Sales Software

Instructional video about how to create a custom report from Live Training on the Mortgage Planner CRM from June 8, 2010.

Benefits of Point of Sale Software

No matter what your line of business, if you have more than one location you should think about getting a POS retail software system. Whether you deal in sporting goods or shoes, apparel or electronics, real-time knowledge of your merchandise is important to you. You want to know whether it is in the warehouse or on location, in transit or on order. A POS retail software system gives you access to this type of information which allows you to immediately react with good business strategies.

You may have seen POS retail software systems that are high-priced and bulky. This type of system required large, on-site servers and specialized IT employees to run them. They often required expensive long-term contracts and additional expenses for technical support. If this is your reasoning for not converting to a POS retail software system, you should know that there are other options. Many POS retail software system suppliers offer sophisticated products for low prices. Inexpensive pay as you go contracts help to minimize your costs. Technology doesn’t have to come with a huge price tag.

Innovative hosted POS retail software systems include the use of software and free updates. Maintenance of hardware and software are part of the package. Technical support and training are also included. These POS retail software system suppliers work to integrate your existing tools, such as barcode scanners and credit card swipes, into the system. They also integrate your PC or Mac and the associated operating systems with your POS retail software so that your initial expense for equipment is minimal, as is the learning curve. With easy to use software and little if any new hardware, you will soon wonder what you ever did without your hosted POS retail software system.

These innovative POS retail software system suppliers can easily install your system and have it up and running in a minimum of time. No longer will you have to limp along for weeks as your new POS retail system replaces the old. Technical specialists will professionally train your staff on the new POS retail software and will work around your busy schedule. Knowing that you can be up-to-date with technology quickly will give you peace of mind.

Mobility is one of the top-rated benefits of a hosted POS retail software system. The data matrix can be accessed from virtually anywhere you have an Internet or telephone connection. Perhaps you attend tradeshows and need some accurate up-to-date information when placing an order. You can use your phone to access the POS retail software and know exactly what you need. Whether you are at home or away, on-site or on vacation, you can stay connected to your information with POS retail software. This will help you make sound business decisions based on accurate information.

Other benefits of using a POS retail software system include increased sales and inventory cost reduction. By knowing how your inventory is moving at different locations, you can be better prepared to meet your customers’ needs. Meeting their needs translates into increased sales. Inventory management helps you reduce costs and streamline all of your data. Letting the POS retail software system company manage your data allows you to manage your retail chain business.
pos retail

POS (Point of Sale) Software System for Your Restaurant

A POS (point of sale) System can save you money, time, and needless expense.

A point of sale system is a computer system that helps businesses track all of your sales and can help with inventory control, delivery and customer needs.

While using a cash register to track sales will tell you how much money you took in, you are only getting part of the picture.

A Point of Sale system eliminates the need to use paper receipts.  A POS system totally removes the need for paper receipts which can be a nightmare to sort and file.

While you can get a good idea of your sales with a cash register, you are missing out on a way to have a complete picture of the types of food you are selling.

With software POS installed in your pizza restaurant you can not only tell you how much money you are taking in, but it can also tell you the types of food you are selling. Information on the exact number of pepperoni pizzas you sold on a given day will allow you to keep much better inventory.

Not only can a POS help you with inventory ordering but you can also tell the exact amount of sales done by a particular employee.

You will be able to track who is selling the most of certain items. You can then take this information and look at who your best employees are. This will aid you in discovering what they are doing right. In the long run this will only increase your business.

A restaurant POS system can assist you with employee training. When used properly a POS system is the best method for business tracking.

For more information and recommendations about POS Software click on the link below.

More Sales Software Articles

FuzeDigital Introduces Fuze Suite 8.0 Social Business Software

The Fuze Suite 8.0 lets you selectively tap into your stakeholders’ real-world wisdom

Seattle, WA (Vocus/PRWEB) January 11, 2011

Calling it a “breakthrough” in social business software, the CEO of FuzeDigital, Chuck Van Court, announced the release of Fuze SuiteTM 8.0, including a social business platform that melds smart-sourcing with customer care and knowledge base software.

