Now introducing Beacon Technology Resources!

March 31, 2011

We at VEITS Group have been in the IT industry implementing business systems for about a decade now. Throughout this time our customers have expressed interest in VEITS Group providing ongoing IT staffing support to help them maximize their IT investment. This concept of providing professional staffing services has been in the works for some time, and now we’re proud to announce our newest affiliate company, Beacon Technology Resources!

Beacon Technology works closely with our customers to better understand their business needs and targeted short-term and long-term strategy. Our professional staffing solutions are tailored to meet your business goals and are driven by your company’s strategy to derive maximum value. Beacon Technology Resources specialize in providing IT consulting services and solutions, as well as, professional staffing services.

Beacon Technology is located in Ohio, with branch locations in Indiana and Canada. For more information on how Beacon Technology can help your business find resources, head over to www.beacontechresources.com!

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Five Ways You Can Put Your Customers First

March 9, 2011

Competition is tougher than ever, due in large part to higher customer expectations. After two years of difficult economic conditions—which have left an enduring impression—every dollar you earn will require greater effort and responsiveness. Customers expect as much value as possible for every dollar they part with. Your ability to gain an edge in the market will depend on how well you can connect with your customers and maintain their loyalty.The stakes are high. For small and mid-sized businesses, long without sufficient CRM capabilities to compete against larger companies, there are resources you can use to succeed. With SAP, you can implement the CRM features you need to protect your customer base and attain profitable growth. This starts with putting your customer first, and here are five ways you can accomplish that:

  1. Identify opportunities: customer demand isn’t always obvious. Use your SAP CRM solution to identify cross-sell, up-sell, and upgrade opportunities.
  2. Manage your pipeline: don’t let leads fall through the cracks. Increase responsiveness through better tracking and information management, and you’ll ensure that you have the most productive conversations with existing and potential customers.
  3. Monitor service levels: look for trends and isolated incidents that could lead to bigger problems down the road and remedy them in advance. Take early action to keep your customers happy and protect your company’s brand.
  4. Keep it all in one place: use centrally stored information and functionality to ensure that data is always accessible. Monitor employee performance, spot check business units, and identify opportunities for improved service or additional sales.
  5. Get answers fast: use your SAP CRM solution to as a knowledge resource. Your customer care team can search for solutions to customer problems, remedying problems directly and quickly. A happy customer keeps coming back.

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Posted by aforeman

Five Benefits of Faster Report Design

January 5, 2011

Some report requests come with far too little lead time. And, it’s these instances that tend to be the most urgent. To fulfill the request, you have to drop everything, pull the necessary data and format the report in a way that will highlight the right information and resonate with the target audience. Meanwhile, other tasks continue to accumulate. Figure out how to accelerate report design, and you’ll deliver a higher level of analytical services while also recapturing time to address your other responsibilities.

SAP Crystal Presentation Design can take the stress out of short-lead report requests. Use this solution to design complex reports quickly, and you’ll save time you can use for other tasks, while also increasing the visual quality of your reports. Here are five ways you can use SAP Crystal Presentation Design to accelerate results.

  1. Plan ahead: create presentation templates for reports you run frequently. You don’t have to start from scratch every time.
  2. Use automation: SAP Crystal presentation design includes a number of tools that are ready for use immediately, obviating the need for repeated manual efforts.
  3. Go interactive: use SAP Crystal Presentation Design to bring data to life … without having to engage a designer or programmer. Interactive tools will help presenters illustrate key points, making your reports far more effective in the decision-making process.
  4. Mitigate risk: reduce the manual involvement in presentation design, and mistakes become less likely. Increased accuracy naturally results in better reports.
  5. Cut costs: there’s an implicit cost associated with everything you do. Faster presentation design can alleviate workload, making it possible to defer hiring and make existing employees more productive.

Continue to our website for more information on SAP Crystal Reporting.






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ERP Helps You Close the Books Faster

December 6, 2010

How much time does your company invest in closing the books for the quarter or year? Timing is always tight, it seems, and the work mounts quickly. Team members are diverted from other tasks to help with the close. As a result, risk can enter your organization. Manual efforts, especially when employees are rushed, leads to error, and error leads to future costs—not to mention the prospect of damaged relationships with financial stakeholders. Automate the close, and your company not only mitigates this risk, but it prevents the need to disrupt other operations and projects.

Automating the financial close saves time. Systems use repeatable processes and the data already resident in them to streamline this important accounting task. For small and mid-sized companies, however, automation hasn’t been accessible, because the traditional perception of ERP solutions is that the necessary investment is too high. With SAP ERP solutions, this is no longer the case: you can implement the capabilities you need to manage your company effectively and facilitate the financial close.

