course for growth. With Sage X3 Data Management and Analytics, you have what you need to set KPIs and measure progress towards them. More importantly, you are empowered with information and self-service capabilities that help you make the system what you need it to be. It’s flexible and offers exceptional data visualizations for better insights.

Transform Your Company

Many companies seek to become data-driven businesses but difficulty finding, accessing, and using data can make it hard to take the final step. If you can’t trust your data or you can’t find what you need, it becomes next to impossible to make decisions based on data.

Sage X3 Data Management and Analytics can shift this paradigm into one in which not only can you trust the data that you see, but you can make it your own. With customized dashboards, the CEO’s view is different from the Marketing Manager’s view, but each gets to see the metrics vital to their roles within the company. The result is a tool that not only supports better decisions but makes data the basis from which business decisions are made.

IWI Consulting Group

IWI Consulting Group helps businesses gain insights into their operations, inventory, and profitability. We provide software and support for a wide range of industries throughout Canada. For more information, please visit IWI Consulting Group or contact us today.

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) offers unprecedented insight and business data for discrete manufacturers. Worldwide, there’s growing unease about the slowdown in demand. Nationalism is rising and sales are slowing. When there’s this confluence of global factors, the emphasis shifts from expansion to improving productivity. Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) can help you improve productivity and more.

There are several steps you can take to improve productivity and profitability as the global demand for discrete manufacturing slows. These include:

1. Leverage Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) data and analytics: Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) users know that the system provides excellent data and analytics. Condition-based monitoring, which helps discrete manufacturers monitor the condition of equipment and facilities, can be monitored and tracked. Warehouse management can be improved using data from Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3). Other areas of improvement include data-based marketing, sales, and operational decisions. Use all the data that you can from Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) and make sound, fact-based decisions. Monitor costs and expenses carefully and make better decisions about your operations.
2. Use pricing for competitive advantage: Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) can help you improve your supply chain management, which in turn can drive down the cost of goods. You can use lower wholesale costs to provide incentive pricing for good customers or to increase market share by aggressively pricing high demand goods. Price can be an effective marketing strategy if used judiciously.
3. Cultivate strategic partnerships: Consider whether strategic partnerships can be used to enhance your company’s abilities to reach new markets or produce innovative goods. A strategic partnership can be used to leverage industry knowledge, specific project-based innovations, or other areas where business growth outweighs concerns about sharing information.
4. Use data to make incremental improvements: Look at your company’s operation data in Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) to see where incremental gains can be made. For example, just a slight reduction in return rates can yield gains in profitability. Wasting less during the production process can increase profitability too. Spending more on routine maintenance for equipment may result in fewer costly emergency repairs. By using operational data, you can make choices about where to spend to save in the future or how to get more from using less.
5. Never stop recruiting: Hiring is probably the last thing on your mind when costs are rising and sales are declining. It takes top people to build a top company, and it’s often difficult to find mid- to senior-level manufacturing talent when you need it. Build a company-wide recruitment campaign to position your company as a great place to work. Include your sales, marketing, and communication teams in the movement to make your company number one. Always be open to new hires if the talent they bring can boost your company’s productivity, sales, or market share.

Building a Discrete Manufacturing Ecosystem

The buzzword now is “ecosystem”—an interrelated sequence of thoughts, ideas, and more that support growth and development. Discrete manufacturers can build their own ecosystem by considering:

1. Sharing specific intellectual property assets to build something better with a selected partner;
2. Collaborating with another manufacturer to create a highly desirable product;
3. Sharing supplier resources with other manufacturers to support an evolving industry;
4. Using systems such as Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) that support collaboration.

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) can be used by discrete manufacturers to make improvements that can counteract the slowdown in the global market. While you may not be able to increase demand, you can certainly decrease costs and find new and innovative ways to build new products.

At some point in time, the manufacturing cycle will pick up again. It always does. Until then, smart manufacturers use Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) data to continue producing at profitable rates. Be one of the smart companies by learning more about Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) today.

