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Case Study – Healthcare – Skyway Behavioral Health
Start Up Requiring Robust Infrastructure – From Planning to Implementation
The 7 Irresistible Qualities of Cloud ERP
Learn why ERP tools are an critical component for many businesses.
Why a Business Continuity Plan is Essential
Learn why your company needs a business continuity plan.
Ransomware 101
If you’re looking for ways to stop ransomware dead in its tracks, the experts at CCS Technology are here to help.
How managed services make the difference
Learn more about the benefits of partnering with a managed services provider.
Cloud Services and the SMB Revolution
Learn more about how Cloud Services from CCS make your life easier.
Office 365 Migration Made Easy
Migrating over to Office 365 has never been easier with CCS Technology.
The Advantages of Working with I.T. Pros
Learn how working with a seasoned technology pro makes your work easier.
Closing Common Cybersecurity Holes
Learn several critical cybersecurity tips and tricks any SMB can use.
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Benefits of Inventory Management Software for Your Distribution Company
/in Blog, Distribution Industry, ERP Software /by lindsayManaging inventory in the most efficient and profitable way, is a top concern for companies across the globe. It’s essential that businesses are able to fully understand customer needs so they can make better decisions that impact ways inventory is handled. With cutting-edge technological developments, it’s becoming much easier for distributors to better manage inventory.
Through modern ERP software, organizations are able to improve customer service with real-time access to important information around inventory, as well as key data. Implementation of a cloud-based ERP system, allows companies to manage the distribution process efficiently and without losing track of costs.
Challenges Distributors Face
Visibility provides distributors a way to realize and understand inventory, which can impact supply chains. In this area, the entirety of the business revolves around receiving, replenishing, stocking, compliance labeling, processing customer service requests, tracking, reporting, and shipping, etc. By understanding the complexity of the inventory ecosystem, a business is able to set in place protocols that drive efficiency, which helps to reduce costs.
The ERP Advantage
An ERP system gives a real-time glimpse of the company’s inventory; distributors are no longer pressed to work with ambiguities in critical areas. Effective businesses will learn to keep a handle on costs as they manage both inventory and distribution processes.
Many businesses are challenged due to the sheer expanse of the business. Multiple warehouses often have location-specific inventory quantities, allocations, and costs. An ERP system that focuses on inventory management, helps companies to redistribute product from a central warehouse to other warehouses with ease, as well as granting rights to the various locations, so employees can access information and enter transactions in real-time.
The systems assign multiple valuation methods, so businesses can determine standard cost, moving average, FIFO (first-in, first out), and item-specific methods. Unique valuation methods can be attributed to each inventory item, while report and inquiry views help distributors make direct adjustments to cost and physical inventory counts.
Being able to know where each and every item is becomes exponentially easier with lot and serial numbers assigned on receipt, issue, or assembly. Costs can be managed with item-specific valuation methods associated to serial numbers — all of which makes tracking that much more effective.
Learn more in ERP for Distribution Companies.
Impacts on Distribution
Imagine the advantage of having access to warehouse information, including the ability to make updates in real-time. With a cloud-based ERP solution, distributors are able to modify and analyze inventory, as well as restrict access to inventory by item or warehouse. All business insights are accessible in the cloud-based system — employees are able to get secure access anytime, anywhere via smartphone or Internet-connected device.
Visibility gives the team the tools they need to make better decisions, faster. Drill-down reports and user- or function-specific dashboards reveal past actions and data that can help positively impact the future. With the entirety of the organization viewing real-time inventory levels and customer-specific pricing, the team is able to clearly communicate to customers. When customers are told the same insightful information from all parties, expectation is better managed; a company that honors contracts and successfully fulfills orders will have a better chance at gaining repeat customers.
A modern ERP that meets the needs of distributors can help to manage costs. Outdated spreadsheets become a thing of the past, as ledgers are automatically created from inventory transactions. It’s easy to see what goods have been sold, and also any inventory holding costs.
Another cost saving measure, is the benefit an ERP system brings to the actual workforce. There’s no longer a need for employees to perform time consuming data entry, which also helps to mitigate risk due to error. Default accounts can be set, reducing the amount of work the staff must do. The increased efficiency leaves time for distributors to focus on other areas of business that can drive growth and profit.
Implementing for the Future
The first step of the journey is realizing when a company is ready for a cloud-based ERP system. Acumatica Cloud ERP is an award-winning solution that offers Acumatica Distribution Edition. One of its many features is Advanced Inventory, which is designed to improve customer service and profitability.
Partnering for the future enables a business to improve capabilities and efficiencies, both of which are imperative to growth. As an Acumatica Partner, CSS Technology Group brings cloud expertise to take a company into the next decade and beyond. Read testimonials and contact us to learn more about implementing a cloud-based ERP solution.