SAP ERP solutions are designed specifically to meet the needs of companies like yours, delivering on an appropriate scale the features that small and mid-sized businesses can use to compete more effectively. Automated finance and accounting features also reduce the risk of manual error, as hurried employees are no longer in a position to make costly mistakes.

The stakes are high at every close, and you don’t need unnecessary risk. Use SAP ERP solutions to streamline this operation, and manual errors become much less likely. With this ERP solution, you can protect your budget and your key financial relationships.

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Posted by aforeman

Increase the Value of Every Customer

November 11, 2010

You’re leaving revenue on the table. Your existing customers are the best source of new business your company has, and without powerful CRM capabilities, you’re missing important business opportunities. In fact, these opportunities would cost much less than revenue from new customer acquisition. Implement a CRM solution, and you can gain the insights you need to deepen existing relationships and accelerate profitable growth. The CRM tools in SAP Business All-in-One can help mid-sized companies like yours learn more about your customers and take swift and effective action.

Your current customers know you, trust you, and have done business with you. Your brand means something to them. Engaging this group for continued sales, therefore, is much easier than trying to attract new customers, where you have to introduce your company and gain their trust. To make the most of this opportunity, you have to understand your existing customers as thoroughly as possible and gauge their specific needs.

The information in SAP Business All-in-One can equip your sales team to maximize every opportunity to sell to your customer base. You can review past purchases, check customer care experiences, and mine every interaction with your company to find the potential for additional revenue. Instead of using general approaches, you can target your company’s efforts, increasing the likelihood that your efforts will be productive.

SAP Business All-in-One puts information into the sales process, and this is what your company needs to lower its sales costs, increase margins, and generate more revenue. Further, it allows you to take advantage of potential your company already has and may not realize.

A CRM solution can help your company grow faster and more profitably. With SAP Business All-in-One, you can take back the revenue your company has been missing.

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Posted by aforeman

Solve the Problem of Unenforced Policies with ERP

October 28, 2010

People say that “rules are made to be broken” for a reason. When there’s an easier way to get things done, or policies don’t seem to make sense, there’s certainly a temptation to bypass them and do what seems “right.” Yet, rules exist for a reason—as is the case with your company’s policies. Policies have to be enforced, but without automated support, this can be an uneven effort. Violations will be missed, and they can have significant consequences. Use SAP Business One to implement business processes that come with a built-in governance framework. By limiting employee access and options to what is available in the ERP solution, you can protect your business from impropriety and risk.

Policies don’t accomplish much without an enforcement mechanism. You need to monitor system use and employee activity to ensure that they comply with the guidelines your organization has put in place. The process is time-consuming, riddled with gaps, and delivers little return on your effort. Without an automated approach, policies inherently come with the “honor system” as an enforcement mechanism, which puts your company at the mercy of your staff.

Automated monitoring helps, but only to a certain extent. At best, you’ll identify attempted or actual violations, and sometimes the information will come too late. You can take action against an employee who disregards company policy, but you may also have to engage in remediation outside your business—with partners, customers, and the public as a whole. In the worst cases, this can be an expensive proposition, and the damage to your brand can be enduring.

The solution is to fuse policy and control, preventing violations rather than simply remedying what has already occurred. A robust ERP solution will contain the features you need to implement a reliable governance framework that aligns with your business processes, protects your data, and prevents damage to your reputation and brand.

SAP Business One allows you to define automated business processes that align with how your company operates. As a result, you can determine how a task is to be completed and make it difficult for employees to deviate. You’ll gain operational consistency and data integrity through the course of mitigating operational risk. Rather than simply write and publish a policy, you can create a process that includes a mechanism for preventing the activity that could cause lasting damage to your business.

The best way to make sure your employees follow the rules is to make it the only option. Make your policies part of standard operating procedure through the business processes in SAP Business One, and you’ll gain ROI not just from a better solution, but also through risk management.

Click HERE for more information on the SAP Business One ERP system.

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Four Ways to Take Control of Your Inventory

October 13, 2010

To succeed in today’s competitive marketplace, you need to be ready for anything. Your customers’ needs are shifting, and other companies are always looking for new ways to take some of your market share. Meanwhile, you need to balance the pursuit of new market opportunities with managing your costs, invariably resulting in the need to “do more with less.”

Track and manage your inventory effectively, and you’ll be able to eliminate waste from your operation and become more agile in the marketplace. Streamline the financial and logistical aspects of your inventory management processes, and you’ll free up capital while gaining new flexibility to compete more effectively.

