Eclipse Tip: Review PO Backorders

So, you were expecting 100 pieces of that widget from your vendor; but, the truck showed up at your dock and you only received 95. Now you need to get the rest; but, when? Typically, Eclipse’s back order field on POs is set to default to three days. However, this may not be accurate. What if the vendor is going to deliver it in two? Or worse, 10? Here’s the solution: In vendor file maintenance, you can determine the number of days for a back order for a vendor. If you set this field to “review” instead of a number, it will prompt the back order to show or display in the “Review PO Back Orders queue” as a purchase order. That way, you have a reminder to follow-up on it and find out the actual date of the expected delivery. GET MORE free Eclipse help …

Keep ‘Em Comin’

This month, we started working with two new customers. In mid-August, a Zerion consultant visited Columbus, Indiana to work with Southcentral Company. The HVAC, plumbing and industrial distributor compiled a “wish list” of Eclipse issues that needed to be resolved. It included menus and authorizations, along with future aspirations for pricing and RF. Our first opportunity to work together was a success, and we look forward to more!

Also, we’re in the midst of an RF installation for Hill Country Electric. The Texas-based electrical distributor had us train them on RF and turn on RF picking this month. Soon, we’ll be heading back to turn on RF receiving/purchasing.

Thanks for the new business and welcome to our newest friends!

The Back to School of Billing

It’s that time of year again. School supplies are filling the aisles of every store, the news and advertisements are littered with back-to-school themes, backpack-toting kids are scurrying around on the sidewalks, and big yellow buses are making their appearance in everyone’s neighborhood. But most of all, back to school time means the return of a more typical, regimented way of life. It’s time to put vacations and relaxation aside, and focus on forging ahead. For many of our clients, we think that should mean taking a serious look at their billing processes.

Over the past several months, we’ve had the opportunity to help a handful of clients with this important aspect of their operation; and, we feel it warrants some discussion. We’ve found that, in some cases, billing has evolved into an “as long as it’s getting done, I don’t need to worry about it” kind of a task. What many people don’t realize is that utilizing Eclipse to create a structured, more automated billing process can streamline this essential activity. In turn, you can save time, make day-to-day work easier, and potentially put money in your pocket faster.

Let us ask you this: If you could save three to four hours per day, per person who is engaged in billing, would you be intrigued? We recently discovered that one of our long-term clients was waiting for a paper copy of every ticket to show up before they would bill anything. Sometimes, this meant waiting days to figure out what happened to one or two out of hundreds of tickets.

Once we realized this, we convinced them to let us spend a couple of consulting hours; and, we changed their Eclipse settings to reflect the standard billing process that we recommend. Our focus is on signatures and manifests rather than paper tickets or manual processes. Within a few days, our client was saving, per day, more time than the one-time investment we made to fix it.

Here’s a pop quiz for the day (don’t you hate it when teachers do that?). It’s just eight quick questions regarding your billing processes. It should only take a minute, and you’ll find out instantly whether or not you’re efficient. CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE QUIZ.

If you didn’t get a passing grade, it could be time for you to go back to school: Zerion’s School of Eclipse Billing. We’ll help you understand the options and items that should be addressed in your billing cycle. For example, those pesky paper tickets aren’t necessarily needed in order to do your billing. If you set up your control files correctly, set up ship vias correctly, and use some features inside Eclipse like they were meant to be used, then billing can become an efficient machine within your organization.  You can ship product today and bill it today.  In some cases, that may mean a faster paid bill; and, at minimum, it will result in a more efficient operation.

If you’re interested in talking with us more about billing, be sure to check out our special for this month only. It can be found at the bottom of our email.

Our Latest and Greatest

We continue to be humbled by the outpouring of support and interest from the Eclipse community. This month, we’re very pleased to announce the addition of four new customers to our ever-expanding roster. First is Consolidated Supply, a plumbing, heating and water works distributor headquartered in Tigard, Oregon. We’ll be providing them with some custom programming to modify print styles and billing, as well as assisting them as they convert to laser printers.

