The Oates & Company Blog

Building a Following with Social Media

Posted by John Shepperson | Aug 11, 2014 11:00:00 AM

Social media is the new way to build a following in the community. The beauty of social media – and the internet, of course – is that now your “community” can be worldwide. No longer are you relegated to local customers attracted with yellow pages ads, billboards, magazine spreads, and TV commercials. The number of social media platforms available is large: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the most well-known, but there is also Instagram, Pinterest, Yelp, and many others. If you aren’t using at least one of these forms of social media, you’re missing out on valuable business opportunities.

Before you start blogging, tweeting, and post to Facebook, however, make sure you’ve done the basic foundational work that is necessary to ensure your social media success.

Topics: Blog Posting, customers, john shepperson, oates co, twitter, facebook, pinterest, instagram, social media, prospects, community

Just a Click Away from Going Green

Posted by Randy Aimone | Mar 27, 2013 6:11:00 AM

We see signs and commercials of companies Going Green all the time; do you wonder what you can do to help? As we get fastened in our perplexed routine way of completing our jobs, we tend to forget to step back, and look outside the box, and ask ourselves; is there an easier more proficient way to do this. Normally the answer is yes, and usually staring us in the face.

Do you print, scan, save, and email printed documents out of Sage 100 ERP (Formerly Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200) to your vendors, clients, or associates? Do you print Registers and Journals, and keep them tucked away, just in case you may or may not ever need them again? Are those filing cabinets filling up quicker and quicker every year? Do you print a report to just later throw it away? If so, there is a more proficient way in handling, the storage, viewing, printing, faxing, and emailing of documents, forms, reports, journals and registers through Sage 100 ERP using the Paperless Office module.

Paperless Office provides you with a PDF storage/viewer, of forms, reports, journals and registers. Setups can be module specific, or document specific.

Contact Lisa Brewer (lisa@oatesco.com) to schedule your Review/Setup/Testing/Training of Paperless Office, and begin the first stages of your company, Going Green.

(The Paperless Office module is a standard, included module with those versions 4.3 PU18 and above)

Topics: Blog Posting, MAS 90, MAS 200, Sage 100

Sage 500 ERP: 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Version 2013

Posted by Randy Aimone | Mar 20, 2013 1:30:00 AM

With the chaos of year end processing behind you, you might be thinking about an upgrade to Sage 500 ERP Version 2013 released in November. Here are 10 reasons to consider an upgrade to the newest version of your ERP software.

Topics: Blog Posting, Sage 500

SAGE 500 ERP: Improvements in Credit Card Processing

Posted by Randy Aimone | Mar 7, 2013 2:47:00 AM

The introduction of Sage Exchange changes the way that credit card transactions are processed in Sage 500 ERP beginning with Version 2013, which was released in November of last year. Sage Exchange is cloud-based technology that provides the integration, or bridge, between Sage 500 ERP and the Sage Payments Gateway. It all adds up to new features and improvements in credit card processing that we think you’ll like. Here’s a closer look.

The Components of Sage Exchange

As mentioned, Sage Exchange provides the integration between your accounting system and the Sage Payments Gateway. It’s made up of two components which we’ll take a look at here:

Sage Exchange Portal - this configurable dashboard consolidates all of your credit card and payment activity into a single web portal that can be accessed from a tablet or PC. From the portal, you can connect Sage 500 to your payment devices, administer users and control employee access, create customer coupons and push them out to your point-of-sale terminals, and much more.

Sage Exchange Vault - this secure, cloud-based vault stores sensitive credit card information online and processes transactions outside of your Sage 500 ERP system. By doing so, it reduces your PCI compliance burden, allowing you to more easily comply with credit card processing laws. For added cardholder security, Sage 500 ERP 2013 will also allow a “one-time use” credit card for payment transactions without saving credit card information.

If you’re migrating from previous versions of the software, you can easily move customer credit card information from the current Sage 500 database location into the secure Sage Exchange Vault.

New Payment Options, Including Mobile

The implementation of Sage Exchange in Sage 500 ERP Version 2013 introduces new payment entry options. New card swipecapabilities have been truly integrated so that payment processing is built into the normal Sage 500 ERP workflow, which can replace the disconnected card swipe system that you may be using today.

Using the new Sage Mobile Payments, you can capture credit card transactions using a smart phone; ideal for companies with a mobile sales force or service providers that collect fees on the go. Simply launch the app, identify an existing customer from the mobile device, and select one or more invoices to pay. And with a Sage Mobile card swipe device connected to a smartphone, you can swipe the customer’s credit card and present a touch screen for signature and approval.

Topics: Blog Posting, Sage 500

Why ALL companies should use CRM Software (Customer Relationship Management)

Posted by Randy Aimone | Feb 12, 2013 12:39:00 AM

What is CRM and why should a company implement it? CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, focuses on improving customer retention, increasing revenues and profitability, and ensuring continuity for the customer through any staff changes. At its best, it becomes a key part of corporate strategy that everyone is involved in, not just salespeople. The idea behind it is to provide a tool where every stakeholder in the company records interactions with customers so that everyone is on the same page. How many times have you experienced a salesperson making a sales call to a customer and the salesperson did not know that there was a major customer service issue the week before? It makes the salesperson, and the company, look bad that this information is not shared.

One of the major advantages of utilizing CRM software is to eliminate the silos of information. In most organizations that have not adopted CRM, the customer experience looks something like this:

The salespeople manage their calendars in either Outlook, or even worse in a day planner.