IWI Consulting Group

IWI Consulting Group helps businesses gain insights into their operations, inventory, and profitability. We provide software and support for a wide range of industries throughout Canada. For more information, please visit IWI Consulting Group or contact us today.

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) can help you overcome many of the challenges you face using outmoded legacy systems. Sure, legacy systems are as comfortable and familiar as a pair of broken-in sneakers, but staying comfortable comes with risks. The risk of lost data, lost productivity, and worst—lost customers and profits. Instead of staying with your legacy system, moving to a new enterprise resource planning system, such as Sage X3, can boost your business into new areas of profitability and efficiency.

Overcoming Team Inertia

One of the big challenges facing many companies is helping their employees understand the benefits of embracing a new system. Employees may be used to using an older legacy system. They don’t see the costs of continually updating and fixing an older system, nor do they see the areas ripe for improvement.

From an employee’s perspective, a legacy system may be just fine. Yet, you know that Sage X3 provides better insights, faster reports, and real-time data, all things that your team has said they want or need in an enterprises resource planning system.

To overcome resistance to change and what we’ve dubbed “team inertia,” it’s important to emphasize the benefits to your employees when you’re pitching them on embracing the new Sage X3 system. People respond best to information on what’s in it for them—what will help them do their jobs faster and better. Emphasizing the benefits to each department of using Sage X3 is what will help move teams out of inertia and into action.

Make People Part of the Change

Another way to overcome employee inertia is to make people part of the solution. Invite selected team members into the group. Teams sometimes invest a great deal of time and energy into making existing systems work, and it can be hard to break free from the mindset that, because they’ve invested so much in the current system, the company should keep it. They don’t understand the urgent need to replace an existing system with something better.

It’s important to express your appreciation to those who have kept the old system going. People need to understand that just because Sage X3 is replacing the existing system does not mean their help is no longer needed. On the contrary—the legacy system experts can now become the Sage X3 experts and help with the new ERP system.

When you include team members in the evaluation stages, you’re exposing them to the benefits of a new system early on. They’ll see firsthand during these meetings with your potential ERP system vendor just how much better a new system will be.

Offer Exceptional Training

To assist with the transition to Sage X3, be sure to schedule ample opportunity for training in the new system. You can schedule general group training, as well as specific training by department to help people learn more about functions in Sage X3 such as invoicing or CRM.

Another great training step is to identify so-called “super users” to become the go-to people in-house for questions about Sage X3. Such individuals don’t have to be people from the IT department, just employees willing to learn more about the system.

Lead by Example

Embracing a new system starts from the top down. Set a good example by holding yourself accountable for learning the new system and using it as soon as it’s ready. This way you’ll be both an expert on it and a good example for others!

Sage X3: An Enterprise Resource Planning System Made for Manufacturing

Once your employees begin using Sage X3, they’ll never want to go back to the legacy system again. That’s because Sage X3 is an enterprise resource planning system that’s made for the manufacturing industry. It contains multiple functions in one system so that everything from accounting to warehouse management is in one central location.

With Sage X3, you can monitor warehouse function; track shipments, bill your customers; and manage accounting, finance, inventory, operations and customer relationships. It’s made for manufacturers so it has intuitive navigation and workflows that match your business’ requirement.

IWI Consulting Group can also help you with migrating legacy systems into new systems such as Sage X3. Our migration services help you improve efficiency and get your new system running quickly. We can help with many legacy system migrations including QuickBooks, Intuit, and more.

Contact IWI Consulting for more information on Sage X3 and product migration support.

IWI Consulting Group

IWI Consulting Group helps businesses gain insights into their operations, inventory, and profitability. We provide software and support for a wide range of industries throughout Canada. For more information, please visit IWI Consulting Group or contact us today.

The data derived from Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) can be used for many things, including improving warehouse management. You’d think that it would take a lot of effort to improve warehouse management and productivity, but sometimes little efficiencies make a big impact.