Next up is Hulbert Supply, a plumbing, heating, air conditioning and and water treatment distributor with branches in New York and Vermont.  For them, we’ll be conducting an operational audit, and setting up automated purchasing and a buy matrix.

MCI HVAC, an HVAC distributor in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, has also hired us to do a data extraction for phocas, and set up some reports.

Last but not least, we’ll be providing Mechanical Drives & Belting, an industrial supplier in California, with custom programming for activity triggers.

Eclipse Tip: Ignore Cash Required

With COD customers, you may not know that you can force your users’ authorizations to ensure cash is actually collected. In ship via maintenance,  set the flag for ignore cash required to “no”. (Yes, it’s a double negative, and no really means yes. But you’re probably already used to this with Eclipse.) Then, during warehouse picking confirmation on cash orders, the user will have to collect cash from the customer in order to get past the total screen. GET MORE free Eclipse help …

Austin and Harrisburg Training Coming Right Up

The month of September is bringing Eclipse users two on-site training opportunities: Austin, Texas and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Eclipse Users Group (UFO) will be hosting a Zerion-led Report Writer/Utilizing Eclipse & Excel class in Austin on September 8, and one on User Defined Screens, Class Files and Eclipse Reports on September 9.

On September 22, there will be a Zerion-facilitated Regional Roundtable in Harrisburg on Pricing. And, the following day, there will be a roundtable on Sales Management.

To learn more, or sign-up, visit eclipseuser.com.

Eclipse Hot Topic: Converting to Linux

50% lower investment. 80% faster. Up to $10k per year savings. Numbers like that might get your attention, especially in today’s market. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the number of jobless Americans neared 15 million this year. While it seems things are beginning to improve, cost-cutting and productivity are still very front-of-mind for many business managers and owners. There certainly have been a variety of creative approaches to accomplishing these goals; and, distributors running on Eclipse have recently been buzzing about a new one (that keeps every employee’s job safe): switching to Linux.

The idea of converting from Windows-based IBM servers to UNIX platform servers running Linux software isn’t new. Organizations have been talking about and making the switch to open-source (or free) software of all kinds for the last several years. However, it wasn’t until recently that the economic situation seemed to push Activant to openly support Linux boxes, and create awareness that this was an option. Now, word on the benefits of Linux is spreading quickly and users are taking notice.

Why switch? 4 Solid Reasons.
1. Cost-savings. HGH Hardware Supply, a distributor of kitchen and bath cabinet hardware and woodworking supplies, is a 16-year Eclipse veteran and a recent convert to Linux. The company was halfway through a 5-year $45,000 maintenance contract with IBM on a seven-year-old server that was beginning to fail. They were able to cancel that contract and spend less than the remaining cost to purchase a brand new, faster, larger-capacity server and cover their conversion costs.

Similarly, Fastening Solutions in Alabama wanted to convert to Solar Eclipse; but, needed to spend $100,000 in hardware to do it. Once they found out about Linux, and realized it would instead cost $22,000 in hardware, they were sold.

Mike Winstead, the Controller at Fastening Solutions, said, “Because the box was less expensive, I doubled the specifications required by Eclipse. They wanted me to have two dual-core processors, and I got two quad-core, plus 32G of RAM versus 16. I didn’t want the processors to become obsolete, so I loaded up on the front end.”

Tim Walker, HGH’s Operations Manager, agreed. He said, “For the price of the server and maintenance compared with IBM, I could buy a whole new additional Linux server as a back-up and still save money.”

Tim also noted, “As inexpensive as technology has gotten over the years, IBM’s prices haven’t changed. So it’s great to finally have some options.” He added, “We didn’t have to do a cost benefit analysis [for converting to Linux] because the outstanding contract made it an easy decision. We traded in our IBM contract and got a brand new Linux server for nothing.”

The savings with Linux are realized in a variety of ways: The actual hardware is a great deal less expensive, licensing fees are non-existent, and the maintenance savings are compelling. Meanwhile, the conversion costs are minimal, especially when considering the overall savings.

