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Business applications like ERP are undergoing many changes. The realities of cloud computing, the accessibility provided by mobile technologies and the impact of social media are all affecting the business application environment. Market research conducted by some of the most important companies in the field have shown which are the managers' expectations from ERP systems for 2012 and beyond. Here are some of the highly anticipated predictions for 2012:

Food producers must find ways to satisfy customers and operate profitably despite fluctuations in consumer demand, varying raw material variability and capacity constraints. And, above all, must comply to strict government and European Union regulations regarding the traceability process and products quality. That means the need of controlling the history of a food product, from raw material until the final product and its location after sale or distribution. And those EU regulations on products quality must be complied by any European food manufacturers, no matter what size the food company is. But are the Romanian food producers prepared to fulfill the EU regulations? Are they able to track the raw materials sources, the processing of those materials, and the products lots on batch?

At beginning of a new year, some of the most important BI research agencies – Forrester Research and Gartner - make a few predictions for business intelligence in 2012.

As we announced a month ago, SocrateBI solution is composed of several modules, so we will continue to talk today about PCAM (Project Controlling Analysis Module), addressed to companies working on projects.

The environment around us is changing fast. The amount of information increases. Many of them are related to business, many are personal, but all of them are important. And managing all this information became very difficult. Furthermore, the collaboration is a key element in today’s business. And since the Internet is everywhere, our expectation is to make the data available anytime and anywhere, in order to act quickly, but in a secure environment.

Understanding what motivates customers to do business with an organization is a fundamental aspect of today’s customer-centric business environment. To succeed, organizations must quickly identify changes in customer tastes and preferences and act to improve the overall customer experience.

„How can we optimize customer profitability?” „How can we control marketing campaign ROI?” „Who are the customers that make multiple purchases?” „Why have we lost some high value customers?” Those are just a few questions to which sales people and marketers must answer. In order to give answers, they must capture many different types of customer data: attitudinal, behavioral, transactional, and more. But all those data must be analyzed in order to achieve a customer behavior understanding.

When we talk about analytic process, we mean two levels: historical and predictive. Provided by OLAP cubes, historical analysis is an important component of customer understanding, revealing past customers activity.

Instead, predictive analytics provides a clear picture of what is going to happen, enabling marketers and sales person to understand the key factors that drive customer value and loyalty, and attract more customers. That is what SocrateBI’s Sales and Customer Analysis Module (SCAM) does.

Based on information provided by SCAM, the marketers and sales people can:

- understand and define customer behaviors;

- identify customer demographics;

- monitor shopping habits;

- identify product preferences.

- identifying the appropriate target audience and products for designing cross sell campaigns

- identify products with increasing/decreasing revenue

- identify potential products, that can be used for a cross sell campaign

- what percent of customers contribute the top 10% of profits in a given month

- analyze quantities, revenue and operating margin for two periods of time

- see how revenues and discounts are divided amongst items

- identify sold quantities and sales value of agents per week

- emphasizes the monthly trend of the Operating Revenue

- identify product category contribution to operating revenue

And all those in order to develop targeted offers and match a specific offer to a specific individual.

They can also manage customers information to create and execute marketing campaigns, knowing which messages and offers to send, to whom and when to send them. They can also forecast campaign ROI by measuring & extrapolating campaign results in real-time of previous similar campaigns & similar target market.

SocrateBI uses MicroStrategy 9.2.1a as development and production environment platform, allowing access to the latest features available in MicroStrategy platform: MicroStrategy Mobile, Transaction Services or Visual Insight.

We just released the new 2011.11 version of Socrate+ ERP, which includes more enhancements, especially for companies that activate in Services, Distribution and Retail industries.

Socrate+ 2011.11 includes a complex „Projects” functionality, which allows companies working on projects to plan and track execution of projects, from the financial point of view, on any of their phases. Detailed planning of each step/action/resource, and monitoring the execution of an action are managed by specific Project Management software, Socrate+ 2011.11 allowing the integration with such solutions.