It only takes a few errors to start leaking profits from your business. Case in point: even a half percent (0.05%) of mistakes in picking can lead to money lost processing returns, productivity, and dissatisfied customers. It may seem like a very small amount, but even a little bit is too much when it comes to losing money.

Use the data from Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) to review your current return statistics. Read through the reasons why people are returning products. If the wrong products are going out, then you need to take steps to improve picking and packing.

Ways to Improve Picking and Packing

1. Examine return information: Review all the information in Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) on your returns. If the number of items returned for incorrect products or reports of incomplete orders is high, it could mean problems in your picking and packing area.
2. Review the existing process: If you have written process and policy manuals, review them now to make sure they are in line with your current system. Sometimes processes are written down, but the actual process in use changes over time and the written method isn’t updated. New employees may not even know you have a written process for picking and packing. Take time now to update the process and schedule refresher training for your teams to make sure everyone is following the current protocol.
3. Ask for comments and feedback: Don’t be afraid to invite the warehouse team’s comments, feedback, and suggestions. A good way to do this is to host a round-table luncheon where the company provides sandwiches or pizza and creates an informal atmosphere. Allow people to open up and share thoughts for improving the process, feedback, and ideas.
4. Offer prizes: If you can monitor data on picking and packing, hold a contest to see which team can generate the lowest number of order mistakes. Give a special prize to the team with zero mistakes per month. Software that tracks return data can help you set the parameters for a contest. Monitor metrics such as returns for incorrect or incomplete orders, which leads straight back to the picking and packing process.
5. Recheck data each quarter: Start the process again each quarter by reviewing Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) data on returns. Compare previous quarters with your current stats and monitor improvement. Reward your warehouse team for improvements, no matter how small. Every little bit counts when it comes to improving warehouse management.

Make Little Things Count

Small items can be the most troublesome in the picking and packing process since they are easily dropped, miscounted, or missed during scanning. Consider hosting some additional training sessions with your team on handling small items. You may also want to consider teams dedicated to picking only small items.

Speaking of small, it’s also a good reminder that little mistakes can add up. One small mistake in shipping can lead to lost customers, canceled orders, and a drop in profits. Every incremental improvement you make in the picking and packing process can help the bottom line.

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) with Warehouse Management

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) offers a robust enterprise resource management system that includes warehouse management modules, as well as order processing, inventory management, accounting and financial management, CRM, and more. It’s one system that does so much for manufacturers. Whether your company is in food manufacturing or you manufacture cosmetics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, or other materials, Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) can help you improve your business through better information management and communications.

IWI Consulting Group

IWI Consulting Group helps businesses gain insights into their operations, inventory, and profitability. We provide software and support for a wide range of industries throughout Canada. For more information, please visit IWI Consulting Group or contact us today.

ERP systems such as Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) have long played an important role in manufacturing operations. The capabilities of this software have helped manufacturers monitor costs, improve communications and teamwork, and enhance customer service. Now, a new study points to the many ways in which ERP systems are making an impact on supply chain management.

The Study: Three Surprising Results

The Delphi Group asked 23 global manufacturers about the impact of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems on their supply chain and supply chain management. The answers can be grouped into three main findings that include the following impacts on supply chain management:

1. Integration of information across the entire supply chain between customers and suppliers
2. Increasing “mass customization” of products
3. Supply chains consisting of several independent entities, making the entire supply chain more complex to manage

The supply chain has been shifting over the past few years from a few large suppliers to a network of smaller, independent suppliers. This flexible approach has made it easier for small to mid-sized companies to offer lower prices, faster turnaround time, and newer services such as mass customization to their clients so that they can remain competitive in the global marketplace.

New Concepts in Supply Chain Management

Manufacturers have always worked hard to improve their operations. All improvements can lead to more sales, lower costs and happier customers. The last challenges that manufacturers are addressing are the challenges of improving supply chain management.