“The Fuze Suite 8.0 is unlike other available solutions that silo online communities, customer care technologies, and knowledge base content,” Van Court said. “Our delivery of integrated modules infuses the community into self-service and assisted-service components. The result is a single system that supports and engages knowledge sharing among a company’s stakeholders, including its customers, web visitors, staff, partners and others to yield better content and more satisfied and loyal end-users.”

“Traditional knowledge bases are old-school,” according to Van Court. “Companies are looking for ways to selectively tap into their stakeholders’ real-world wisdom to keep content up-to-date and evolving so that it is effective in answering questions, whether via self-service or assisted-service delivered by staff or other members of an organization’s ecosystem. In addition, companies want their online communities to have meaningful interactions about their products and services, not just social chit-chat.”

“What’s unique about Fuze Suite 8.0 is that it drives out subject matter expertise across the community and within specific areas while measuring, motivating, recognizing, and rewarding a person’s contributions through our patent-pending reputation engine that awards points earned for contributions made to improving the knowledge base or participating in community answers, ideas, and conversations. Points earned can be used in contests administered in the Fuze Suite and even incorporated into a staff person’s performance appraisal,” he added. “At the end of the day, an organization’s success is all about facilitating healthy, constructive and mutually-beneficial relationships across its entire ecosystem.”

“Our community knowledge base is a uniquely different and better approach than jumping onto the typical social bandwagon,” said Van Court. “We totally agree there’s value in community engagement, but we have found that better exchange occurs on a company’s web site to directly benefit its operations, business development and ultimately its bottom line. Facebook, Twitter and other social technologies don’t measure contributions that make people accountable for creating real value.”

“We are excited to begin using Fuze Social. It will allow us to get broad participation in creating and evolving content that helps us better support our customers and operations, while including the metrics I need to motivate the desired contributions and make sure that the related expenditures make good business sense,” said Tony Rodrigues, director of customer support for ParetoLogic, Inc., a FuzeDigital client.

FuzeDigital has implemented Fuze Social for its own online community so clients can engage with each other and FuzeDigital to optimize Fuze Suite usage and product evolution. “It’s not every day that a software solution is used to improve itself. We expect that this always-on user group will facilitate client engagement and ideation that produces many useful enhancements that FuzeDigital will continue to roll out in the coming months,” said Eric Cairns, CTO of FuzeDigital.

Esteban Kolsky, founder of ThinkJar LLC and former Gartner analyst, published a paper about how the Fuze Suite 8.0 offers unique value for businesses. To view this paper, go to http://www.content.fuze.com/fuzecontent/consumer/kbdetail.asp?kbid=1287

About FuzeDigital

Seattle-based Fuze Digital Solutions began in 2002 and is a privately-held, employee-owned company. The Fuze SuiteTM is enterprise-grade social business software that’s more about doing business than being social. It blends multi-channel support and community technologies enabling companies to build and sustain customer loyalty by providing outstanding, consistent customer care, communication and collaboration. The Fuze Suite is comprised of a community knowledge base, case management, chat, feedback management, contact management, Fuze Social and online reporting. FuzeDigital clients include Careerbuilder.com, Fujitsu, Sutherland Group, SonicWALL, Oregon Health & Sciences University, AAA clubs and many financial institutions. For more information, call (425) 649-1246 or visit http://www.fuze.com.

Media Contact:

Jean Van Court

Fuze Digital Solutions

425-649-1246     x206 (Business)

888-658-6741 (Fax)

http://www.fuze.com

###

Attachments

©Copyright 1997-2011, Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.

More Contact Management Press Releases

Instructional video about how to send an e-mail with Video Message from Live Training on the Mortgage Planner CRM from June 8, 2010.

DRONA, flagship product from Deltecs InfoTech deals in mobile learning and training solutions across the industries. Check this video to see how this works.
Video Rating: 5 / 5

Web Based CRM

Why you need a web based CRM program.

