Meet Amber Pearce

Zerion is pleased to announce the addition of Amber Pearce to our sales team. Since you may be getting some phone calls or emails from her, we thought we should introduce her. Amber serves as a Sales Representative and brings a broad skill set to this role, with prior positions in retail as well as office management for a busy dental practice. Each of these people-focused experiences prepared her well for the time she spends developing and pursuing sales opportunities at Zerion. Amber has specialized knowledge in credit card processing, and she works to make sure our customers needs are met by checking in with them via phone and email. She also makes contact with potential new customers and introduces them to the benefits and services that an independent consulting firm like Zerion can provide. Welcome, Amber!

How Scrambled Eggs Help Distributors Sell More: Part One

Was it the chicken, or the egg? Much like two kids might go round and round over the answer to this question, so might your sales manager and operations manager endlessly debate which function is more critical to the organization. It seems like every wholesale distributor we visit faces this same reality: sales thinks they’re most important because they bring in the cash; but, operations thinks the salespeople are just a tad full of themselves. We say: just take the egg, scramble it, and serve it up for a company-wide breakfast!

It’s no secret that the health of both functions is deeply tied to success, and that they must harmoniously complement one another in order to maximize profit. We have a heart for operations because our consultants are most often called in to facilitate change in this area (with an emphasis on Epicor Eclipse). However, in our current economy, we’ve been pushing clients to pay special attention to sales … because people ARE buying, they’re just picking who they want to buy from. It may be the nature of sales to have fewer boundaries and less organization; but, we’ve seen that applying operational structure can significantly improve your chances of being the one that buyers pick.  Not to mention that it also has an interesting trickle down impact on your operational well being!

So, scramble it up! Take some basic operational structure and principles, mix them into your selling approach; and, in no time at all, you can fry up a heartier, protein-rich, top line. To do this, we have three strategic recommendations; and, the first has to do with a logical beginning point: hiring.

Strategic Opportunity #1: Hire for Motivation, Not Accreditation

Selling in a wholesale distribution environment is a unique beast. It requires that positions be filled with the right candidates who possess the right mindset. Notice I said mindset rather than skill set. That’s because motivation should be ranked above experience in practically every sales hiring decision. After all, you can teach industry jargon, product knowledge and job site conduct. You can build relationships. But, motivation comes from a deeper place.

MCA Associates stated this well in their web article “How to Screen Out Salesperson Duds and Hire Superstars.” They say  “It’s better to hire a lesser skilled person who is highly motivated than a person who is skilled and not motivated enough to APPLY their skills on a steady and consistent basis.”

I’ve seen this in my own business, too. I’ve put people in sales positions who looked great on paper: fully equipped with deep relationships and high accolades. But, after trials and tribulations, I learned they weren’t the right fit. My best closers are those who knew absolutely nothing coming in, but were interested, engaged, and motivated. They were also the employees who seemed most grateful for the opportunity. They weren’t necessarily desperate, they just had a position of humility, and a tradition of loyalty, that were intrinsic to their personalities.

Was there more hand-holding than normal? Yes. Was there more of a learning curve than usual? Yes. But, those efforts provided great opportunities to teach what I felt was most important about the business, along with my own best practices and methods for selling. There were no bad habits to break. They’re just fresh and hungry.

So, how do you achieve this? By removing some of the guesswork and subjectivity from the hiring decision, and relying on measurement and planning:

1. Choose an assessment tool that, according to MCA Associates, helps you “ensure against bad hires,” because it “rates and ranks your candidate against successful people in the same type of sales discipline.”
2. Observe the characteristics of your best, most highly motivated team members (sales or not). Put down on paper which personality traits are most desirable.
3. Involve at least one unbiased person in the interview and approach each with the same plan … one that utilizes your assessment tools, your list of traits and any other pre-established guidelines for hiring.
4. Use the results to vote in the best-suited, most motivated personality for the job.
5. Whether or not you’re in hiring mode, take your new measurement tools and make use of them with your existing sales force. It will give you a better sense of the personalities that you’re dealing with and what can or should be done to train or re-orient. Hopefully, the results won’t force you to get in to hiring mode!
6. Get everyone properly trained on Eclipse. A New Hire class (done individually with us or through the Eclipse Users Group) will help your salespeople establish a good foundation with the ERP, and teach them important daily functions.

We have two more opportunities for you to sell more by scrambling operations with sales; but, we’ll let you have some time to work on hiring and training the right team first. Stay tuned for parts two and three of the series to find out more.

