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Cloud solutions hold the potential to dramatically change the businesses that adopt them

Date: 28-02-2012
Author: Bit Software

As I said in an earlier post about ERP Prediction for 2012, this year cloud-based ERP will continue to gain ground at the expense of traditional ERP. Why? Because enterprises will continue to adopt SaaS-based applications to replace legacy, high-maintenance and often marginally effective systems in use today.

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SocrateBI "Inventory SocrateB and Stock Analysis Module" allows companies to improve sales and eliminate out of stocks

Date: 16-02-2012
Author: Bit Software

One of the most critical and time-consuming aspects of retail and distribution is managing the stock. You want to sell the products in stock, but you also need to ensure that you have sufficient stock to meet variable demand. You must have real-time control and visibility of your stock in order to respond to market requirements and remain competitive.

Therefore, controlling stock levels and cost of stock purchases is essential to keep your business moving forward. Inventory is like cash! Having a tight grip on your stock levels helps you improve the efficiency of your logistics and reduce operational costs. For many businesses, inventory is a significant part of their working capital. So optimized stock levels have a huge impact on their financing costs.

SocrateBI`s new module - „Inventory and Stock Analysis Module” (ISAM) - enables retailers and distributors to analyze in minutes volumes of transactional data and gain vital intelligence on essential areas such as sales trends, stocks and inventory management, in order to help your business grow. With ISAM, you will be able to gain a better insight into inventory levels, stocks and sales performance, providing the best selection of products and services that customers like and want. This insight is giving decision makers a better understanding of sales trends, in order to improve product sales and profitability.

ISAM`s excellent reporting and analytical features allow you to analyze lots of data, in an easy and intuitive way, and to make critical inquiries at different levels, supporting your decisions with efficacy. The module includes a series of important reports, such as: Average quantity sold for days with stock, Date of Last Sale for Products with Stock = 0 in the last 30 days, Item Sales vs. Stock, Products with Stock without Sales, etc. And, there is a report template included, allowing the user to select his own attributes, metrics and filters that will appear in the final report.

Below are the most significant benefits of using SocrateBI ISAM module:

  • allows you to focus quickly on those areas that result in profit by giving you the ability to monitor stock products without sales, in order to avoid financial blockages due to purchasing of products difficult to sell.
  • allows you to more effectively monitor and manage inventory levels, so that you will be able to identify revenue enhancement and cost reduction opportunities.
  • improved sales and gross margins, by having each store or warehouse stocked with the right combination of products, at the right time.
  • improved merchandising decisions, that help you more proactively serve your customers.

The ISAM module was added to the already existing SocrateBI`s modules launched in November 2011: FRAM (Financial Reporting Analysis Module), PCAM (Project Controlling Analysis Module) and SCAM (Sales and Customer Analysis Module).

BITSoftware`s Business Intelligence solution – SocrateBI -, is developed having as a base the MicroStrategy platform, MicroStrategy being the largest independent provider of Business Intelligence solutions in the world. SocrateBI allows organizations to run packaged analytics directly from Socrate ERP, or, due to its open interfaces and connectors, analysis can be done also using the information available in other ERP systems.

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Google Apps, the key to a successful communication

Date: 09-02-2012
Author: Bit Software

Operating costs as low as possible, increased productivity, innovation. These are some of the major objectives of managers today. Therefore, more and more of them started to look toward online communication and collaboration applications. And more than 4 million companies and 40 million users now handle their e-mail, documents, and other office tasks using Google's online professional office suite, Google Apps. And for good reason. Because Google Applications offer a stunning range of cloud-based productivity options to even the smallest firms. Everything you do at work is now available anywhere, anytime, from any online connection. And it's all for just $50 per year per user for the Business version, which includes additional storage and high-quality, unlimited support.

The total ROI of deploying Google Apps is more than 300%

Google Apps offers simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools for businesses that increase productivity while reducing your costs – all hosted by Google on secure and reliable cloud infrastructure. According to a Forrester report („Should Your Email Live In The Cloud? A Comparative Cost Analysis”) the total ROI of deploying Google Apps is more than 300%. And when Forrester`s experts looked at the financial benefits of switching away from traditional email and collaboration tools to Google Apps, they found that organisations were able to cut ongoing costs by „an impressive 38 to 56 percent”.