More than ever businesses depend on the sales department to build maintain and recruit new customers. Using a web based CRM or Customer Relationship Management system allows sales people to use the power and convenience of the Internet. Some programs will require you to download software to utilize the web based CRM. Others simply run off a web based CRM program.

What is a web based CRM program?

Web based CRM programs help manage contacts, leads, and existing accounts online. These contacts can be managed but using email, calendars, and sorting functions that are available with most web based CRM systems. Sharing information with other sales people, your sales manager or even the president of the company is a breeze using a web based CRM program. Every sales person has to submit reports right? By using a web based CRM program, sales representatives can do that over the Internet.

How the web based CRM program works.

It’s not enough to build just a local client base anymore. By using a web based CRM program it’s possible to land and support customers all over the world. Correspondence through email is a snap. Keeping track of overseas sales leads, opportunities and appointments is critical for making travel plans. Your web based CRM program can help with all of these. When you get to those far off sales appointments accessing any necessary client information will be quick and easy if you use a web based CRM program. What if you forget to print out a needed sales projection report? Not to worry, with a web based CRM program, all you have to do is log in to your account and retrieve the needed report.

Finding a web based CRM.

How do you know what web based CRM is right for you? What do you look for? Functionality, and ease of use are a couple things to look at when considering what web based CRM to use. Not only is the web based CRM program important but so is the company behind the web based CRM. Is it a solid company with a proven track record for supplying not only an outstanding web based CRM program but superior customer service as well. Will you or your sales team need training for a new web based CRM program or can you find one that will work with some of the software you already have? Ideally, the web based CRM program that you pick for you and your sales team will have all these things and still be affordable.

Prophet from Avidian.

The Avidian Company has developed such a web based CRM program called Prophet. The Prophet web based CRM program is fully integrated to work with your existing Microsoft Outlook program. You do need to purchase software for the Prophet web based CRM program but it is very affordable and comes in three different levels of use. The Prophet web based CRM program comes complete with an installation guide. You can even check out a demo of this web based CRM program by visiting the Avidian Company website at Avidian.com.

About Prophet.

What exactly does the Prophet web based CRM program include? The Prophet web based CRM program comes with a contact manager. Access details for clients with the click of a mouse. Web based CRM systems like Prophet allow users to keep meeting and contact notes and send group emails. The Prophet web based CRM program opportunity manager also allows for automated follow up with clients and sales assistants.

The Prophet Program.

The Prophet web based CRM program has an opportunity manager to work hand in hand with the contact manager. With this web based CRM opportunity manager you can create sales opportunities from any email or contact. Review your sales status, closing dates and revenue of all your clients within the opportunity manager. Like the web based CRM contact manager, the Prophet web based CRM opportunity manager has tracking capabilities to track notes, emails and allow for easy follow up for sales opportunities.

With the Prophet web based CRM program you can easily see your daily sales activities. Organize your daily appointments and see what opportunities for follow up are available. This web based CRM program provides online tutorials and help files so getting you up and running with the Prophet web based CRM program is quick and easy.

The Prophet web based CRM program has a built in report wizard. Create and maintain sales summaries, forecast amounts and design reports specific to your company. Because Prophet is a web based CRM program you can save your reports as PDF, word, excel or aspx file types making them easy to share with anyone. Non-web based CRM programs don’t allow you to do that. These are just some of the features available with the first version of the Prophet web based CRM program called Prophet Standard.

Prophet Professional and Enterprise.

Additional features are available with the Professional version of the Prophet web based CRM program. Features such as shared data through a central server, centralized team reporting and automated sales assist follow-ups are great to have with a web based CRM program. The most complete level of the Prophet web based CRM program is called Enterprise. Take all the features of the Standard web based CRM program plus the Professional web based CRM program and ad automated workflow activities and advanced user permissions for the centralized server and you have the most complete web based CRM available. All from the Avidian company at Avidian.com.

About the Avidian Company.