Improving supply chain management is one of the last frontiers for improving manufacturing processes. The supply chain is integral to all aspects of quality control, from the quality of raw materials to the timeliness of delivery. It’s also important for cost control. The better the suppliers, the lower the cost of raw goods. The cost differential can be used as part of a sales strategy of lower prices or to shore up profits.

Relying upon a broad, vast network of suppliers is becoming the norm instead of relying on a few chosen suppliers.  Changing marketplace conditions, lower costs, and faster shipping have put specific suppliers at the head of the list for future orders. This is creating a new dynamic among suppliers who recognize they need a flexible approach to ensure customer satisfaction. You can no longer rely on one or two companies for your main business: it’s beyond putting all your eggs in one, two, or even three baskets. Now, you need to be able to access every basket in the farmyard!

Information Integration in Sage EM

ERP is a natural extension of materials requirement planning (MRP) systems from past decades. An ERP system provides a comprehensive management system that integrates transactions, materials planning, and many other functions into one complete system.

Research has shown that fragmented information is the source of many delays across the supply chain, according to the Delphi report. With one seamlessly integrated ERP system, much of the fragmentation is removed and information becomes cohesive and shareable.

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) fits the bill perfectly. It brings together many aspects of your business, including supply chain management and communications, for one powerful, seamless base of operations.

Demand for Mass Customization Increases

It’s no longer enough to keep plenty of basic items on hand and customize them as the need arises. The sunk cost of producing such excess inventory “just in case” as well as the cost of warehousing the items just doesn’t add up. Now, mass customization is the name of the game. Being able to respond to customer requests for customization on a large scale is a requirement for all size manufacturers.

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) can help you meet the demands for mass customization. Its ability to manage multiple vendors, keep track of inventory, and track orders from start to finish make it easier to offer customization. It also offers great control of your costs and real-time views of orders, invoices, purchases and more, so you can keep tighter control over your costs.

Manage and Deploy Resources Efficiently

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) also offers you the ability to manage and deploy resources from multiple vendors. Parts from a supplier in Toronto, raw goods from a Manitoba warehouse, it doesn’t matter where the resources are being deployed from; they can be deployed effectively. You can also manage the flow of goods from one central dashboard as well as manage prices, costs, and more.

Enhancing Your Supply Chain through ERP Systems

It’s time to enhance your supply chain management through a great ERP system. Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) offers a multi-faceted ERP system that’s flexible to meet the needs of many industries. Food manufacturing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and many other manufacturers can all benefit from Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) integrated data. It’s the right way to manage your supply chain and improve operations.

IWI Consulting Group

IWI Consulting Group helps businesses gain insights into their operations, inventory, and profitability. We provide software and support for a wide range of industries throughout Canada. For more information, please visit IWI Consulting Group or contact us today.

Perhaps you’ve just purchased your first barcode scanner or you’ve realized how barcodes can make your business more efficient. It’s time to implement a barcode system that will help you manage inventory more easily and provide you with the business insight and information that you need to keep your warehouse humming and your customers satisfied. The following steps can be used in many industries for barcode implementation after the purchase of a new barcode scanner.

Step 1: Get a GS1 Prefix

Every barcode begins with a series of numbers known as a GS1 Prefix. This is a unique identifying number that is coded to your company and enables you to sell your products in stores and online. It can be used worldwide so that anyone scanning your products knows their origin and source. These numbers are followed by unique product identification numbers.

You can obtain a GS1 Prefix at gs1us.org.

Step 2: Decide what items will carry a barcode.

Next, you’ll need to organize and sort the items in your company that will carry a barcode. Most companies categorize their products as static or dynamic barcodes.

Static barcodes are used to consistently identify products. You’ve seen them hundreds of times on mass produced packaging ranging from milk cartons to wraps on reams of copy paper; these barcodes never change and the packaging can be printed in huge batches to use for multiple product runs.

Dynamic bar codes are typically used for a single purpose. Companies who use their barcode scanners and barcodes to track equipment such as forklifts, copies, and other machinery may choose dynamic barcodes because the use is limited to a handful of items.

