ERP Ideas Blog

Posted by Connie on November 23, 2010

Get quick shortcuts and suggestions to help you navigate in Microsoft NAV, Ceres and Navigator

Today’s Tip: Date Shortcuts

When you’re entering in today’s date remember you can use the shortcut “t” for today’s date rather than typing out the full date.  The same is true for any day of the week. Want Monday’s date? Just type “m” in a date field and hit enter – the date will automatically get filled in for you. Here’s a quick list of the Date Shortcuts in Microsoft NAV, Ceres and Navigator.

Date Shortcuts

• T = Today’s date
• M = Monday’s date
• Tu = Tuesday’s date
• We = Wednesday’s date
• Th = Thursday’s date
• F = Friday’s date
• W = Today’s work date

You can also type in the day of the month, or the month and day and the system will fill in the rest. Type in 18 and the system will convert it to 11/18/10. If you want a different month, type in 1218 and you will get 12/18/10.

* Note: You don’t have to capitalize the shortcut. “Tu” or “tu”, “f” or “F” both capitalized or lowercase shortcuts work.

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Have a suggestion for a Tip Tuesday shortcut? Send your Microsoft Dynamics NAV shortcuts suggestions today!

Posted by Kimarie Wolf on November 19, 2010

Portland, Ore. — November 19, 2010 — In February of 2000, eSoftware Professionals got an urgent call from Navision and America’s Second Harvest (now Feeding America). They needed an inventory management and financial system designed specifically for the unique challenges facing the nation’s food banks. And by the way, they needed it designed, developed and implemented as soon as possible!

eSoftware Professionals knew their knowledge of accounting and business processes would be important in creating a system for this distinctive industry. The project was kicked off in mid-February when eSoftware met with ten food banks and America’s Second Harvest staff to help document the industry’s unique requirements. Then the serious work began. The result: an unveiling of the new software solution, Ceres 1.0, at the America’s Second Harvest National Conference in mid-September of 2000. The first “go live” was also in September a short 7 ½ months total project time. Read the full article…

Posted by Kimarie Wolf on October 26, 2010

eSoftware Professionals was named to the exclusive Technical Adoption Program (TAP) for Microsoft Dynamics NAV. TAP, the early beta program designed by Microsoft for select partners and customers who Microsoft has determined are important to a successful release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 7. eSoftware Professionals is among an elite group of Microsoft partners worldwide selected for this TAP.

“As the first Dynamics NAV solution center in the United States, eSoftware Professionals is uniquely qualified to share insights, industry expertise and customer focused feedback. eSoftware Professionals has a long tradition of being Microsoft’s go-to partner for mid-market ERP solutions in the Pacific Northwest. We have broad industry and role tailored expertise from food processors to archdiocese, and food banks to distributors, from financial management to procurement, and quality control to inventory management. We are proud to be among the elite group selected for the TAP. Our position on the TAP continues our 20 plus year role as leaders in ERP Consulting.” Jody Leoni, President, eSoftware Professionals

About eSoftware Professionals

eSoftware gives you the Microsoft Dynamics solutions organizations need to eliminate duplicate work, improve productivity, and do more with fewer resources. An eSoftware solution consolidates information into one integrated system to get the information you need where and when you need it. And everyone is working with the same data – all on a familiar Microsoft platform.  eSoftware Professionals developed and implements both eFood and Ceres which are industry focused ERP solutions designed to address the unique requirements of Food Processors/Distributors and Food Banks.

About eFood for Food Processors and Food Distributors

eFood streamlines the fundamental business processes faced by food processors and distributors including the often tricky tasks of inventory tracking, production control, vendor management, supply chain management, achieving regulatory compliance, quality management, and recalls.

About Ceres ERP Solutions for Food Banks

Designed and implemented by eSoftware Professionals, and based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Ceres helps food banks be more efficient by solving their main business challenges including inventory control, donor and grant management, and simplifying both the audit and regulatory compliance processes. Ceres enables food banks to do more with fewer resources and it allows them to focus more attention on their main mission – serving their communities.

Posted by Kimarie Wolf on October 18, 2010

Tax Breaks for Small Businesses in 2010

On September 27, President Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act which includes tax breaks and better access to credit for small businesses. If you are considering capital investments of any kind including software or hardware you may want to get started before the end of the year to take advantage of these tax breaks and credit opportunities.

