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Author: SMB Suite

7 Ways to Work Smarter in the Cloud: Parts 5 through 7

May 31, 2016

Welcome to the final part of the Office 365 platform, integrated with Microsoft ERP and CRM blog series.

Meetings, Simplified

Meetings are an important part of business, providing valuable opportunities for people to brainstorm, collaborate, strategize, and share information. According to information compiled by Atlassian, most employees attend 62 meetings a month, including the 31 hours they spend in unproductive meetings. Those unnecessary meetings carry a high price, costing US businesses $37 billion annually.

New communication and collaboration tools like Skype for Business make it easy to conduct modern meetings that are more efficient and productive by providing familiar, easy-to-use features plus enterprise-grade security, compliance, and control.

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7 Ways to Work Smarter in the Cloud: Parts 3 & 4

May 27, 2016

Welcome back to part three and four of our blog series covering the Office 365 platform, integrated with Microsoft ERP and CRM.

Synchronize Your Business

It’s rare to find a busniess todaythat sticks to strict 9:00-to-5:00 operations. The most successful businesses have become much more fluid, using cloud and mobile technology to broaden their reach and compete within the market. These businesses often need to communicate and share information with customers, partners, and suppliers in different time zones or different countries.

Cloud storage synchronizes information across different devices, so you and your colleagues are always viewing the lastest version of a file no matter where you’re working or what device you’re using. When you use cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools, you can stay on the same page with distant partners and offsite employees, who can seee the most up-to-date content. The cloud also provides high-level security and privacy while ensuring the access control you need.

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7 Ways to Work Smarter in the Cloud: Parts 1 & 2

May 26, 2016

Join us for our blog series covering the Office 365 platform, integrated with Microsoft ERP and CRM, to enable organizations to better manage their business.  It’s easy to see all the information you care about in one place and use it to make faster, better‑informed decisions, all built on the power of Microsoft ERP, CRM, and Office 365.  With a single sign on, integrated cloud ERP and CRM solution set, you can gain real-time financial, sales, and operational visibility throughout your business.

 

Efficient collaboration and communication are vital components in the success of every business.  Luckily, Office 365 makes it easier than ever to work smarter, not harder, so you can do your best work. With Office 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, as well as other productivity apps, you can redefine how you communicate and collaborate. Features such as coauthoring in real time, instant messaging (IM), video, and voice make it easier to create, share, and work together wherever you are, across your favorite devices.

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7 Tips to Improve Your Cash Flow with Financial Accounting Software

May 25, 2016

Cash flow. Two little words that are the source of huge amounts of stress and frustration for many SMBs. Invoicing quickly and accurately is key if businesses want to have enough money to pay their employees and their own bills. But invoicing quickly isn’t as easy as it sounds.

To improve your invoicing, SMBs need to focus on three key areas – keeping all their financial data in one place, avoiding manual re-entry of data and efficiently collecting information from the business so invoices can be sent out quickly.

And just like accounts receivables, accounts payable also benefits from using an integrated system that eliminates manual re-entry and offers better controls. With improved visibility into your accounts payable and accounts receivable, SMBs can make sure they’re optimizing their payments to take advantage of discounts for early payments and maintaining a stable cash flow.

3 Ways To Shorten Your Invoice Cycle

For many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), longer invoicing cycles cause confusion, accuracy issues and serious cash flow problems.

Without powerful financial accounting software to rein in these complications, SMBs wrestle with maintaining the integrity of their bookkeeping. This struggle makes it difficult- if not impossible- to forecast or make sound business decisions without questioning the validity of the data.

Here are three key invoicing issues that SMBs frequently deal with, along with an explanation about how financial accounting software helps to eliminate these problems, effectively speeding up the cycle time and saving the company money. 

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Streamlining Business Processes: 10 Common Pitfalls to be Avoided

May 23, 2016

Market, competitive, and customer pressures are relentless. Each requires businesses to seek new areas of unique advantage and cost savings in order to remain competitive. Process improvement and re-engineering can provide great advantage. No longer the domain of large enterprises, such endeavors have shown to return new opportunity to SMB’s.

Unfortunately process re-engineering and improvement generally suffer from a pervasive recognition that such activities haven’t completely delivered on promised benefits. Additionally realized benefits seem fleeting, or not sustainable over the long haul. In general, this perception has contributed to cautiousness when adopting new technology or tackling new process improvement initiatives. Individual project studies over the past ten years, by organizations such as Forrester Research, the Gartner Group, and businesses, indicate that the process re-engineering/ improvement initiatives weren’t bad but that the problem lay more in the implementation. Unfortunately, many businesses succumb to these common pitfalls:

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What Obstacles Do I Face in Considering an On-Premise Alternative

May 20, 2016

A. I’m Comfortable Operating My Business As I Currently Do!

Perpetuation of the ‘status quo.’ By this, continuing to acquire, install, manage, and support business technology ‘in house.’ Or remaining comfortable with where the business is and what they’re doing; not paying attention to changing business environments, customer need/requirement, market and competitive pressures, and technologies that increase business velocity or reduce cost.   Cloud Computing and SaaS put your business on a solid foundation that allows you to do business as you wish, without any ‘lock-in’, and change as external conditions demand. 