According to a recent Gartner report, Gmail „should now be considered a mainstream cloud email supplier capable of competing head-to-head with Microsoft Exchange Online”. Also according to Gartner, cloud email is expected to grow significantly and reach 20 percent by the end of 2016.

Google`s online office tools makes your employees more innovative and productive

Google Apps allows your employees to effectively work together in real-time on shared documents and sites. By working together, your employees can be more productive and innovative. And according to a report by The Future Foundation, there is „an 81 percent correlation between innovation and collaboration. Employees who are given the opportunity to collaborate at work are more than twice as likely to have contributed new ideas to their company”.

There is no doubt that cloud services are changing the way organisations view their corporate messaging and collaboration platforms. But why is Google Apps for Business proving such a force in the enterprise space? With Google Apps, your employees can:

- access their content anywhere, anytime - laptop, desktop, home, work, mobile, online, offline etc;

- work together on Google Docs in real-time without the hassle of multiple versions or attachments;

- easily create team or project Sites without the need for IT support, improving information sharing within your business;

- have complete control - each piece of content can be as private or public as necessary.

Google Apps, the key to a successful communication

Organization is key to a successful business, and exactly this Google Apps suite does: connecting all your users together. It only requires one login for each user, and it offers simplicity to your employees.

Also, Google is in the works of allowing your Google Apps login to be able to be used in conjunction with their other applications like Picasa, Google Maps, Google Alerts, Google Trends, and Google Analytics.

So, if you want to make the switch but you aren’t good at technology, call us. As GoogleApps Authorized Reseller, BITSoftware offers different services in order to help companies successfully use Google Apps: installation services, migration services, users' training services and integration with other applications.

Surses: Gartner, Forrester Research Agency, The Future Foundation, Google, The Money Crashers, PC World

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MicroStrategy Social Intelligence lets your company more effectively engage and monetize your Facebook fans

Date: 03-02-2012
Author: Bit Software

Not long ago, enterprise social media used to be quite simple. Some blogs, used sporadically by a few employees to explain to what use or how to use a certain product/service of the company. Or a bit of social media for marketing purposes.

Now, social media is a growing component of enterprise communication and collaboration. Increasingly, the world is using social networks and other social media-based services to stay in touch, communicate, and collaborate.

In a recent survey realized by Frost&Sullivan PR Agency on 200 C-level executives in North America, sixty-nine percent were closely tracking „social media, placing it ahead of telepresence, VoIP, shared team spaces, soft phones, and even unified communications and unified messaging”. Almost half of the respondents say social media is used within the organization, and 41 percent use the technology personally. Among executives who report social software in use within their company, 67 percent say it is used extensively at all levels of the organization, and another 26 percent say it is used mainly by senior management. The message is that companies are going to use social media as a primary channel in the very near future, if they aren’t already. It’s time to get strategic.

Therefore, both Gartner and Forrester Research said that in 2012 just integrating BI with Excel isn’t good enough any longer and users will demand BI tools that are integrated with email and collaboration platforms. As I said in an earlier post, Gartner predicts that by 2013, 15% of BI deployments will combine BI, collaboration and social software into decision-making environments.

MicroStrategy, the largest independent BI provider, which is present in Romania through its partnership with BITSoftware, has taken already ahead of „predictions” and provides a platform for analysis and synchronization of data business and Facebook! „MicroStrategy Social Intelligence”, which contains three modules (Wisdom, Alert & Gateway), lets your company more effectively engage and monetize your Facebook fans.

MicroStrategy Wisdom allows you to get to know your Facebook fans as well as their friends do. You can segment your users based on their interests and motivations (they are, where they come from, and what they like, what activities they enjoy, places they like to go, etc), so that you can target each segment with more relevant and valuable offers and increase engagement with individualized content and recommendations.

With MicroStrategy Alert, you can add marketing and commerce features to your brand's Facebook page to personalize the consumer experience, increase fan engagement and monetize your fan base. Also, you can turn Facebook fans into friends by delivering highly relevant offers, content and promotions to them, encouraging frequent page visits and drawing their attention away from competitor's pages.

With MicroStrategy Gateway, you can gain a 360-degree view of your Facebook app users, combine your corporate view with their social view to see the complete customer and use it to create a one-of-a-kind experience for your customers.

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