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.

How Scrambled Eggs Can Help Distributors Sell More: Part Three

Recently, we introduced a series that aims to boost your sales with scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs? Yup. You can read our first installment with a complete explanation here; but, basically, we think sales and operations shouldn’t be independent of one another. We suggest taking basic operational structure and principles and mixing them into your selling approach to fry up a more appetizing, protein-rich, top line.

Our first strategic recommendation had to do with hiring salespeople. Our second was about compensating them. Now, we’re going to wrap up the series with a discussion on an essential part of selling: customers.

Strategic Opportunity #3: Growing Sales Through Customer Management

How many times has this happened to you? Joe Schmo Contractor calls your office to get a price on some widgets; and, he speaks to Fred, an inside salesperson. An hour later, Joe Schmo calls back. But, this time he gets Sam, another inside salesperson. Sam doesn’t know that Fred talked to Joe Schmo earlier, and he gives Joe a different (lower) price.

Or, how about this one: Smith HVAC has been a loyal customer for ten years. You feel pretty pleased with the length and stability of your relationship, yet you don’t realize that you’re missing out on a big chunk of their business. You’re only selling them compressors because they got a better price on air handlers from your competitor many years ago. Even though you could probably get the handler business if you tried, no one has ever pursued it.

In both cases, you’re losing potential revenue because of a lack of visibility and tracking. It doesn’t have to be that way!

What Eclipse Does and Doesn’t Do

Your Epicor Eclipse software is focused on transactions. It’s intended to get them out the door; and, then get them billed and collected. It’s designed to help you buy and sell at a profit, then collect the money. It does each of these things very well; and, they’re attributes that are extremely important to a distributor. But, there’s something important missing … Eclipse isn’t helping you to be strategic and operational with your selling approach.

Why? Because Eclipse is looking at customer profitability, not customer potential. Since Eclipse doesn’t allow you to track customer touches in a reasonable, executable format, it may show you what you’re getting from a customer; but, it doesn’t show you what you’re not. In essence, it doesn’t tell you the other side to the story. And, it isn’t proactive by telling you what products you need to be selling to which customers to increase profits. It also doesn’t provide any good methods for tracking customer communication or prompting follow-up. There are bits and pieces available (such as with the bid follow-up queue, which we recommend); but, it doesn’t show the big picture. To achieve any of these things with Eclipse, you would need some very complex custom reporting.

What CRM Brings to the Breakfast Table

How can you close this gap? By applying some operational principles to sales, of course! Implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is the best way to get analytical. CRM can take all of the wonderful data Eclipse compiles and use it to tell you what you’re missing out on with each customer. The intention of a CRM is to drive sales, based on what’s actually happening with your customers. It’s geared toward customer touches, sales, and time spent.

A few years ago, we were skeptical about CRMs and their necessity. Nice to have? Sure. Truly going to drive business? We weren’t sold. But, Zerion had some challenges in our own business for which CRM quickly proved to be the best solution. We learned first-hand about the most important benefits of a CRM*:

• Proactively identify sales opportunities
• Increase customer retention rates
• Increase productivity by getting a 360° view of all customer information
• Increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales team by giving them one place to review sales history, activities and communication by customer

By the time we made the decision to purchase a CRM for ourselves (Driven CRM), we had changed our opinion. We took the time to get the CRM “dialed in” to our own business processes; and, it has allowed us to hone in on more opportunities than ever before. For a distributor, those specific opportunities might include**:

• Pull reports of sales by a vendor’s products so you can collaborate with strategic vendors
• Analyze all customers’ buying habits in order to recognize trends and determine which customers should be buying products that they’re not
• Create target customer lists by product or vendor based on the opportunities you find; and, track sales for those customers on those particular products
• Identify your best customers, learn from their statistics and apply this to other customers
• Recognize “holes” in your product sales by category
• Pinpoint customers whose sales have dropped off
• Identify what parts your customers are purchasing and the corresponding parts they should be purchasing
• Target concern customers with a strategy to win business back
• Develop, target, track, report and evaluate promotions (per our recommendations in part #2 of this series)
• Present a united, coordinated and professional front to customers because of tracked conversations

In addition to all of these potential benefits, implementing a CRM provides a great opportunity to imbed more processes into your sales team. When you train them on the CRM, it’s also a perfect time to introduce or re-establish procedural steps that can benefit the entire business.

Integrating with Eclipse

So, how does an Eclipse customer go about adding a CRM tool? Well, the best place to start is by talking with Sales Management Plus (SMP) and Tour De Force. As of now, these are the only two CRM-specific vendors that we are certain have an integration to Eclipse. They are both viable options; and, we have customers using each. We haven’t been made aware of many issues with either of them.

Once you choose which of the two vendors best suits your needs, you would contact Eclipse regarding the implementation process. Currently, Zerion does not provide integration services for CRM (though we do for other third-party software).

Something else to consider is phocas. If you already have this business intelligence tool that we endorse, there is a CRM component that is imbedded in the software. Since phocas integrates with Eclipse, utilizing their CRM tool is a great option.

Regardless of the tool you choose (as long as it integrates with Eclipse), your salespeople should experience an easy and seamless tie-in to Eclipse’s valuable data. You’ll still need to tackle some basic training upon implementation, both on the processes and the tool itself. This can be challenging if your sales force is resistant to change, or they don’t readily recognize the benefits a CRM can bring. However, it shouldn’t be long until their commission checks reap the rewards of a more operationally savvy sales organization.