The Avidian Company isn’t just another software company pedaling their web based CRM program to turn a quick buck. They have over 6000 satisfied clients currently using the Prophet web based CRM software. Clients such as Sony, Smith Barney, GE and AT&T top the list of clients that is available on the Avidian Company website. The Prophet web based CRM program received a 4 star rating from a leading computer magazine as well as the Avidian Company as a whole as the winner of the Seattle Mayor’s small business award.

Looking for an advanced web based CRM program? Check out Avidian.com for the Prophet program from Avidian. You will find what you are looking for.

About Avidian Technologies:

Avidian Technologies is a software company specializing in creating software solutions for users of Outlook and Exchange. Prophet, developed by Avidian Technologies on the .NET platform, is the leading contact management and sales CRM software built in Outlook. The company is headquartered in Redmond, Washington. For more information, please visit http://www.avidian.com or call 1-800-860-5534.

Microsoft Great Plains: Government & Non-Profit Organization – Workflow Implementation

Sometimes workflow & messaging is realized in CRM and then transactions are simply logged into Accounting/ERP/MRP. Within the case of Microsoft Business Solutions product: Microsoft Nice Plains, Navision, Solomon, Axapta the natural CRM alternative would be Microsoft CRM. However typical CRM application targets Sales automation, that is sometimes not applicable to government structure, non-profit or public company (community services, public utilities, churches, charities, etc.). Not-for-profit organization wants buying and requisition workflow, payroll approval workflow, and in certain cases special General Ledger (GL) transactions workflow. Microsoft CRM doesn’t give the functionality. Then how could this be realized? We have a tendency to’ll provide 2 situations to understand this customization:

o Lotus Notes/Domino approach. In Nice Plains you could notice either Nice Plains Dexterity triggers or MS SQL database trigger on sure events (Purchase Order creation, Payroll Transaction, GL transaction). This event calls COM+ application and this one in flip creates Lotus objects via Java agent (Lotus Notes Domino should be version 6.0 or newer). This is primarily the bridge. Then in Lotus you have to style workflow – but this can be natural task for Lotus and it’s not difficult. Users ought to work in Lotus to urge transactions approved and when it should be posted in Nice Plains – Lotus calls SQL script against Great Plains company database. Developer should know Microsoft Nice Plains tables structure

o Microsoft Exchange/Outlook approach. This is often the second means – when you are doing not need to deploy Lotus Domino, and would be OK with easy messaging and notification through Microsoft Exchange. The technical realization should either involve Dexterity or SQL trigger, calling COM object (Dexterity) or simply sending notification email from MS SQL Server. The scenario to post or set out hold from Nice Plains transaction may be realized via MS Exchange event sink – this MS Exchange event handler can check all the messages and when the one has sure criteria – it calls MS SQL Server stored procedure within the Great Plains company database

o Programming Tools. Java agent to address Lotus – you wish either Sun JDK or somewhat additional advanced: VisualCafe or JBuilder. Nice Plains Dexterity trigger ought to be done in Dexterity IDE – this language requires experience and it is difficult to code while not experience, Microsoft Exchange event sink ought to be programmed in Visual Studio as COM+ application, then you wish to register COM+ application through Management Panel->System->Component Services

o Feasibility. To be honest and don’t set unrealistic expectations – this Workflow implementation is pretty serious project and we have a tendency to do not advocate if for small non-profit organization – it’s rather for large and mid-size-to-giant structure.

Customer Relationship Business Management – 5 Value Propositions for SMBs

Info at hand is the “Business Portal” and central application in our CRBM Platform. Depending on your perspective or roles played in your business processes, you will find a benefit and perhaps many that apply to you. If you are a manager or book keeper there are several features that can help you track assets, inventory and help you gather solid business intelligence. If you are a production manager or talent resource there are many tools for managing project and improving efficiency or collaboration of your team. If you are a system administrator there are many tools for managing roles, teams and other system wide configuration and customizations.