Here are four ways you can use SAP Business One to take control of your inventory to drive profitable growth:

  1. Forecast supply and demand effectively: this often involves a precarious balancing act, as too many materials on hand can tie up cash, while too few cause delays and interruptions. Use SAP Business One to find the right levels, ensuring that your capital remains available without disruption to your operations.
  2. Stay connected with every aspect of your business: your business is not a collection of unrelated departments—it’s an integrated whole. So, it makes sense to treat it (and view it) that way. SAP Business One collects data from across your company, delivering an accurate picture of your production and supply chain. You’ll get a complete understanding of how your business runs.
  3. Use software that aligns with your processes: there’s no substitute for software that works the way you do. Instead of changing your processes to fit your ERP solution, implement a solution that is flexible enough to fit your company. Your ERP solution should not force you to your operations.
  4. Streamline and optimize your inventory: use the insights in SAP Business One to understand future demand, improve inventory control, and maximize warehouse space. You’ll also be able to reduce procurement costs to make smarter purchasing decisions based on pricing and available discounts. With SAP Business One, you’ll extend the impact of your capital.

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Posted by aforeman

Think SAP is out of reach? Think again.

September 28, 2010

Think SAP is out of reach? Think again.

When you’re choosing solutions to help you sustain and grow your business, you want to make your decisions on facts, not fiction.

Think that SAP is only for big business? The facts prove otherwise.

Think that SAP is much more than you need? Thousands of small and mid-sized businesses around the world would disagree.

If you aren’t aware of SAP’s track record helping smaller businesses flourish, it’s time to learn the facts – and see why SAP solutions are flexible enough to be a perfect fit for any size of business.

Think SAP is too big? Think again.

While SAP has built a strong reputation for its large business solutions and customer base, the majority of customers are actually small and midsize enterprises (SMEs). In fact, 77% of SAP’s 95,000 customers are SMEs -nearly half of which have fewer than one hundred employees.

So why are SME companies turning to SAP in ever-growing numbers?

Because SAP solutions are proven, powerful and affordable for businesses of all shapes and sizes. With a portfolio of solutions specifically designed for SMEs, there is a solution designed to fit every size of company – including (most importantly) yours. Choose from business management and business intelligence solutions sized for small business – or SAP® Business ByDesign™ if you’re looking for an on demand solution – or SAP® Business All-in-One if you need industry-specific functionality. Whatever your needs, SAP has you covered.

The fact is, smaller companies need software as much as their larger counterparts – because they face exactly the same pressures. Clients don’t vary their standards according to a supplier’s size. Regulators demand compliance from small and large firms alike. To compete, SMEs need the powerful software accessed by their large competitors – but they need it at a fraction of the cost and complexity.

That’s why SAP distilled the learning gained from serving larger customers – and developed practical, easy-to-use solutions sized specifically for SMEs. And because every SME customer is unique – from start-ups to established midsize businesses – SAP developed a portfolio-based approach to the market, allowing companies to choose from a full range of solutions and select the option that fits their individual business needs.

Think SAP is too expensive? Think again.

Because small and midsize businesses need all the software advantages previously only available to large enterprises, SAP made sure that its solutions are priced well within SME customers’ reach. Pricing models vary by solution – giving customers a range of payment options.

For example, on premise business intelligence (BI) solutions start at just a few thousand dollars, and you can get an on-demand personal license for free. And to make the SAP Business All-in-One fast start program more accessible, subscription-based pricing has recently been introduced — with a flat monthly fee that allows companies to circumvent up-front payments and maintain a financial edge.

SAP Business ByDesign is offered on an on-demand basis, with no significant IT investment. Priced at just US$149 per user per month, the cost for a company with twenty-five users is less than US$50,000 per year — well under the salary of an IT manager. SAP experts upgrade, manage and maintain business solutions from hosted data centers worldwide – and with built-in service and support, training costs are kept to a minimum.

Whichever software solution you choose, SAP offers budget-friendly options – with a focus on fast return on investment.

Think SAP is too complicated? Think again.

Lengthy and laborious software deployments can be daunting, but thanks to recent technological advancements, SAP solutions are easier than ever to deploy and maintain. The software is more compatible with other applications, and due to increased interface standardization, less customization is required. As a result, the deployment of SAP’s SME solutions is streamlined – often up and running in a matter of weeks or even days.

The award-winning SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program is one way to simplify and accelerate deployment. For this program we’ve developed innovations with select hardware partners so you can get a joint hardware and software solution implemented in as few as 8 to 12 weeks. Manufacturing companies, for example, have used this program to get their SAP ERP software up and running in just four weeks. To make it even more simple and affordable, select partners offer a subscription-based hosting option.