An adjustment to your Auto Ship Ticket Phantom

Did you know that you can set Eclipse to automatically print backordered tickets after the items are received? You can, with this Epicor Eclipse Tip of the Day from your friends at Zerion:
The Automatic Shipping Ticket Phantom has a helpful option that often gets ignored during setup. “Print Incomplete Ship When Availables after:” refers to those tickets that were not completely available on XX day, and now they have been received. The system will print all of these backorders after the designated time, keeping them separate from today’s tickets and providing more organization.

Zerion’s New Tagline

Zerion recently celebrated it’s sixth anniversary. We are very proud to reach that milestone; but, it means that some of our marketing materials are also six years old! We believe our logo still suits us perfectly for the time being and see no reason to change it; however, our tagline, web site, brochures and business cards are a bit dated. We’ve evolved over the last six years and it’s time to reflect that in our marketing. As such, we’ve started the process of re-doing our collateral. Our first step was to adopt a new tagline that better reflects our commitment to our customers: Supplying knowledge. Delivering efficiency. The words “supply” and “deliver” reflect our wholesale distribution focus, while knowledge befits what our people bring to the table, and efficiency encompasses the result of our services. Over the next few months, you’ll start to see that tagline show up in our new materials.

Eclipse POD Poll Results

Last month, we talked about some of the pros and cons of implementing Eclipse’s new Proof of Delivery tool. It’s the latest buzz in the industry and we wanted your opinion on it, as well as your plans for implementation. Well, the results are in! We didn’t have as many responses as we’d hoped, but here’s what you said:

81% said “Yes, the distribution marketplace is slower to implement technology.”

The responses for whether or not you plan to implement the tool were quite varied. The highest percentage of respondents fell into the “I’m waiting to decide until I talk with others” category.

Only 6% had already implemented it. 38% answered positively to implementation, with varying degrees of timeframe. And, 12% said they have absolutely no plans to implement the software.

Efficiency Killers Webinar Now Available to Everyone

Our August webinar on the Top 10 Efficiency Killers for Eclipse Users and how to avoid them had record attendance. We had over 50 Eclipse UFO members listening in, all of whom stayed on the call for the entire hour! If you missed it, or aren’t a member of the UFO, now you can be a part of this essential info session! We’re offering the opportunity for anyone to participate on September 15 at 2:00pm EST. Get more information on the session below, or register by emailing Tony King.

Could you be missing the boat? Whether you feel completely lost at sea or are happily sailing in the ocean of profitability, chances are you’re not operating as efficiently as possible.

As an Eclipse user, you’ve invested in an industry-respected ERP that should keep you systematic, profitable and savvy; but, instead there’s processes slowing you down, challenges you can’t seem to overcome, or the desire to just plain be better. Yet, you don’t know where to begin or don’t have time or resources to deal with it. If any of that sounds familiar, our September 15th webinar is for you.

Zerion is an alternative, independent Eclipse services provider. We spend 500 hours a month with Eclipse-run distributors. And, we know exactly where you could be getting off course, even if you don’t realize you are. In one short hour, we’ll count down the 10 most common missed opportunities and mistakes that Eclipse users make; and, we’ll tell you how to flag down the efficiency boat, jump on board and sail to operational success. Don’t miss out! Register now by emailing Tony King.

Zerion has provided customer-centric consulting, implementations, customization and training to over 200 distributors nationwide. Our mission is to help you maximize your Eclipse investment with more accessible, less expensive solutions. To learn more about Zerion, visit www.zeriongroup.com.

Eclipse Reporting: 3 Ingredients for Success

I’m a big fan of cobbler. There’s just something about the gooey, warm fruit, contrasted with cool, melting ice cream, and the finish of a crispy texture. With peach season at its peak right now, ending the day with my favorite summertime treat cancels out any struggles of the workday. Or, does it? When it comes to reporting, most of our customers might disagree. In fact, 1/3 of Zerion’s customers say that reporting is their biggest hurdle in Eclipse. Numero Uno! And, we can understand why. Eclipse is absolutely awesome at collecting data, but it’s pretty darn lousy at getting it out.

The Gaps in Eclipse Reporting
The standard reports that exist in Eclipse, as well as interactive reports (or queues), are Eclipse’s bread and butter when it comes to reporting. They are meant to cover the fundamentals. However, there are holes in the output you can generate … lots of holes.

This is somewhat expected with any kind of canned reporting; and, it’s not so bad because you can fill the gaps with custom reports (via Report Writer) that perfectly suit your company’s needs, taking reporting to the next level. Sweet! But, wait … there’s a catch: most users do not consider Report Writer to be a user-friendly tool. It’s not something you can give to a basic user if you’re expecting decent results.