Both parties we spoke with mentioned that IBM’s customer service is outstanding, and they aren’t sure how their Dell counterparts will compare. They’ve both been running on their new servers for close to six months and have yet to experience any issues that required assistance.

2. Speed and productivity. Sometimes, waiting for Eclipse reports to run can steal precious time from your day; and, server restarts can be a real drain on efficiency. With Linux, it seems that much of this frustration can be reduced; or, in some cases, even eliminated.

Mike at Fastening Solutions said, “We’ve had fewer printing problems and issues since going Linux. Our print queue used to die every now and then and we’d have to restart it. It’s now 75% less of an issue, happening once for every four times before. It’s been better for us.” He also said, “It [Eclipse] runs quick now. It used to take three to five minutes to run a financial statement and now it’s seconds. It’s 80% faster.”

Tim from HGH has experienced similar increases in efficiency. He said, “Monday first thing everyone noticed was how much faster the machine was. A report that might take a day to run is now taking 10 or 15 minutes. Some screens would take a while to refresh and now we had almost no wait time going through screens. It was so fast we had to get out of its way.”

Tim finds this change to have a big impact on productivity. “People were used to the delay and getting lost in where they were with their keystrokes,” he said. “It was like going from a first generation desktop to a new machine. It’s at least 10 times faster and reports are at least 15 times faster than before.” He added, “I used to start reports and have to come back to it later in the day, but now I don’t have any reports that keep me from continuing work on that particular project.”

3. Easy conversion. The idea of a conversion may seem daunting or risky to some people; but, our sources have experienced seamless transitions with very little work or involvement on their end.

“I came in Sunday afternoon and switched cables and that was it,” said Eddie Lewis, the Computer Systems Manager at HGH. “When we came in Monday morning, no one knew anything changed except everything was faster.” He added, “ There was hardly an hour into the conversion on the customer side. There’s nothing about the conversion that we wouldn’t do over again tomorrow.”

Likewise, Mike’s conversion was simple and straight-forward. He said, “Eclipse does the whole conversion process. The only pain point I felt was I had to come down and put a DVD in over the weekend. There was no impact to staff or operations, all of the reports run and everything we had set up automatically works.” When asked about any changes his users had to endure, he said, “The learning curve was short. There were no changes made to our network. The only difference our users knew was that it ran faster.”

4. The future. The companies we interviewed feel like the future is with Linux. Quite notably, it can run Solar. Many Eclipse users are moving away from Eterm; yet, the IBM servers they are running on likely aren’t compatible. Mike from Fastening Solutions feels this is an important point to consider. He said, “We have learned more and more of the benefits and neat things in Solar that can’t be done in Eterm. Every week we’re learning two or three more things we can do in Solar and picking up those productivity gains.”

Another facet of Linux’s future potential for companies is that it’s easily and inexpensively expandable. When asked what the most important aspect of his switch was, Tim from HGH said, “The ability to expand with it. And the fact that Eclipse is going to be fitting all new systems on Linux.”

Finally, Linux-based servers are more in line with the ever-decreasing size of technology devices. Tim said, “This server is much smaller and fits in a rack, versus the several hundred pound IBM.“

To read more reasons to consider converting (not specific to Eclipse), check out this article, “25 Reasons to Convert“.

Lessons Learned
Like any change, there are always opportunities for improvement. Fortunately, you have others to learn from; and, the Linux conversions we’ve referenced involved very few, and only minor, challenges. Tim noted, “The only problem we’ve had is that we have yet to get our refund from IBM. We’re not sure whose fault that is.” He also mentioned, “We did have a few problems initially with add-on products, including the messaging system, VSI-FAX and MITS. It took about three days to fix these with Eclipse, but they weren’t problems that put us dead in the water.” He added, “I don’t think there is anything we could’ve done different to avoid them because we were sort of a test for Eclipse. I doubt they would be a problem for someone now.”