You may wish to develop a list of how barcodes will be used in your company. Categorizing items by static and dynamic barcodes, product categories, and similar information will organize your inventory and make it easier for those programming and running barcodes to understand the logic undergirding the system.

Step 3: Choose your barcodes.

Each barcode must be accompanied by a specific symbol, which indicates how the items are scanned and distributed. IWI Consulting Group can help you choose your barcode system so that it works with your new software and with your company’s business needs.

Step 4: Select the size.

Barcodes can also be printed in many different sizes, so you’ll need to select the size you want for your products. The specific symbol chosen in Step 3 will also influence the size of your barcode, so make sure you complete Step 3 and seek assistance from IWI Consulting Group, if necessary, before setting the size for barcodes.

Step 5: Create the text.

Now it’s time to create, format, and proofread the text for your barcodes. The numbers below the actuals bars on a barcode are very important. If the barcode gets smudged, damaged, or is otherwise unreadable by barcodes scanners, the numbers act as a backup and can be manually typed into the system to identify your products.

You can use any size or font for the letters or numbers, but be sure they are easy to read. This isn’t a good time to use a script or calligraphy font. Instead, use a common font such as Arial or Verdana that is easy to read.

Step 6: Choose your colors.

Yes, you can print barcodes in many colors. They are easiest to read when printed in black ink on a white surface. That’s the standard for barcodes.

Step 7: Place the barcode.

Determine where on your packaging you will place the barcode. Again, you can put a barcode almost anywhere, but there are certain locations that are typical for product categories. Boxes tend to have barcodes on the bottom or on the back lower panel (left or right) so that they are easier to scan during checkout. Review products in your industry to find out what is typical or common for your product category.

Step 8: Test barcodes and barcode scanners.

Lastly, once your product is barcoded, the barcode is placed and printed, it’s time to test it. Use your barcode scanner to make sure that the code is accurate, is easily scanned, and that there are no other issues with your new barcodes.

IWI Consulting Group:  Barcode Scanning Made Easy

IWI Consulting Group can help you choose barcode scanners, set up your barcode process, and help you launch a barcoding project to manage your inventory and sell more products. We offer a Barcode Scanning Inventory Module for Sage 300 that lets you manage your inventory and warehouse with confidence. To learn more about IWI’s Barcode Scanning Inventory Module for Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), or to discuss choosing and setting up a barcode scanning project, contact us today. Call 1-866-916-3851.

You can improve your business intelligence presentations to executives, directors, peers, and subordinates by using tips and techniques found in the world of education. Many people are unfamiliar with the term “learning styles” but understanding this core concept and applying it to your presentation techniques will help you deliver better presentations that resonate with your audience.

What Are Learning Styles?

Educational theorists created a system of learning styles to describe the ways in which people prefer to learn. Your learning style is innate, and you probably recognize your own style in the descriptions below. Most people have a predominant style that they naturally gravitate towards when engaged in self-directed learning. Because the Western school system is heavily auditory (lecture-based) and visual (textbooks), many people who are kinesthetic or tactile learners learned early on to compensate by relying heavily on their secondary preference. No matter what your preference, there’s no one right or wrong way to learn.

The three basic learning styles are described as:

• Auditory: Auditory learners need to hear information to process it. They understand business intelligence most during your presentation and retain information best when it is spoken aloud.
• Visual: Visual learners learn best by seeing information in charts, graphs, or other pictorial representations. These members of your audience will eagerly read your full report.
• Kinesthetic: Also called tactile learners, this group must handle the data in order to understand it. This can be accomplished through role plays, simulations, or even colorful anecdotes that help your audience grasp key points.

Think back to your school days and to the teachers you liked the best. These teachers probably used techniques that appealed to all learning styles, not just one. That’s how the best presenters earn their reputation, too: they use different techniques during meetings or lectures to engage with their audience’s learning styles.