Socrate+ 2011.11 supports also the retail and distribution companies, providing mechanisms that automate the printing process of shelf price labels directly from a reception, that generate internal bar-codes and clear the warehouses in case of transfer or restructuring.

For more information about our new version of Socrate+ ERP you can read the press release.

We started a blog post two weeks ago, announcing the launch of SocrateBI solution.

We will continue today to talk here about one of the most important module in the SocrateBI suite: FRAM (the Financial Reporting Analysis Module).

Understanding your organization’s financial health is a fundamental aspect of responding to today’s increasingly stringent financial reporting requirements. To avoid risks, organizations must quickly identify trends in liabilities and assets, analyze and adjust planned and forecasted amounts, and act to provide regulatory statements as needed.

If you are working or managing a financial department, you need to answer to questions such as:

• What are the values of assets and liabilities on a given date?

• What is the value of assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity on a given date?

• What is the breakdown of expenses by organization? Which business units are hitting their targets?

• What are the revenue trends by organization or by revenue types?

• What is the forecasted revenue? Has this forecast changed? Why have revenue forecasts changed?

• What is the actual amount of profit margin by organization or region? What are the associated trends?

• What is the breakdown of costs by vendors, and what are the associated trends?

• What is the change in cash position from period to period?

• Which bills are due this week and for what amounts?

• Are there any customers with payment problems; if so, who needs to be notified?

The standard reports included in an ERP solution are usually not answering very easy on such questions. That’s why, sometimes, reporting to top management is difficult. But what happens if you really need the information faster? Can you afford to wait and delay the decisions? How much this delay will cost you?

With the Socrate BI Financial Reporting Analysis Module, an organization can run reports that replace those typically produced manually by finance or accounting departments, and answer all the above questions.

SocrateBI FRAM is designed to provide in-depth knowledge of corporate financial information. The module includes reports, scorecards (a specific collection of related reports), and dashboards (a collection of related reports customized for optimum display). In addition, some reports show summarized information to help you see trends, while others display very specific, detailed data about your finances and extract intelligence not otherwise evident.

Due to the possibility of analysing fast your profitability, SocrateBI provides not only improvement of internal processes, but also offers support for new development projects. Based on relevant information about Revenue, Expenses and Costs provided by FRAM module, the company`s management will be able to minimize its operating costs.

Also, in times of monetary instability, measuring the collection performance is very important, as delays in collections may cause bottlenecks (jams) with negative effects for the company's activity. To avoid that, the Cash Flow reports provided by SocrateBI’s FRAM module are crucial, focusing on tracking the inflows and outflows of cash for the company and offering information about what happened or will happen as regards of economical results/turnover and allowing to plan the future company`s activity.

The SocrateBI’s FRAM module includes also Profit and Loss Statements, Balance Sheets, Accounts payable and Accounts receivable, Planning and Forecasting reports and metrics, Dashboards and Scorecards, allowing the possibility to dynamically define the exceptions on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor & catch financial anomalies, thereby reducing financial risk.

Our Financial Reporting Analysis Module provides more than 50 financial metrics and over 40 key reports to help organizations immediately begin reporting, analyzing, and monitoring financial information extracted from Socrate ERP or other ERP systems.

SocrateBI uses MicroStrategy 9.2.1a as development and production environment platform, allowing access to the latest features available in MicroStrategy platform: MicroStrategy Mobile, Transaction Services or Visual Insight.

BITSoftware continues to be faithful to its policy of providing complete integrated solutions for business management, designed to help companies activating in distribution, retail, construction, discrete manufacturing, professional services, agriculture, telco, food industry and auto dealers, by launching a new business solution: SocrateBI, a Business Intelligence solution that offers an increased flexibility in the decision making process and completes company`s business solutions range: Socrate+ ERP, SocrateOpen ERP&CRM and Socrate Payroll.