Here’s What It Takes to Succeed at Cloud
/in Blog, Cloud /by lindsayWhat does it take to succeed at cloud? You can have a successful migration to cloud and still not experience the benefits you expect. Truly succeeding at cloud begins with understanding the technology, having a strategy that aligns cloud use with business needs, and putting appropriate support teams and systems in place.
Understanding Cloud Technology
There are many different kinds of cloud, and you won’t succeed if you pick the wrong cloud model for your business. In addition to choosing from Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, and Platform as a Service clouds, you also need to decide whether you need a public cloud, a private cloud, or a hybrid cloud. You also need to decide whether you want to use a single cloud provider or create a multicloud environment leveraging multiple cloud providers. You need to know how cloud will fit into your end-to-end business workflows.
Along with understanding what cloud offers, you need to understand what cloud doesn’t offer. Cloud can free your team from much routine support, but cloud doesn’t free your team from responsibility. You’ll still need to make sure you have a way to monitor your infrastructure and have a backup strategy if there’s an outage (cloud is highly reliable, but all the big and small cloud providers have had incidents that impacted customers).
Cloud also doesn’t eliminate the need for you to implement security controls. The cloud provider protects the physical infrastructure and may implement patches, depending on the kind of cloud you’re using, but they do not completely protect applications and databases from unauthorized access. Your team needs to ensure appropriate configurations and roles are in place to keep private systems private. You need to continue to review logs to detect breaches.
Plan to Use Cloud Strategically
Cloud can be used simply to alleviate the burden on your IT team. It can also be used to provide business advantages, but that requires thinking strategically about using cloud rather than seeing it simply as a fix for technology challenges.
To create a cloud strategy, you need to understand how your current IT is limiting the business, whether they aren’t able to roll out new products and services quickly enough, there isn’t enough capacity to support demand, or other challenges.
Once you know the business problems, you can identify ways to leverage cloud to address these business needs. You can address these department-by-department or take a higher-level view and implement your cloud capability as a collection of services that can support multiple departments.
Put the Right Support in Place
Cloud changes how your technology team interacts with technology and how your end users interact with technology. You should anticipate reorganizing and retraining your technology team to provide them with the tools and skills to support the new cloud-based systems and resolve users’ problems. This may require hiring new staff or engaging a support organization that’s already deeply familiar with cloud.
How successful have you been integrating cloud technology into your organization? CCS Technology Group provides cloud services to help you understand cloud technology, develop your strategy for using cloud, and support your cloud effectively. Contact us to learn more about what it really takes to succeed with cloud.
Additional Cloud Resources
The Cloud Solutions Primer eBook
Calculating the ROI of Moving to the Cloud
5 Changes to Make When You Switch to Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
5 Tips for Getting the Best Results from a Managed Services Provider
/in Blog, Managed Services /by lindsayThere are many things to think through when you choose a managed services provider, and hopefully you select a provider that’s a good fit for your business. But don’t stop thinking about your managed services provider once you sign the contract. Think through how you’ll work with the provider so they can succeed in delivering services that help your business succeed.
1. Make sure you get the right services from the right provider
There are two ways to think about this. The right services are the services you need to address your business’s IT problems, whether it’s help with your network, cloud, desktop support, or security. You want to make sure you get the services you need from a provider that’s got the skills and experience to deliver them effectively. If your provider doesn’t have a background in a technology or service you need, you’ll be better off contracting with a second provider who does have that expertise, even if it means you add complexity to managing your providers.
2. Get clear about service delivery
It isn’t likely you’ll completely eliminate your internal IT team, so carefully define the boundaries around the work you’ll do yourself and the work you want the managed services provider to handle. If the contract didn’t define a detailed set of deliverables, have a meeting when the contract starts to spell out your expectations and address concerns. Along with this, carefully define the communications process so both you and the provider know how new requests will be handled and how you’ll work to resolve any problems.
3. Set metrics
You should have a plan for how you’ll evaluate the effectiveness of your managed services arrangement. Define metrics before the contract starts, and be sure to let the provider know. That way they can focus their efforts on the concerns that really matter to you. Don’t wait until the end of the contract to let the provider know if they aren’t measuring up. Do a periodic assessment and bring your concerns to them when there’s still time to make changes and get a positive result.
4. Treat the managed services provider as a member of your team
The more the provider knows about your business, the better they’ll be able to tailor the services they deliver to your business needs. While you may not want to give them all the details, if you give the provider information about your business problems and strategies, they’ll be able to give you better support that helps you meet long-term goals.
5. Let the provider do their job
Pay attention to what the provider delivers, but let them figure out how they want to provide the service. Managed services providers support many businesses, and they’ve most likely found a way of working that works for them as well as the clients they support. As long as they’re not doing something illegal, unethical, or disruptive to your business, you should focus on their results and not how they’re getting them.
CCS Technology Group is dedicated to providing top quality managed services to our clients. Contact us to learn how our team can help solve your business information technology challenges.
Additional Resources
6 Big Benefits from Using Managed Services
How Managed Services Make the Difference