B. I Don’t Want My Business Information Kept Elsewhere!
 A perception of the loss of control. When all company information, processes, reports, and communication is kept ‘in house’ it is generally deemed safe and secure. Safe from the competition and secure from theft. Unfortunately, neither of these are true. Studies overwhelmingly show that a decision to keep business information and processes in house doesn’t increase safety and security but, in fact, often compromises critical business information and processes.   Cloud Computing and SaaS actually give you more control over your information while substantially increasing the safety and security of your business. 

C. I Have a Certain, Unique Way of Doing Business. 
 Assuming that your business is different than every other business. Over decades of working with businesses of all types and sizes, it is clear that businesses are more similar than different. Sure, there are subtle nuances in some discrete processes, products, or services that provide differentiation or benefit. But these represent a small part of the business and not the ‘core’ or mainstream transactions and processes. The bulk of transactions and processes that your business conducts are very common to businesses in general.

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Future Proofing Your Business

May 18, 2016

Breaking Free of the Technology Trap

Ever feel like you just can’t get off the technology treadmill? That the latest new processor, operating system, or application requires you to purchase it or you’ll be left at a disadvantage? It’s a common problem and one that is especially acute for small and medium businesses.

The concept of ‘future proofing’ a business isn’t new. In fact, it has been around as long as there has been, well, the ‘future.’ The idea is that no one can predict the future with accuracy and circumstances will occur that have a direct impact on the business. Future proofing is about mitigating or eliminating the impact future events may have on the business. It is this concept that is one of the main reasons why businesses carry insurance. Right?

Using technology, is it possible to ‘future proof’ your business? To protect your capital and critical business data through reducing or eliminating the impact of future ‘events’? The short answer is yes.

Today, most business information is kept within information systems. Computers, servers, networks, applications, databases, and mobile devices have all become an integral part of the business. Such technology has been procured over time, as the business has grown, to meet new challenges or business requirements. Unfortunately, though, each has ‘locked in’ the business to upgrade, maintenance, and management – all costly and distracting to the business.

A business can eliminate these upgrade, maintenance, and management costs and challenges by thinking differently. By taking a ‘future proof’ perspective to technology. By evaluating solutions that eliminate the need for the business to have technology‘in-house’, and adopting options that provide required functionality without the capital investment, maintenance, upgrade, or management.

Today, there is a new suite of services offerings that ‘future proof’ your business. These solutions allow you to break free of the ‘technology trap’ without compromising on the power, functionality, and benefit you need to run the business. Offered under the banner of “Software as a Service”, or SaaS, a business can have ready, secure, and fast access to the applications and functionality they need, at the time they need it, without direct capital investment and the need to upgrade and manage the technology. SaaS ‘future proofs’ the business – it’s that simple.

How does SaaS ‘future proof’ your business? In five distinct ways:

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Steve’s been with SMB Suite since 1998 and has been involved with nearly every aspects of the Company’s business as a strategist, professional services executive, cloud solutions architect, and senior consultant. In his current role, Steve is responsible for SMB Suite’s revenue and oversees the execution of ERP, CRM and BI projects for customers across a broad range of industries. Steve combines his expertise in MS Dynamics GP, CRM and other Microsoft products with a strong foundation in accounting and business to identify gaps and streamline customers’ processes. Prior to co-founding SMB Suite, Steve was previously Corporate Controller for MEHLE Behr and, prior to that, Audit Senior for Ernst & Young. Steve holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Jeremy is responsible for SMB Suite’s technology vision, strategy and implementation and is the architect of the Company’s Dynamics Cloud Platform. Highly adept in every facet of managed services, ERP systems and e-commerce platforms, Jeremy’s expertise spans the implementation and support of business and financial software solutions, as well as the customization and integration of SMB Suite’s cloud ERP technology stack. He holds numerous Microsoft and industry-related certifications, and was primarily responsible for designing the Company’s progressive business services platform in the early days of the Cloud. Prior to SMB Suite, Jeremy served as the financial analyst, systems administrator, and information systems liaison for a $2 billion financial services corporation.

Monty is responsible for SMB Suite’s day-to-day operation and, most importantly, its customers. As a leader, motivator and mentor, Monty creates loyal high performance teams willing to “walk through walls” to accomplish their goals. Prior to SMB Suite, Monty served as President of The Bradshaw Group (TBG), a global distributor, manufacturer, and repair facility for digital printers. In this role, he was the Company’s ambassador to its most important domestic, European and Latin American customers and TBG achieved a best-in-class Net Promoter Score of 74 for its superb customer satisfaction. Prior to TBG, Monty served as the General Manager of Sam’s Clubs three highest grossing U.S. stores and was named Regional Operator of the Year in 1999. Monty holds a BBA in Marketing from Texas Tech University and is an active member of Business Navigators. He has been active in Vistage International, Executives in Action, the Dallas/Fort Worth Retail Executives Association, as well as, A.P.I.C.S., the leading professional association for supply chain and operations management. Monty also volunteers with Hunger Busters and ManeGait, a therapeutic horsemanship organization.

David is a proven financial and information technology professional with expertise in providing business accounting software and computing solutions. He began his career by starting and managing a successful independent consulting practice for several years. He then launched the local systems consulting unit of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneurial Services Group, leading the office into the hi-tech consulting arena. After successfully developing the unit for Ernst & Young, David founded NextCorp (which became SMB Suite in 2013) to serve the business software needs of clients throughout the US. David has made SMB Suite one of the best cloud ERP providers in the industry. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur and leader, he is a software and technology specialist, holding certifications in various Microsoft and other technologies.