Just remember that, as with any tool, deriving true benefits is a result of proper application. If you don’t utilize the CRM to enhance your processes, be more strategic about your sales, and proactively identify more revenue opportunities, then you’ve just got an expensive address book.  Happy scrambled selling!

*adapted from Tour de Force’s web site

**adapted from SMP’s sales sheets

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 Can Help Distributors Sell More: Part Two

Last month we introduced this series, which aims to boost your sales with scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs? Yup. You can read our first installment with a complete explanation here; but, basically, we think sales and operations shouldn’t be independent of one another. We suggest taking basic operational structure and principles and mixing them into your selling approach to fry up a more appetizing, protein-rich, top line.

Our first strategic recommendation had to do with hiring. And, now that we’ve helped you get the right people in place, we’re going to tell you what we think about compensating them. Because we all know the truth … MONEY MATTERS!

Strategic Opportunity #2: Compensate More Intentionally

Whether you have been fortunate enough to bring on the most motivated people; or, you’re committed to making the best of your existing team, you must keep them hungry, and make them accountable. How can you do this? By adjusting the commission structure for your salespeople! We recommend doing this in two key ways: on dollars earned and dollars paid.

Dollars Earned
If your commissions are centered only on gross sales, or if you’re paying salary plus straight margin, then you could be missing the mark. Satisfactory volume can be achieved simply by maintaining existing, or grandfathered, accounts and standard orders; but, that does not steadily increase your company’s top line over time nor does it help you create business longevity. It can make you dependent on the same core businesses; and, you’ll feel the impact of their natural ebbs and flows more than you should. Yet, one Net New account, or additional product order from an existing customer, could bring in thousands of dollars per month or year. It can also provide more depth to your business.

It may seem small, but merely getting in a company’s payables system is a great sales goal. Once you’re in, they’re more likely to call on you in the future; and, over time, it can become a big account.  Another goal could be getting on an approved vendor listing.

If organic growth is more appropriate or appealing for you, then another excellent goal might be to focus on selling more of one or two  certain products. Your aim might be to shift existing purchases of those items away from other vendors to diversify, while expanding orders from existing customers. Regardless of the goals you choose, incentivizing your salespeople to pursue new business can pay off for both of you.

One operational change to achieve this growth is to develop a routine promotional program that becomes a process for “feeding” your salespeople. The word “routine” is key here, as that’s what makes it transition from isolated sales tactics into strategic (and standard) operational procedure.

The particular promotions that work for you will be dependent on your customers and your salespeople; but, once you figure out what makes each of them tick, you can create spiffs with that in mind. It may be a “deal of the day” format, an individual product focus, special terms on a short-term basis for new customers, or all of the above. As long as you’re consistently providing a reason for your salespeople to talk with new (and existing) accounts, you’ll be approaching sales with a more structured, operational mindset.

Another operational shift is variable pay. If you make commissions variable, weighted or scaled, (not only by volume, but by age of account) you could motivate your salespeople to bring in more business. In  comparing  it to an operational principle, think of it as buying 60 days of supply versus automating Purchasing within Eclipse. In the old days, you would buy 60 days of demand for all items; but, with Eclipse you variably purchase items depending on their demand.

The same can be said  for using a fixed percentage commission plan based on volume. It’s simple and familiar; but, it’s the method from days gone by.  Using it probably isn’t going to produce the results you need. Applying a variable commission structure may seem more complex; but, as long as you invest some time up front, it will be much easier, and more fiscally beneficial, in the long-run.

To automate the payments, you can apply your desired variable commission structure to Eclipse’s settings. However, keep in mind that Eclipse can’t always accommodate these changes out of the box. Depending on what you have in mind, you may need a custom report to handle it for you.

Dollars Paid
When you’re ready to truly blur the lines between sales and operations, consider ‘paid when paid.’ It works exactly like it’s name; and, when you switch to it, salespeople are paid when the customers pay, rather than when they are invoiced. While this is a somewhat controversial and sensitive subject, there is no doubt that ‘paid when paid’ further engages salespeople in the business and holds them accountable for their sales. They become ingrained in the collections process; and, they retain their point-of-contact status with customers. This can improve cash flow because checks aren’t being cut to salespeople prematurely; and, a more invested party is involved in collecting payments. From a system perspective, Eclipse handles this process very well.

Now, we’d be lying if we said any of these transitions would be seamless for your salespeople. Even though this kind of change has the potential to garner them (and you) more income, and it will motivate them to sell more, it is still change. And, it’s change that impacts paychecks. Nobody likes it when you mess with their money. So, we suggest lots of lead time, over-communication, and training to help them understand and prepare for the change. For example, typically ‘paid when paid’ works best when there is a six-month transition period to allow for adequate preparation and all commissions to cycle through.

At the end of the day, you have to do what’s best for your organization; and, management has to have their eyes on the long-term health and profitability of the company. But, it doesn’t have to be at all costs; and, it doesn’t always have to sacrifice people’s feelings or the food on their plates. If you need help making any kind of transition, Zerion always is available for consulting, custom reports and more.

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.

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.

News: Sonepar to Acquire IES

Two Zerion clients were recently in the news because of another acquisition. Sonepar USA announced it will be acquiring Independent Electric Supply (IES), a California-based electrical distributor with 24 branches and a top 20 electrical distributor ranking.

Also, Epicor introduced cloud-based, on-demand access to Eclipse, called Epicor Distribution Express Edition (Epicor Express).

FIND OUT MORE of the who’s who and what’s what of software, IT and distribution …

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.”