Ten Ways to Turn Eclipse Into a 21st Century Program

The business world at large is in a season of efficiency; and, that isn’t changing anytime soon. Customers and business owners alike want better, faster, cheaper and easier. This presents a challenge, at least theoretically, for some Epicor Eclipse users because the software originally was released in 1989.  Yes, 1989 …  when the first Bush president moved in to the White House and Milli Vanilli was all the rage. We know Eclipse isn’t considered “hip” or “hot”; but, that doesn’t mean it needs to be replaced or retired. Eclipse is a sound piece of software that serves hard goods distributors quite well.

In an article that we wrote last year about Epicor’s purchase of Eclipse, we said, “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.”

In addition, implementing a new ERP can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in software, licensing and consulting, plus time lost due to training and ramp up time.

Instead of replacing Eclipse, we recommend you simply consider enhancing it … going more “electronic” so to speak. When the computer and software are doing work instead of people, and you’re eliminating paper, your business will become more streamlined. In some cases, we’ve seen automation turn a fifteen-person job into a one-person job. Electronic business operations also reduce errors and protect you in cases of fraud, or customer disputes. Yet, every day Zerion encounters Eclipse users who hardly touch the breadth of functionality that exists in the system or that easily can be added on.

For a relatively small investment of time and money, you can tap into these under-utilized features and make Eclipse seem new. Your software can function as if it had been created for today’s business needs!

Here are ten suggestions for going electronic:

1. ACH – An Automated Clearing House (ACH) cuts down on stamps and paper going from one place to another. It also requires less involvement of personnel.
2. Billing – You can use Eclipse functionality to eliminate paper tickets and create a more structured, automated and efficient billing process.
3. Eclipse POD – Eclipse’s proof of delivery tool is still fairly new. We see some benefits for larger distributors who can use this real-time tool to improve customer service, profitability and efficiency.
4. EDI – When you use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to send a PO to a vendor, the creation or submission of an order, invoice and payable have virtually no human involvement. It is a long-term commitment to move to EDI; but, this change can have huge returns by way of reduced errors and headcount.
5. EFT – Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), such as wire transfers, direct deposit, direct debit and electronic checks, is now considered a business standard that is fairly easy to comply with.
6. Electronic Signature Capture – Capturing signatures electronically reduces filing and paperwork; and, it also makes signatures easier to find when you need to supply proof of delivery.
7. Emailed Invoices – Paper is still the most prominent way to send invoices, though some Eclipse users do it via fax or EDI. Emailing invoices straight from Eclipse can be a simple change that brings you savings and efficiency.
8. FTP –File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Secure FTP are beneficial when a bank requires information on a customer’s check and bank, which they usually want encrypted.  Typically, this is important when dealing with Canadian banks.
9. PosPay – Positive Pay is used to ensure that checks cashed actually were written by your company. The process of sending your check register to your bank is completed daily and helps to eliminate fraud.
10. RF – We’re passionate about Radio Frequency (RF) technology for streamlining warehouses; and, we are never shy about that! This is considered a more significant change; but, as we mention here it can increase your correct up-rate by 90%.

We also have developed reports, created processes for integrating with third-party vendors and written code and settings for other clients that may be useful to your business’ quest to automate operations. Here’s a link to an ever-expanding list of other ways our clients have gone electronic.

Implementing any, or all, of these changes will make your software appear newer without incurring a massive undertaking or expense. Eclipse users don’t take advantage of these opportunities because they’re unsure of how to approach them; or, they don’t have the knowledge to do it themselves. Most of the changes do indeed require a third party like Zerion, Epicor or someone else to set it up. They also may need some custom code, settings or training. But, consultants, programmers and trainers are easily attainable and not nearly as costly as new software. And, the expense is well worth it for a more up-to-date operation!

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help, contact us. We’re also in the process of reaching out to all Zerion customers to let them know about the latest ways we can help supply knowledge and deliver efficiency.

Eclipse Tip: Get BCC’d on Customer Quotes

Did you know that you can automatically receive an email copy of your customer quotes? This is especially helpful if you want to keep track of quotes outside of Eclipse. You can do it with this Epicor Eclipse Tip of the Day from your friends at Zerion:

To set up automatic Blind Carbon Copies (BCC) on customer quotes, access the User File for each desired user. There, you can specify the BCC address for all outgoing emails. Enter the user’s email address in the “Sender BCC” field. Eclipse will then email the user when a quote is emailed to a customer. Please note: You may need the system administrator to make this change for you, but it will be well worth the effort.

I hope this helps enhance your sales operation. Let us know if we can be of assistance with anything.

Eclipse Tip: Exclude from Check Avail/Cycle Count

If you do any light manufacturing, it may be helpful to use priceline maintenance to exclude some items from check availability or cycle count. In this short video overview, Tony King will show you how to do that.

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Inventory and Purchasing in San Jose

Located in or near the San Fransisco Bay area? Want to know more about Eclipse inventory or purchasing? If you’re a member of the Eclipse Users Group, you can join us Sept. 21 for an all-day workshop on Purchasing, or Sept. 22 for an all-day workshop on Inventory Control. We’re also conducting shorter, online classes during the month of September, including Report Writer, TCL and Dictionaries. To learn more or sign-up, visit www.eclipseuser.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.

Eclipse Tip: Re-Order Pad

Using the re-order pad in Epicor Eclipse can help you save time by accessing your customers’ recently purchased products. In this short video overview, Tony King will show you how to use it.

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