New One-Click Select For Billing Portal

In the Order Entry Portal, a new sub-portal has been added, “Select Orders for Billing”. This new portal lists all sales order and gives you the option to select for billing with one-click!  Sales Orders that require additional data – like lot or serial numbers will still use the same select for billing process.  One you have selected an order – an invoice can be printed from the same portal.

Ability to Zoom to Work Order from Order/Invoice Inquiry

Now you can drill from Order/Invoice Inquiry you can now zoom to the Work Order.

Secure Payment Processing – New Interface to Element Express

Simplify and Secure the Process of Electronic Payment Acceptance.

SouthWare offers customers a fully integrated, PCI/DSS compliant, and cost-effective payment processing solution via is partnership with Element Payment Services, the industry leader in PCI DSS compliant payment processing solutions.

Through a simple upgrade, capture every sale with easy-to-use, reliable payment processing solutions that simplify card payment acceptance and dramatically reduce the risk associated with handling cardholder data. The state-of-the-art Element Express Processing Platform supports credit, debit and check solutions and includes features such as TransForm tokenization, point-to-point encryption and comprehensive Web-based reporting, allowing customers to easily comply with PCI DSS requirements for your payment processing software.

Key Benefits:

• Process Payments Using the Fully Integrated Payment Module in SouthWare, Eliminating the Need for Standalone POS Terminals Or Costly and Unsecure Third Party Software
• Option to Keep Your Current Processor While Leveraging the Advantages of Element’s Processing Platform
• Security and Compliance with Industry Standards such as PCI DSS
• Access to 24×7 Customer Support at No Additional Cost
• Get the Most Valuable Payment Processing with Highly Competitive Processing Rates and Fees.

Streamline Your Warehouse Operations – Keep Them from Eating Your Cash

There are many opportunities in your warehouse, and mobile or service van inventory operations to automate and streamline processes that will reduce costs and improve efficiencies, while meeting or exceeding customer expectations. Adding scanning or RF technology in the warehouse can help your employees track products consistently from receiving to shipping, and reduce manual errors. Here are some examples of how automating your warehouse operations can help reduce your costs, improve efficiencies, and improve customer service levels.

 

• Often employees at receiving will manually match a receipt to a purchase order, or even accept that the shipment quantities match the purchase order quantity when in reality the shipment is incorrect. This means that your inventory counts are not reliable. When receipts are hand written, they often go to accounting for updating the computer, which allows for manual data entry errors and a delay in shipping customer orders. By using technology that scans the label on every receipt, you can match it to the correct purchase order, and immediately update the system quantity; you can improve inventory reliability, reduce order fulfillment times, and reduce vendor disputes. You also reduce the amount of time a warehouse worker spends on receiving so they can be assigned more productive tasks, as well as, reducing the time accounting spends to resolve disputes.

 

• Many errors occur during the manual picking and packing process due to product numbers that are similar or quantities that are not picked correctly. These manual errors result in costly shipping errors and frustrations for your customers. For example, the cost of a single shipping error includes return freight, receipt of returned goods (and potential scrapping), accounting hassles, processing the replacement order, and out bound freight. Frustration from the customer can cost you sales. As you can see, one single error can be very costly. An automated picking and packing solution will stop these errors before they occur, and result in accurate shipments and satisfied customers.

 

• Many companies spend days completing an annual physical count, and must stop receiving and shipping until the count is complete. This results in a back log of customer orders with a direct impact on your receivables and cash flow. Counts are taken and written on a paper form. When the counts are complete, they must be entered into the system. Because hand written entries may be difficult to read, or the data entry person may make typing errors, your system counts may still not be correct. An automated solution can save you time by updating system quantities as each product is scanned, reduce the total time to complete the physical count, and ensure that the count is accurate. You will be able to resume invoicing sooner and reduce the impact to your cash flow.

 

From these examples, you can see how scanning and warehouse management can greatly reduce costly errors in the warehouse and improve staff efficiencies. An additional benefit is simplified processes that allow cross training in the warehouse, and a reduction in training time for new employees.