Mike also experienced an initial issue with VSI-FAX, but it was resolved quickly.

Final Thoughts
If you aren’t convinced of the value and benefits of converting to Linux yet, HGH and Fastening Solutions have some parting words for you to consider:

Eddie from HGH declared, “I told someone, ‘you won’t be disappointed [if you switch to Linux]’. I wouldn’t go back to IBM, no way.”

Tim added, “Call me back in a year and maybe I’ll have something negative to say, but not now.”

Mike from Fastening Solutions commented, “I’m well pleased. No pain. Price is lower, speed is faster.”

As always, Zerion is available to be your resource for all of your Eclipse-related services, including advice, consulting, training and more. If you know someone who would like to talk through the benefits of Linux and how it might work for them, be sure to check out our special below.

Zerion Marks Five-Year Milestone

(ORLANDO, FL) July 29, 2010 — On August 8, Zerion Group (Zerion), an Orlando-based software sales and consulting firm, will celebrate its fifth anniversary.

“Considering the reality that 550,000 small businesses close each year, it’s exciting to celebrate that we’ve not only made it to this important five-year milestone, but that we’ve been able to continue our success in a down economy,” said Jack Whitwam, president and CEO at Zerion. He added, “I’m so proud of my team and thankful for the incredible support and loyalty we’ve received from customers and vendors. This achievement is something to be proud of.”

Zerion was founded by four entrepreneurs who met as employees at a large distribution company. Their team implemented an ERP business management system (Activant Eclipse) in hundreds of locations across the country that distributed construction-related products. They provided project management, software training, on-site consulting and support for the entire organization’s operations.

After completing a four-year, company-wide implementation, the need for a team of their size was diminishing. However, their attendance at an annual software users’ group conference sparked an idea: thousands of other distributors and organizations throughout the country are in need of the same customer-oriented, solution driven, ERP implementation and support services they had been providing internally.

Zerion’s founders set out to work with their present employer on a mutually beneficial solution: to dissolve their existing implementation team, yet maintain a job for every team member. On August 8, 2005, Zerion began operating as an independent service provider with many of the team’s original staff and management; and, their former employer became one of their first clients.

Since that time, Zerion has expanded beyond software services for wholesale distributors by adding a division focused on selling SAP Business One. An integrated, affordable business management application designed specifically for small and growing businesses, SAP Business One extends the benefits of SAP’s business applications to a new and rapidly growing segment of customers.  As an authorized channel partner for SAP Business One, Zerion provides the region’s businesses with the technology, business process and consulting knowledge to easily adopt successful, long-term IT strategies.

About Zerion

With main offices in Orlando and Tampa, and virtual offices around the country, Zerion is a software sales and consulting firm. They have hundreds of years of combined experience in a variety of software packages across a diverse set of industries, with a particular focus on distribution. The team logs thousands of consulting and training hours each month; and, has implemented software in nearly 500 locations. To learn more, visit www.zeriongroup.com or www.sap.zeriongroup.com.

Eclipse Tip: B/O Days in Vendor Maintenance

Not receiving all or part of an order from a vendor impacts both your inventory and your customers. To make sure you know when a PO is backordered, you should put “Review” in the B/O Days field in Vendor Maintenance (instead of a number of days). Then, the Review PO Backorders Queue (which can be found in Purchase > Queues > Review PO Backorders) will populate with purchase orders that are backordered at the time of receiving. This will help alert you to follow-up with the vendor and find out when the material will be in. This will let you know to follow-up with the vendor and find out when the material will be in. GET MORE Eclipse help…

The Johnstones Have It

This month, we’re excited to announce the addition of two Johnstone Supply franchises to our list of E.Z. Support customers. Johnstone is an HVAC distributor with over 340 locally owned and operated stores nationwide, and five regional distribution centers. Early on in July, we welcomed the Fresno, California location. Then, we very recently signed on the Tampa, Florida location. We’ll be providing the team at both offices with ongoing Eclipse consulting and support.