Management and customer service has no visibility into any of this information.

All of the emails that the salespeople or customer service has with a customer is in a silo of that individual’s email or in their head.

If any interaction does need to occur between sales and customer service, it is usually done by phone or by email again.

This creates a lot of inefficient time for everyone and does nothing to improve the customer’s experience. If CRM software is utilized, company-wide, then the salespeople can log on before they go on a sale call and see all of the activity that has occurred since the last visit and be better prepared to deal with the customer. Likewise, the customer service representatives can see what the salespeople have done and be better prepared when the customer calls in with an issue.

The second advantage of utilizing CRM software is protection of your customers. Let’s say you have a star salesperson that becomes disgruntled. If they manage their relationships in Excel, Outlook, or by day planner, then if they leave you lose all those interactions and very possibly the client too. By having all interactions recorded in the CRM software, management or the next salesperson can quickly get up to speed of what the salesperson has done and proactively communicate with the customer to retain them.

If you would like to reduce the silos of information in your organization and protect your customers, please visit us at john@oatesco.com or visit us at www.oatesco.com.

Topics: Blog Posting, crm

Sage 500: Introducing Visual Process Flows

Posted by Randy Aimone | Dec 19, 2012 6:30:00 PM

Customers participating in Sage 500 ERP Version 2013 beta testing earlier this year were unanimous in giving a thumbs up to the new Visual Process Flows feature. These graphical workflow diagrams provide a visual representation of your business processes, helping you navigate the system more easily, perform daily tasks more quickly, and serve as a nice refresher during procedures that are preformed infrequently like year-end processing. Let’s take a look at the new Visual Process Flows.

What Are Visual Process Flows?

The newest addition to an arsenal of Sage 500 built-in self-help tools, Visual Process Flows are interactive HTML pages that not only demonstrate the steps of a process in visual terms, but also include links to the various tasks along the way. So, they can serve as both a visual diagram and a launching point for the steps and tasks in the process. The 2013 release includes a number of key pre-built processes as well as an easy to use tool that allows you to design your own custom workflows that reflect your unique processes.

Improving Your ERP Experience

The primary goal of the new Visual Process Flows is to allow you to quickly identify your tasks and launch screens without searching through the giant tree of menu items and icons within Sage 500. Even though you can customize the tree of icons to limit what a user can see based on his or her role, usability studies conducted by Sage revealed that customers were still spending quite a bit of time searching for the correct screen to launch for a given task. Process Flows also make it easier to visualize how individual tasks relate to the overall business process. So in this case, a picture is worth a thousand hours of productivity.

See It In Action

Visual Process Flows are ... well, a visual thing. So you might want to check out this Visual Process Flows overview video on YouTube to see exactly how it works. Even though the video is using Sage ERP X3 as the demo system, it’s the same Visual Process Flow engine that’s built in to Sage 500 ERP.

RETIRED VERSIONS REMINDER - Sage 500 ERP (formerly “MAS 500”) versions 6.3 and 7.0 are now retired. Product updates (including year end) and telephone support are no longer provided by Sage. However if you’re on a current maintenance plan, you still have access to the online knowledgebase with articles and support documents covering retired versions. Please don’t hesitate to Contact Us if you need assistance.

Topics: Blog Posting, Sage 500

Leveraging Workflow Automation in Sage CRM

Posted by Randy Aimone | Nov 6, 2012 4:48:00 AM

The workflows you incorporate into your business processes can be a competitive advantage.When your workforce adheres to pre-defined and repeatable best-practices, your business is more efficient, your product or service more consistent, and you avoid having important customer service issues fall through the cracks. That’s where the automated workflow engine in Sage CRM can play a tremendous role and here’s why.

Topics: Blog Posting

Introducing Sage Timesheet

Posted by Randy Aimone | Oct 23, 2012 6:04:00 AM

Planning and managing a project can be stressful, especially when the inevitable project pitfall shows up and threatens to delay or ruin a project. Completing a project on-time and on-budget is no easy task when resource shortages, scope creep, and budget overruns make it harder to monitor and allocate resources.

Topics: Blog Posting

The Tax Collection Connection

Posted by Randy Aimone | Sep 19, 2012 3:07:00 AM

The dictionary definition of nexus is a “connection” or “link”. When we’re talking about nexus in the context of sales tax, that’s what we’re referring to. If you have nexus in a state, it means that you have a substantial enough connection or link to that state to warrant a requirement to collect and remit sales tax. But the devil is in the details.

Topics: Blog Posting

Credit Card Enhancements

Posted by Randy Aimone | Aug 10, 2012 6:31:00 AM

When you integrate all your points-of-payment directly to your accounting system, you ensure timely collection of customer invoices, maximize cash flow, and minimize the hassle of manual reconciliation. Perhaps that’s why Sage put so much effort into improving credit card processing functionality in Sage 100 ERP 2013. Here are the improvements we expect to see when the new version is released later this year.

Topics: Blog Posting

Oates and Company Blog

Building a Following with Social Media

Just a Click Away from Going Green

Sage 500 ERP: 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Version 2013

SAGE 500 ERP: Improvements in Credit Card Processing

Why ALL companies should use CRM Software (Customer Relationship Management)

Sage 500: Introducing Visual Process Flows

Leveraging Workflow Automation in Sage CRM

Introducing Sage Timesheet

The Tax Collection Connection

Credit Card Enhancements

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