 

Customer Online Self-Service Portal

The Customer Online portal lets you give your customers anytime access to information about their accounts. Via SouthWare NetLink, your customers can inquire status and perform selected functions such as creating new orders, requesting service, and paying bills – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Here are some of the key features available in this portal:

• Start Tab: Shows account info including the status of orders and any unpaid balances
• Place an Order Tab: Access the standard NetLink Shopping Cart page
• Open Orders Tab: Lists any open orders for the customer
• Recent Shipments Tab: Lists box information for recent orders
• Order History Tab: Lists recent invoices for the customer
• Unpaid Invoices Tab: Shows any unpaid open items from Accounts Receivable and if using PCCHARGE, accepts credit card payments
• Service Orders Tab: Shows any open service calls for the customer – also allows the customer to create a new service call
• Account Info Tab: Shows basic contact information for the customer’s account and lets them edit the info

Empower Your Customers with Self Service

Providing good customer service is a key element of a successful business. But how much time are your employees spending to provide that service, and what is the cost? Often customers call to check on the status of an order, find out what they purchased last month, ask for a copy of a lost invoice, check on a service call request, or ask for a tracking number for their shipment.

Consider providing your customer with access to this information from your web site. With today’s technology, many customers want immediate results. They don’t want to be put on hold or leave voice messages for a call back. Providing an easy to use site where a customer can access a copy of their invoice, get a tracking number, review a list of products they purchased in the past or check the status of a sales or service order on their schedule can provide higher levels of service, and reduce the cost of in-house customer service employees.

New Live Portal Order Entry for SouthWare!

Want a quick and easy way to enter customer orders?  Now you have SouthWare’s Order Entry portal!

This Live Portal contains dozens of features for entering orders.  The bottom line is that with the OE Portal your order entry:

• Is Quicker
• Is More Accurate
• Requires Less Training
• Is More Intuitive
• Is Simpler to Use, but..
• Allows you to access all the standard features of SouthWare’s standard Order Entry program

Here are some of the key features available in this portal:

• Instant access to existing orders
• Quick customer access or setup of new customer
• One-click creation of a new customer order
• Instant stock item inquiry
• Smart entry of items
  • Item inquiry/pricing access
  • One-click handling of out-of-stock conditions
  • Prompts for related items
  • Generates standard bills as needed
• Instant access to full Order Entry program
  • Maintains same files as standard order entry so you can use both entry methods
• Billing info on separate tab
• Shipping info on separate tab
• Easy entry of text
• Option to select items from previous customer purchases

Get a Bigger Bang for Your Payroll Buck – Improve Employee Efficiencies

Often, employees spend unnecessary time completing their daily tasks. Moving from one module or menu to another to locate the program they need to run next is time consuming. Searching for the correct item code or customer code is time consuming. Running lengthy reports and reviewing them to find a specific piece of information is time consuming.

Having the right technology to improve employee efficiencies is critical to reducing your costs. Structuring personal menus or roles-based portals that simplifies the user experience can have a direct impact on your costs. Users see everything they need to do their tasks, and they are not bothered with information they do not need to see. This allows an employee to work from one convenient screen to perform all of their job related tasks.

This will streamline each employee’s work efforts and help make them more productive. Establishing these methodologies will also reduce the amount of training time when you add new employees.

Penetrate New Markets & Find New Customers

During a slow economic time, perceptive companies look for ways to enter new markets and expand their business. Here are some ways to grow today, and ensure that you emerge positioned for the inevitable boom that will come.

• Introduce or expand your e-business services. This is a great time to enhance your web site and your professional image.
• Look for ways to attract new customers with your web site. Think of this as adding another sales person without the overhead of hiring an additional employee.
• You may want to offer existing customers an option to enter their own orders on-line. The benefit to your customer is that they can place orders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The benefit to you is a reduction in the amount of time your sales staff spends each day answering phone calls and entering orders. The cost savings to you can be substantial.
• Look for additional products or services to offer your existing customers. If your products have warranties, this might be a great time to offer preventive maintenance contracts or other types of services that can add to your revenues.

As you can see, this is a great time to consider business opportunities and additional services to improve efficiencies and grow your business.

A Masters Course in Competitive Advantage Through Technology

Many of you may have already used Redbox to rent a movie.  If you have not yet, you should try it at least once to open your eyes to the potential advantage that process simplification and a little technology can provide for your business.

I had an opportunity to use a Redbox this past week a few times.

The process is simple.  You need a credit card.  If you want a receipt you need an email address.

That is all you need.  You do not give them your name, address, phone number or any other information.  No contracts to sign.

Rental is $1 per day.  After 25 days you own the DVD.

It is a process that could not be made any simpler.  It is less steps than video on demand via your cable provider.

What processes in your business could use a rethink, some simplification and a little technology?