Capital Investment Expense Benefits

The Small Business Jobs Act included the extension and expansion of Small Businesses’ ability to immediately expense capital investments. The bill increases for 2010 and 2011 the amount of investments that businesses would be eligible to immediately write off to $500,000, while raising the level of investments at which the write-off phases out to $2 million. Prior to the passage of the bill, the expense limit would have been $250,000 this year, and only $25,000 next year. This provision means that 4.5 million small businesses and individuals will be able to make new business investments today and know that they will earn a larger break on their taxes for this year.

50% Bonus Depreciation Extension

The bill extends a Recovery Act provision for 50 percent “bonus depreciation” through 2010, providing 2 million businesses, small and large, with the ability to make new investments now and know they can receive a tax cut for this year by accelerating the rate they deduct capital expenditures.

Small Business Lending Fund

The bill creates a new $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund which – by providing capital to small banks with incentives to increase small business lending – could support several multiples of that amount in new credit.

Talk to your tax adviser to find out the benefits you can receive by making your capital investments before December 31, 2010. Find out more about the Small Business Job Act.

Posted by admin on October 15, 2010

As a presenter at last week’s Feeding America Finance Conference I realized there’s a hidden gem in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Ceres, and eFood. When asked how they manage Fixed Assets most of the attendees admitted frustratingly that they still used Excel spreadsheets or Access databases with manual entry for fixed assets tracking. When I investigated further I found they didn’t realize Fixed Asset management is already included in their MS Dynamics NAV license (Ceres, and eFood, too). With both BE and AM BRL licenses you already get Fixed Assets life cycle management.

To Automate Fixed Assets Tracking or Not, That is the Question

How do you know if you are ready to move your Fixed Assets from your spreadsheets or databases to Dynamics NAV, eFood, or Ceres? If you answer yes to any of the following, you are ready to take advantage of the improved functionality and automation offered by Ceres, eFood, and Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

• Tired of spending so much time manipulating fixed assets data manually in spreadsheets?
• Wish you had real-time fixed assets information?
• Want to reduce the time it takes you to provide the required tax and reporting information?
• Want to improve your fixed asset reporting capabilities?

Fixed Assets Life Cycle Management in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Ceres, and eFood

Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Ceres, and eFood help you control and manage the entire life cycle of your fixed assets—from acquisition to disposal. You can manage fixed assets allocation, reclassification, maintenance, and reporting. You can improve your team’s productivity by streamlining your fixed asset management. Automating Fixed Assets management gives you control to automatically track fixed and intangible assets, calculate depreciation accurately, as well as easily complete tax reporting and compliance requirements.

Here are a few screen shots to give you a quick overview of fixed assets life cycle management.

1. From the Main Menu select Fixed Assets (under General Ledger)
2. The Fixed Assets Main Menu includes one-click access to:
   1. Reports, Insurance, & Periodic Activities
   2. Fixed Assets G/L Journals & Fixed Assets Journals
   3. Fixed Assets Reclass. Journals (Fixed Assets Reclassification Journals)
   4. Fixed Assets Registers & Insurance Registers
3. The Fixed Assets Card gives easy access to each Fixed Asset’s:
   1. Book Value, Depreciation Book Code, Posting Group, & Straight-line percentage
   2. Depreciation Method, start date, end date, and automatically calculates the length of depreciation
4. Fixed Assets Maintenance Ledger and Integration with Purchase and Payables Granule
   1. Includes transaction posting dates, amounts, G/L entry number

Posted by admin on October 8, 2010

CRM, (Customer Relationship Management), xRM, and xyM may sound like alphabet soup to you now, however, the changes Microsoft is bringing to MS Dynamics CRM are more than just changes in letters. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is truly transforming the way we do business in extraordinary ways. As I mentioned in my previous article “CRM, xRM, MS Financing and more”, the business tool Microsoft Dynamics CRM is not restricted to just the Sales, Marketing and Customer Service departments anymore. And by the way, we are already using it for more than just customers. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has already expanded its reach to include all departments, as well as vendors, partners, suppliers, and anyone else you communicate with. This expansion replaced the C (customer) in CRM to an X (for anything) and brought us xRM, Microsoft’s new Anything Management System.