There are really 5 clear value propositions that make the CRBM platform a perfect choice for virtually any small to mid-sized business:

1. Consolidated business management with reporting, automations, HR, Project Management with project profit loss tracking, Timesheet, and more.

2. Seamless integration with the Joomla CMS for virtually unlimited expandability for front end customer portal, partner portal or social networking community.

3. e-Commerce synchronization for a full transaction life cycle management and ERP inventory management capabilities with Shipping and Receiving.

4. One time licensing fee on premise model and low cost of entry.

5. Close integration and two way synchronizations with QuickBooks and Microsoft Outlook.

Our Info at hand based CRBM (Customer Relationship Business Management) has helped large number of organizations to manage their various functions including:

Marketing Management
Document Management
Inventory Management
Receiving
Shipping

1). Marketing Management:

1. A).Sales force automation:

Sales force automation includes lead capture, and the promotion of leads to Opportunities;
Opportunity tracking with sales stage and percentage likelihood;
Sales pipeline tracking, with graphical charts that offer drill-down from the bar or segment of the chart to the data that underlies it;
Definition of sales teams and territories, to manage information sharing and track sales performance by territory;
Sales forecasting and comparison of forecasts to quotas and actuals, by team or by individual;
Lead source analysis of sales and opportunities;
Flexible reporting, to extract precisely the information you want to see;
Corporate calendar management, for arranging calls and meetings; and
Integrated Inbound and outbound Email, which is automatically added to account and contact history.
B).Email & Letter Mail Marketing Campaigns:
Marketing campaigns may be conducted with email templates for automatically customized emails, management of prospect lists, and tracking of campaign click-through rates.
A target list for an email campaign may be assembled from a mixture of prospects plus pre-existing contacts and leads. You may create a target list as the output of a report, facilitating the targeting of prospects or existing clients with specific characteristics. A special Quick Campaign feature makes it quick and easy to perform spur of the moment email campaigns.
You can also import lists of prospects (in either Comma Separated Values (CSV) or Tab Separated Values (TSV) formats).
A mail merge feature enables the execution of letter mail campaigns, and target lists may also be exported to MS Word for a variety of purposes.

2). Document Management:

Info at hand enables the sharing of business documents – from HR claim forms and Marketing collateral to Engineering designs.

Multiple revisions may be stored ensuring only approved documents are used.
Documents in any format can be filed, and may be searched by title, description, file type, status, department, keywords and owner.
Documents may be associated with Projects, Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, or Service Cases.
A project can have all of the project’s documentation attached to it. An account, lead or contact can have all related documents attached. And supporting documents for a service case can be attached to it.

3). Inventory Management:

Info at hand includes a full inventory management capability. Two key modules perform the bulk of inventory management – Shipping and Receiving. In addition, the Sales Orders and Purchase Orders modules, as well as the Invoices module, evolved to support the tracking of partially received Purchase Orders, and partially shipped Sales Orders or Invoices

4) Receiving:

The Receiving module lets users in shipping/receiving document the receipt of a shipment, list the items and quantities received, and link to the related Purchase Order (and Sales Order if any). It documents the inbound shipping provider, number of packages and weight, the supplier’s packing slip number,

5) Shipping:

The Shipping module lets users in shipping/receiving record the shipments they send out. As well, it links to the FedEx and UPS shipping and tracking web services to automate those activities when using these shipping providers. It documents the outbound shipping provider, number of packages and weight, the packing slip number (it can also produce PDFs of packing slips), and the date shipped.

Find More Sales Force Automation Articles

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(Part 3 of 5) Alex Dayon presents salesforce.com’s innovative application that enables service agents to collaborate across their company to close customer cases more quickly and deliver superior customer service. Alex also speaks with salesforce.com customers JetBlue and Bank of America.
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A Guide To Choosing Software For Your Timeshare Resort

Why does a resort need timeshare specific software?

There are a few, extremely important reasons why resorts should use timeshare software.  Some of these are: 

your business has grown and is too big for manual processes
you want to automate processes and increase staff efficiency
the processes that you want to implement are too complex to be done manually
you need to work in real time from remote locations 

But most importantly, software should save you more than it costs you in time, money and frustration.  