SAP Business One, which is designed specifically for small businesses, can be deployed affordably in as little as two weeks. Its intuitive interface and vast configurability minimize IT complexities for implementation and ongoing maintenance. To further simplify its deployment, SAP has also created an accelerated implementation methodology in conjunction with our partners, which provides a structured framework for a seamless integration into customers’ existing setup.

SAP has also made it easy for users to get the most out of their solutions. Here are a few examples:

  • Templates and best practices are built directly into the software, giving SME’s a major head start.
  • SAP software has also been pre-configured for customers in different industries, so customers have access to industry-specific processes from day one.
  • For companies using SAP Business All-in-One, along with Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise and Seibel, we provide prebuilt data integration, database schemas, semantic layers, reports and dashboards that reduce deployment times from months to weeks – for more advanced ad-hoc query and data exploration functionality.

And that’s not all. SAP software has an intuitive user interface that makes usage simple – and in the case of SAP Business ByDesign, includes built-in user tutorials that make the software even easier to learn to use.

SAP Has You Covered

Helping businesses like yours for over 38 years across 25 industries, SAP has solutions that fit every business need – so you really can get what you need. And as an extra bonus, SAP has 10,000 partners around the world that are also there to help.

Small and midsize companies are turning to SAP solutions to the tune of about thirty-five new customers a day, effectively tripling SAP’s SME customer base over the past three years.

Click to find out more about SAP Business One and SAP All-in-One.

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Posted by aforeman

Develop Executable Strategic Plans with Real Information

September 14, 2010

How does your strategic planning process work? Do you have employees from all over your company dig for information, and leave the task to a few to pull it all into integrated reports … after having “massaged” the data thoroughly? This isn’t unusual. Without a single source for the basic information about your business, strategic planning becomes a costly, time-consuming affair that is riddled with inaccuracy and preventable error.

Every gap in your data presents risk that could take months to realize, long after you’ve committed your entire company to a specific direction. Without an integrated view of your company’s data that is reliable and easy to mine, your strategic planning process is destined to fall short of its full potential. Data makes the difference, and an ERP system for smaller and mid-sized businesses can provide what you need to develop strategic plans that can e executed and measured.

The value of an ERP solution in the strategic planning process is profound. Up front, a system like SAP Business One provides the fodder necessary to understand company performance, identify areas and procedures that can be improved, and provide a baseline for future ROI measurements. During and after execution, you can use SAP Business One (or other robust ERP solution) to gauge the effectiveness of your strategy, from existing account penetration to the performance of newly introduced products.

The metrics available will explain where your strategy has succeeded – and where changes may be necessary. In the end, you will be able to turn strategy execution into a dynamic undertaking, in which you can make adjustments on the fly based on the data you collect about its performance.

The ability to execute your strategic plan depends in part on the objectives and action items you set and in part on the quality of the information you use to determine the direction you want to pursue. Your ERP solution can mean the difference between having a strategy that is a loose guide and having one that is optimized for measurable results. Put your data to work, and you will gain an edge in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

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Posted by aforeman

What Your Data Could Teach You About Your Customers

September 7, 2010

A CRM system is for more than storage. Instead of merely parking customer data for basic record keeping or auditability, you can use it to fuel accelerated business growth. By learning more about your customers, you’ll find which are most likely to deepen their relationship with you, continue to purchase in the future, and advocate for you with other potential buyers. Use SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand, and you’ll be able to mine your CRM system for the insights you need to turn your customer data into ROI.

To maximize the value of your CRM solution, you need to capture and report on the right data. Beyond diligent planning, however, you need to select software that can accommodate your business objectives and operating model. After all, you can’t analyze what you don’t capture from customer interactions. Using SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand, you create a platform for learning about your customers, which you can use to refine your go-to-market strategy.

A carefully implemented business intelligence system supports detailed customer analysis, including online forms that show the important information you can apply to cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, as well as major account pursuits (for deeper penetration). The data resident in your system isn’t just an outcome of your client relationships – it’s a tool for shaping the future of those relationships, too.

The use of your customer data doesn’t stop at analysis: ultimately, it has to lead to action. Take what you learn about your customers, and formulate strategies with clear tasks assigned to specific people. Follow up to ensure that the intelligence you gather is yielding results, specifically sales and ROI. With this approach, learning from your customers creates more than knowledge – it creates value.

SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand can help you turn silent data into bold moves in the marketplace. Use it to analyze, inform, and take action. Listen to your customers, and they’ll reward your efforts.

Click here to find out more information on SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand.

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Posted by aforeman

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