What is next for this powerful business management tool? You may have already guessed (I gave you a hint in the first paragraph). Microsoft’s seamless integration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the other MS Office products you already use allows us to move from mere “relationship” management, to all around “business” management. With simple one-click integration you can tie any conversation, document, spreadsheet, quote, bid, invoice, etc. to the appropriate contact/company. And since you are all connected via Outlook and CRM, it is immediately visible to the rest of your organization – if you want it to be. This allows you to track much more than just “relationship” in CRM. Now you can track any type of business process or entity. No more asking Joe to update you on how many of the vendor bids have come in for the pending contract, or asking Judy about how far along we are for the engineering change request. Now you have the business tool to get the information you need, when you need it.

From either MS Outlook, or MS Dynamics CRM, simply click the link on your supplier’s name and view all the documents, bids, quotes, invoices in one place without having to interrupt Joe to do it. Same goes for Judy – let her keep working, and in the meantime go into the system and bring up the engineering change process, and see how much of the project workflow has been completed. Going from Relationship to Business management or xRM to xyM streamlines all the information in your organization, allows visibility to information throughout the organization, and improves productivity.

If you are as intrigued as I am with the changes in just the first two letters from CRM to xyM I know you will want to find out what is in store for the “M” in CRM and xyM. You may have already guessed, it is not just for management, but what does that mean to you, your business, and your bottom line? I will be writing about the third transformation soon, I know you will not want to miss it.

Posted by admin on September 30, 2010

It’s fun when I can find a real-life example to illustrate how important an effective enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is to a company’s bottom line. Here’s a great real-world example of a company in need of a new ERP solution.

Six months ago a colleague Tom and his wife Emily ordered three lamps from a local retailer. Because the items were out of stock the retailer placed them on back order from their drop shipper. Not willing to wait, Emily promptly canceled the order, was refunded, and bought the lamps elsewhere. Yesterday, six months later, an unmarked box arrived with three lamps. It’s the canceled order.

Here are the questions this order and shipment mix-up raised. Mind you, they are also some of the issues a good ERP system will help you solve.

• Where did these lamps come from?
• Why didn’t the retailer know the drop shipper was out of stock when they placed the order?
• Did the drop shipper get notified when the order was canceled?
• Does the retailer know the drop shipper fulfilled a canceled order?
• Will the retailer ever learn what happened to these lamps, or has this order disappeared into a black hole?
• Who will bear the costs created by this error, the retailer or the drop shipper?
• How much profit and inventory is lost to mistakes like this each month and year?
• How much money is wasted on unnecessary shipping and handling costs each month and year?
• Why wasn’t the retailer identified somewhere on the package or packing slip instead of only the name and address of the drop shipper?
• Why is there no contact information for the drop shipper or retailer on either the package or packing slip?
• How and to whom does my friend return the lamps?

This example illustrates the issues caused when the systems we order and fulfill from are not connected. Sometimes we call this ‘silos of information’, other times we just call it frustrating and costly.

Here are a few questions to help you determine if you need a new ERP system.

• Do your sales and customer service teams struggle to find up-to-date information on which products you have in stock?
• Do your sales and customer service teams lack visibility to the back order and fulfillment systems?
• How many times does an order (or canceled order) need to be entered for the order to be fulfilled?
  Hint: if the answer is more than one, you may need a new ERP system.
• Your business is growing and your system can’t keep up
• A lot of time is wasted hunting for information
• You’re losing clients and losing money

If you answered yes to the questions above it may be time to find a qualified ERP Consultant to help. Find out more about what to expect during an ERP Implementation.

An effective ERP Systems can help improve your bottom line by

• Eliminating the need for duplicate entries into multiple systems
• Reducing the opportunity for operator error
• Providing instant access to orders and inventory
• Improving supply chain management
• Improving efficiency
• Improving inventory management

Do you have a story to share? We’d love to hear your company or personal experience illustrating the ramifications of inadequate supply chain management or enterprise resource planning systems either from the customer or company perspective.

Posted by admin on September 28, 2010

Here is the NAV 2009 quick reference card with all the essential keyboard shortcuts for NAV 2009 and Ceres 2009. Download the NAV 2009 Keyboard Shortcuts PDF in portrait or get the Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 in landscape format. You can also download these quick reference cards from our ERP resources library.