So, when deciding on which software to use to run your resort or indeed when analysing your current software to audit its suitability, you need to consider the following: 

Core Features 

Timeshare Software should cover four core areas or modules: 

Marketing Module 

Your timeshare software should have a marketing module that allows you to: 

build a database of leads and clients
record all of your marketing activities
track responses to marketing activities
determine response rates, cost per lead and cost per sale
Profile clients
track sales 

It should also allow you to mine your database and build complex cascade marketing campaigns that allow you to continue to market by: 

direct mail
email
telephone 

Sales Module 

The sales module should cater for all types of timeshare including:

fixed weeks
floating weeks
points
multi destination clubs
packs and trial membership or entry level products  

It should allow you to: 

build your inventory of products to sell
maintain control over unsold inventory
record new sales as well as changes of ownership when existing owners sell to new owners 

It should interface directly with the other modules so that you can: 

identify the marketing campaign that induced your new client to purchase
have the sale reflect in the appropriate ledger in the accounting module
calculate commission on the sale and credit this commission to the relevant sales agents’ accounts in the appropriate ledger
have the ownership updated so that the new owner is billed for the maintenance fees at the appropriate time
link the new owner to the front office module so that their reservations are made for the periods when they can occupy

Front Office Module 

The front office module should deal with all aspects of: 

reservations
front desk check in and out
housekeeping
room maintenance 

It should allow you to: 

keep track of the reservations of all fixed, floating, multi destination and points owners
provide reservations for packs, trial owners and entry level members
manage rental pool and exchange inventory
check owners in and out at the front desk
interface with housekeeping to keep track of room cleaning and maintenance 

Back Office Module 

The back office module should: 

handle multiple companies and allow you to keep separate accounting records for of each of them
include a fully functional accounting package that integrates with all other modules or allows you to easily export data to control accounts in your stand alone accounting software
cater for multiple currencies
record sales and track sales debtors as well as internally financed debtors
bill owners for their maintenance fees when these are due and track collections 

Reporting 

Everyone wants a different report and while most software vendors provide a set of standard reports, you will probably want something that nobody else wants and that is not in the standard set of reports.  Waiting for the software vendor to provide you with the new report you want can be frustrating and even costly. 

Your software should allow you to create all the reports you need yourself by exporting to you the data that you need.  From there you can use your favourite reporting tool to create your own reports. 

Web Interface 

When the Internet started web pages simply provided words and pictures embedded in the page.  Since then websites have become data driven with most content now being served from a database.  In addition most web sites are also capable of allowing users to transact on them as well. 

The Internet is everywhere and you will be left behind if you are not able to give controlled access to your data to staff and clients alike.  Being able to transact on your web site is almost a must. 

For Staff: 

this will allow them to access your data and to work from home or a hotel room on the other side of the world if necessary
it will also allow your remote resorts and head office to work in real time on the same data 

For Clients: 

clients should be able to access their own personal data that you want them to have access to using their own log in name and password
update the fields that you give them rights to
transact in real time by seeking availability, making reservations, etc

Support 

Support and training are essential when introducing new software.  Sadly, while it would be great to “Keep It Simple” the reality is that most software caters for the diverse and complex needs of many clients and you will need ot be guided and trained to use the new software you have installed. 

Make sure that the software vendor knows and understands how timeshare works and that they can provide you with intelligent support rather than pure technical support. 

General 

All modules of your timeshare software should integrate with all other modules using a normalised database that will allow you to have features such as: 

contact management
marketing automation, management and implementation
sales force automation
office automation
full CRM functionality 

Finally, your new software should understand the way that you do business and not force you into inefficient processes that do not make sense.  Software has to be flexible.

The only software that can provide all these modules, is truly interactive by its very nature, uses the latest cloud technology and has been developed by industry specialists is Merlin Software for Vacation Ownership.