Users who have the privilege of running on Solar are privy to something called “Eclipse Reports.” This is Report Writer in fancier clothes. It has a much friendlier interface so that an end user can actually extract what he or she is looking for. But, wait … there’s another catch: it’s easier; but, it’s only easier because it’s focused on creating basic reports. You shouldn’t expect complex results from Eclipse Reports.

The Solution
So, if standard reports aren’t enough, and custom reports are too convoluted, where’s a troubled Eclipse user to turn? Our suggestion: Cobbler! If it can spin a difficult day into a perfect summer evening, it can turn bad reporting to good.

At first it may be a tough peach to swallow; but, you’ll need to combine the use of standard reports, Report Writer AND a third-party business intelligence (BI) tool if you want to operate at your finest. Standing alone, none of these three tools provides an end-to-end reporting solution. But, strategically cobbling them together will help you optimize the data that’s anxiously awaiting your extraction.

3 Steps to Put it Into Practice
Here’s a generic strategy to get you going:

1. Cover the must-do’s. You need to start with the fundamentals. You should be utilizing at least these eight standard reports on a daily basis:

• Customer calling queue. This is every salesperson’s dream. It allows management of tickets before they go out for delivery, and provides motivation for customer follow-up.
• Trouble queue. This lists tickets that are intended to ship before you have the material.
• Review PO backorders queue. Verifies POs that were backordered at the receiving dock to find out when they will actually arrive.
• Freight audit report. Assigns freight to sales orders from procurement POs with freight on them.
• A/R Collection queue. Designed to help A/R people systematically collect monies due.
• Unavailable queue. Tickets that were attempted to print but couldn’t because some items weren’t available.
• GMROI report. Helps to analyze what your turns are for your company.
• Transfer register for disputed. Helps you resolve discrepancies between what was shipped and what was received from branch to branch.

2. Get help creating custom reports. Face the reality that you need custom reports, but don’t waste your time getting them. Reporting is an investment; but, it will quickly produce an ROI with time saved (and possibly knowledge gained). In fact, custom reporting is one of the most common reasons that clients utilize our services. Whether you hire us, Eclipse, or someone else, recognize that it may take you 40 hours to develop the same report that a seasoned consultant can create in three. Someone who knows his or her way around Report Writer can get at data that most users can’t, often producing a better, more functional report in less time. Even if it can’t be done in Report Writer, custom programming can usually deliver what you need.

For example, Zerion recently cut the time Bakersfield Pipe & Supply was spending on a report by 96%. The Purchasing manager said, “I had to let you know the time that you saved me with this. Because merging three reports was so tedious, it usually took me a day and half, maybe 12 hours from start to finish. From the time I ran the [new] report, tweaked it, and sent it completed was 30 minutes! I am doing my happy dance! Thank you and thank you again!”

Also, another customer was spending 3 – 4 hours creating a rebate report for a vendor once a month. We developed a custom report by adding columns and formatting to the exact specifications of the vendor. This reduced their time to just 30 minutes each month. 

3. Sharpen your intellect with 3^rd party software. Even with the best use of Eclipse’s canned reports, and well-done custom reports, there are no intuitive capabilities to speak of. In other words, you don’t know what you don’t know. These are reactionary tools that don’t necessarily solve problems. Even with Report Writer, you must first know what questions to ask it.

This gap can only be filled with third-party BI software. Expanding your reporting capabilities will enable you to identify opportunities, such as with sales, inventory and financials. You’ll more clearly understand your performance so that you can gain efficiencies and make smarter decisions.

There are several options in the Eclipse space for you to consider, but we happen to be partnered with phocas. We choose to work closely with them because we believe their solution best fills the void for Eclipse users. Just a few of the things we like about them are: a fixed implementation fee; a user interface designed for the end user, not an IT person (which eliminates the IT bottleneck); and, a subscription model with a quarterly opt-out, meaning phocas stays engaged. Also, for the second year in a row, phocas has been named BI Vendor of the Year at the Software Satisfaction Awards.

To date, there are over 50 Eclipse customers on phocas; and, we’ve personally been involved with 40 installations. We weren’t initially involved with Eclipse user Universal Supply Group when they implemented phocas (athough we’re getting involved as of late), but their testimonial speaks volumes. The CFO remarked that, in the first few months, the company gained an additional $20,000 in rebates. He said that with Eclipse it would’ve taken “days to write reports, combine the data, load it into Excel and so on. Added to which, quite often errors would creep in and we’d have to do this again every month.”