Business Intelligence Reports: Presenting with Flair

Presenting data found within business intelligence reports comes with its own set of challenges. You may need to frame the data with information so that the report makes sense. Setting the stage for the backstory, the data, and the interpretation can all help your audience understand business intelligence data.

You can use learning styles to present business intelligence data with understanding, sympathy for learners’ natural inclinations, and flair that makes them memorable.

1. Provide graphs, especially bar graphs, line graphs and pie charts: These visual representations of business intelligence data are most easily understood by your visual learners.
2. Stage a demonstration: To show that a technology investment will repay the company five-fold, ask someone in the audience for a dollar bill, and hand then back a $5 bill. Your kinesthetic or tactile learners will immediately grasp the concept in a deeper way than just stating the data aloud, which appeals only to the auditory learners in the group.
3. Read key points from a summary document for your auditory learners, and include a Q and A session at the end of the presentation.

When you break up a presentation by appealing to various learning styles, you’ll not only meet your audience’s needs better, you’ll create a truly memorable impression. Staging a visual demonstration of the reports’ impact or acting out a data report may sound corny (and may be hard to pull off) but it will certainly be memorable.

Business Intelligence Made Better with Sage Enterprise Intelligence

Sage Enterprise Intelligence eliminates the time and labor-intensive work needed to build great reports by automating business intelligence in one sleek, streamlined system. Fast reports mean data gets to you in time to make better decisions. When every minute counts to act upon business intelligence, Sage Enterprise Intelligence offers a valuable resource for many companies in various industries.

Business Intelligence Systems from IWI Consulting Group

IWI Consulting Group is a Canadian-based consulting resource group that assists for-profit and non-profit organizations with the difficult decision to choose enterprise resource planning software and related software. These systems and software improve business productivity and efficiency. For more information, contact us today or call 1-866-916-3851.

One of the biggest benefits of cloud-based business systems is flexibility. A cloud-based system such as Sage Live works the way you want to work. No longer do you need to run your business around your software.

Sage Live Expands to Fit Your Needs

Sage Live can scale up as you need more bandwidth for your customers. Manufacturers with heavy seasonal demands may find that cloud computing easily adjusts and flexes to the demands at specific times of year when order volume is high. During other times of the year, when the volume is low, their computer demands decrease. Instead of investing in new hardware to handle the high volume time periods, cloud computing adjusts with the needs easily and swiftly.

Add More Users Easily

Another way in which the cloud can expand to fit your business is by easily adding new users onto the system at any given time. A busy warehouse may need to add temporary workers during certain seasons. The cloud can accommodate more logins without adding unnecessary terminals or additional software packages.

You can also add users from multiple locations. Some companies use freelance office workers, marketing, or sales people to supplement their workforce. With Sage Live, you can add additional workers easily onto the system. They can access the database through their home computers, tablets or smartphones. All you need is a web connection. It’s an easy way to get everyone working from the same data and keeping your systems up-to-date, no matter who accesses them.

Security Is Excellent

One concern that many business owners have when they consider cloud computing is the security level. Cloud computing works off shared servers and companies often worry that their data may be compromised or somehow less secure when it is kept off-site than when it is housed on hard drives within their four walls. Suffice to say that cloud computing companies have some of the strictest security protocols available in place to ward off viruses and hackers intent on damaging or stealing data. You can’t “accidentally” access anyone else’s data on the cloud, so your company’s information is secure. Cloud computing is secure computing.

The Cloud Is Here to Stay

Cloud computing has moved from a “nice to have” to a “must have” as more businesses embrace cloud technology. It’s simple to use, highly secure, and less expensive than older technologies.

Sage Live provides global accounting, personalized business reports, and anytime, anywhere access. A multi dimensional general ledger makes it easier to review your company’s finances. It’s Sage software, with a cloud interface that’s simple to use, yet provides robust business intelligence data for better insights.

IWI Consulting Group

IWI Consulting Group helps businesses gain insights into their operations, inventory, and profitability. We provide software and support for a wide range of industries throughout Canada. For more information, please visit IWI Consulting Group or contact us today.