Posted by admin on September 24, 2010

I recently read an article by H. Mackay titled Quality Is Not a Thing, It’s a Way where he illustrated the importance of quality and quality control (QC) systems. Mackay reminds us that the only goal worth attaining in your quality control system is 100%. The following research from Insight Syncrude Canada Ltd. shows us why trying to achieve 99.9% quality can mean failure. At 99.9% quality these things could happen:

• Two flights per day at O’Hare would be unsafe
• 12 babies would be given to the wrong parents each day
• 107 incorrect medical procedures would be performed each day
• 18,322 pieces of mail would be mishandled in the next hour
• 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions would be written in the next year
• 880,000 credit cards in circulation would have incorrect cardholder information in their magnetic strips

In the food & beverage industry quality is not only one of the important factor to success, I’d say it is the most important factor. In the age of increasing food recall incidents, growing government regulation, and difficult economic times it is critical to have the right quality system in place. Food Processors need to ensure they can effectively track each ingredient from the moment it enters the facility, at each processing step, during storage and transportation, all the way through to the final product sale and delivery. The quality management and regulatory compliance program needs to enable companies in the food industry to perform a mock recall within four hours. It’s not to say we won’t have food recalls. As a food industry executive reminded me,

“when you run food, you’ll have recalls, it’s just a fact of the business.”

The important focus here is that we aim for 100% quality and we install the systems we need to quickly and effectively respond n the event it happens. The companies who are nimble enough to survive food recalls, economic downturns, and other business challenges will be those with fail-safe quality systems and comprehensive enterprise resource planning solutions in place. These systems shorten the time between problem identification and solution. Effective QC Systems and ERP Solutions enable companies to track product, make critical decisions, and implement solutions all in minutes – not days.

I’ll leave you with one final quote from H. Mackay, Mackay’s Moral on quality:

The difference between failure and success is the difference between doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.

Posted by admin on September 17, 2010

I recently attended the Microsoft Dynamics West Region FY11 Sales Planning Retreat. This year’s event was filled with great new technology and opportunities. I’ve outlined the top three things you need to know about Microsoft Dynamics in 2011 below.

1. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has become xRM.
2. Microsoft Financing is available for any IT project that includes at least 10% Microsoft Technology.
3. Microsoft “stacked integration” approach will continue to set them apart from the competition.

1. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has become xRM and it’s not just for customers anymore

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has changed the way we view and use our relationship management systems. Did you catch the missing word in the previous sentence? If you did, you might ask why I left out one of the most important words in a sales professional’s vocabulary: the “customer”? The answer is xRM the new “Anything Relationship Management system”.

Microsoft launched xRM with the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 and will continue it in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. It uses the structure of CRM and explodes it throughout your organization. With Dynamics CRM 2011 you can track communications and workflows with any contact. Yes, that’s a big – ANY. Both internal and external as well as customer facing and supplier facing and any contact in between will now be part of your business relationship management system. xRM will change the way we share information, track communications and handle our day-to-day operations. It will expand the important CRM type communications tools from Sales, Marketing and Customer Service focused to a holistic business approach. Now we will have the tools at our fingertips to improve our knowledge and communication with traditional CRM contacts (customers, leads, customer service) and extend them to the external contacts (vendors, suppliers, partners to name just a few).

With four main components including the database, user interface, workflow engine, and reporting engine, the new Anything Relationship Management system (xRM), based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM is flexible and scalable solution that will fit any business. It’s customizable to your industry, business practices and unique needs. Did I forget to mention, it integrates seamlessly with the other Microsoft products including Outlook, Office, Windows, Dynamics, SharePoint, ERP, and CRM, of course. More about that below.

2. Microsoft Financing is available for any IT project that includes at least 10% Microsoft Technology.

It’s that simple. You can get financing from Microsoft for any of your IT projects – simply include Microsoft products as 10% or more of the overall project.

3. Microsoft “stacked integration” approach will continue to set them apart from the competition.

The strength of the Microsoft platform and products including Dynamics CRM 2011 is their unrelenting focus on product integration with their other product lines. This product integration approach allows companies to stack their Microsoft technology purchases and extend them throughout their organizations. With similar user interfaces and simplified integrations the results is faster user adoption and streamlined support.

It’s going to be an exciting year in the CRM world and I for one can’t wait to see how the move to xRM will change the way we work with our customer, partners and suppliers. Want to know more about xRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011? Watch the blog for more about the launch or contact me for more details.