The Cobbled Conclusion
The conclusion we assume you’re coming to is that, unfortunately, there’s no easy answer for reporting with Eclipse. There’s no cut and dried solution and no out-of-the-box perfection. But, there is good news: there’s amazing data of all kinds multiplying every minute on your server; and, it can be retrieved, compiled and analyzed to greatly enhance your company’s performance … it just takes a little bit of cobbling.

Free Webinar: Top 10 Efficiency Killers

Could you be missing the boat? Whether you feel completely lost at sea or are happily sailing in the ocean of profitability, chances are you’re not operating as efficiently as possible.

As an Eclipse user, you’ve invested in an industry-respected ERP that should keep you systematic, profitable and savvy; but, instead there’s processes slowing you down, challenges you can’t seem to overcome, or the desire to just plain be better. Yet, you don’t know where to begin or don’t have time or resources to deal with it. If any of that sounds familiar, our August 16 webinar for the Eclipse Users Group is for you.

Zerion is an alternative, independent Eclipse services provider. We spend 500 hours a month with Eclipse-run distributors. And, we know exactly where you could be getting off course, even if you don’t realize you are. In one short hour, we’ll count down the 10 most common missed opportunities and mistakes that Eclipse users make; and, we’ll tell you how to flag down the efficiency boat, jump on board and sail to operational success. Don’t miss out! Register now.

Zerion has provided customer-centric consulting, implementations, customization and training to over 200 distributors nationwide. Our mission is to help you maximize your Eclipse investment with more accessible, less expensive solutions. To learn more about Zerion, visit www.zeriongroup.com.

Where Oh Where is Zerion Now?

Whenever we can, we use this space to welcome and highlight new customer relationships. As much as we love doing that, we thought it was time to mix it up! Instead, we’re going to tell you a little about what happened in the life of Zerion last month, and anything exciting we have coming up this month:

• We enjoy making distributors more efficient, and we recently achieved that for two clients with custom reports. One is mentioned in our feature story this month, and the other was the customization of product sales comparison report. Our client wanted to include running by multiple select codes and we made some manipulations to how the date ranges could work. The result drastically reduced how long it takes them to prep the report.
• Also this month, Tony made a quick but in-depth on-site visit to an Electrical distributor where he worked to improve their inventory turns with purchasing consulting.
• August is bringing us a most-hands-on-deck inventory that we’re quite excited about because of its perfectly tropical locale. But alas, we won’t be enjoying the beach, but rather staring at racks and wires in our client’s warehouse, as we’re providing counters for their first physical inventory.
• We’ll also spend some time in the Midwest to do “train the trainer” sessions and consulting for a new installation of Eclipse.
• Two of our consultants will head to Alabama to teach a Super User 101 and 102 class for the Eclipse Users Group. (There are still spots available! Visit eclipseuser.com to register.)
• We’ll also spend time “off the road” to provide remote services, including system performance overhauls for several customers, multiple forms changes and several custom reports.

We hope to see you in our travels soon!

Is Eclipse Becoming “Just a Satellite”?

We came across this article in Industrial Distribution magazine, titled “Is your ERP a Mothership or Just a Satellite?” that explores the idea of what happens to ERP products after their owner is involved in a merger or acquisition. We thought we’d bring it to light because of the change from Activant to Epicor, and the fact that we discussed the same issue in a similar article of our own a few months ago.

The authors make some excellent points regarding acquisitions, particularly that not all ERP products will remain a high priority. As they say “this is business, folks.” And, it most certainly is. However, when it comes to Eclipse users, we disagree that this is cause for alarm, or reason to migrate to “the mothership” as they call it. Regardless of what happens with Eclipse’s priority level at Epicor, two important things remain the same: Eclipse is still a superior product for this industry; and, you can still get support (both from Epicor and us).

To quote our own article: “The Eclipse software has impressive capabilities perfectly suited for the wholesale distribution market. It is a program that can aptly serve the needs of distributors for a long-time to come. And, it’s remained a leader in this market in spite of the changes it’s endured. As such, it will continue to have a great presence amongst supply houses; and, Apax will have to pay attention to it.”

We also believe that, “If Apax decides they aren’t going to actively sell the product or develop major releases of the software, there will still be new releases to fix problems; and, they will still support it. That being said, if the service or staff declines, or wasn’t up to your standards to begin with, you have options. Zerion isn’t affiliated with Activant (or anyone for that matter) and we’re not going anywhere.”

And, finally, “If you’re so inclined, we encourage you to stay on board with Eclipse. We’re here to fill any gaps you see, or to provide stability in an otherwise unstable time. If you’re planning to move your ERP investment elsewhere, we have no ties to any vendors and we can help you choose the best product for your business.”