Bellwether - A Blytheco Magazine - Fine Tunining Your Business by Blytheco

BELLWETHER

Volume 4 | Issue 3 | Third Quarter 2013

Dashboards, Metrics and Reporting You Should Have

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Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

sections

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates

Letter from the Editor

Leadership

Technology

Sales & Marketing

Cover Story

Corporate Finance

Industry News

Human Resources

6 12 16

Tip

bell•weth•er -noun: one who takes initiative or leadership

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Making sales tax less taxing.

LETTERFROMTHEEDITOR

BELLWETHER

A Blytheco Magazine Volume 4 Third Quarter, 2013 www.blytheco.com www.bellwethermagazine.com

STAFF

EDITOR Apryl Hanson CREATIVE DIRECTOR Greg Went CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Alicia Anderson Liz Anderson Tess Boros Apryl Hanson Tricia Hartigan Amy Higgins Ginger Kittinger Brian Nunes ADVERTISING SALES Ginger Kittinger SUBSCRIPTIONS www.bellwethermagazine.com Or contact Dori Fitch (800) 425-9843, Extension 1168 dorif@blytheco.com Bellwether Magazine is published by Blytheco with principal offices at: 23161 Mill Creek Road Suite 200 Laguna Hills, CA 92653 If you wish to be removed from the mailing list or to add names to the mailing list, send your request, including name, business name, and mailing address to the above address or to dorif@blytheco.com This is a copyrighted publication and all articles herein are covered by this copyright. Any use of the content for commercial reasons or other form or reproduction of material herein is strictly prohibited without prior, written approval of Bellwether Magazine.

bellâ&#x20AC;˘wethâ&#x20AC;˘er -noun: one who takes initiative or leadership

Strategy Execution I

by Apryl Hanson

f you have been in business for any length of time you have inevitably been involved in a strategy that failed. Strategies can be defined as a carefully devised plan of action put in motion to achieve a desired state or goal. We hear about strategy failures so much more than we hear of successfully executed ones. When we do have a big strategic win it is often celebrated by documented business cases instead of spending time understanding why other strategies have fallen short of their expectations. If we closely examine why strategy fails we may learn how to improve our rate of successful execution and change our business outcomes.

It has been said that when a company fails to hit its measureable targets the next move is to usually change the organizational chart. This is a costly reaction for businesses to take as when you are realigning people; the change alone can take over twelve months to settle. The realignment creates disruption which can take away from additional strategies being able to be performed. Instead imagine if the strategy itself wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the issue. What if instead of the strategy being the culprit for what wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t working, we focused on the communication and measurements that went along with the strategy. When we work with organizations in a change management process we interview executives, managers and front line workers to get their view of what is happening in their organization. We do this because we have found too many times that what the executive team has rolled out as a strategy may be interpreted in an entirely different way through managers to front line teams that are working on these problems and issues every day.

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

LEADERSHIP

How the conversation becomes an important lever in change management We often recommend improvements to processes and procedures that allow people to capture data throughout the change in strategy so that executives have a pulse on what is working and can make adjustments immediately with areas that aren’t working. This way, strategy becomes a work in process. Here are tips to help you create solid strategy shifts in your organization:

• Be crisp, clear and defined – All of the members of your executive team need to be able to speak about the strategy in the same way.

• Get the Executive Team involved and accountable – Your executive team needs to

be held accountable for the entire strategy, not just their individual department. Get everyone’s thoughts before rolling out the strategy, taking success measurements, and executing. Once decided, define everyone’s roles in the process and measurement periods. Executive meetings should be spent discussing what’s working vs. not working and developing strategies to improve in implementation.

• Define your measurements and timeframes

-You have to have clearly defined result expectations that you are looking for with timeframes. Before rolling out the strategy create clear timeframes for those measurements (i.e. what will it look like in 30, 60, 90, 120 days) so that you can determine when you are off or on track and make adjustments.

• Create strategies for organizational change in addition to behavioral change – Change

doesn’t just happen because of alignment of new teams and roles. You should have identified strategies to focus on the behavioral changes your team members are going to need to make in order for your strategy to be fruitful. • Align Technology – If you don’t take a look at the changes that will be needed in your technology to support the strategy change, you could be missing a big step. Often technology is an afterthought in change management. How will information be recorded to know if the new strategy is working? Make sure that you have identified the needs you have. • Work with a partner – Bring in a partner that you trust to look at elements of the change process. This will give you an outsider’s perspective. The right partner will ask questions to help you fill in the blanks in the strategy. We work with many companies going through significant change to help them identify communication break-downs and technology alignment challenges. Find a partner that is willing to truly sit at the table with you and one who is focused on your success.

If you are interested in help regarding aligning your business strategy with technology check out our bly:Optimize services at www.blytheco.com/optimize.

bell•weth•er -noun: one who takes initiative or leadership

The Top Business Reporting Tools Our Customers are Using by Alicia Anderson

recent survey (OK, we asked our consulting team) indicated that ERP users are using a wide variety of tools to get the information they need from their systems. The diversity of solutions brings home the fact that one size does not fit all when it comes to analytics – the solution that fits your business best will depend on the existing technology infrastructure you have, as well as the needs and experience-level of your users and any compliance issues in your business. An overview of the major types of reporting solutions across various categories follows. General Reporting These reporting tools can access data from a wide variety of sources and help users create outputs that are highly customizable. • Crystal

Reports - SAP Crystal Reports features tools such as ready-to-use data drivers, flexible charting capabilities, and pre-built templates to view, design, and deliver consolidated reports from virtually any data source.

• Microsoft

SQL Reporting Services – Microsoft’s Reporting Services are widely used due to the ubiquity of SQL Server in businesses. One significant benefit is their ability to generate reports in a variety of officefriendly formats, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PDF, CSV, and others.

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

• Microsoft

Excel – Basic spreadsheets are powerful and flexible tools for non-technical users building reports for analysis.

Business Activity Monitoring Monitoring and workflow applications with built-in reporting components provide an additional layer of functionality with their ability to poll data to create “exception” reporting and define activities against data characteristics. • Knowledgesync

integrates with many mid-market front-office and back-office applications to identify defined parameters in the business, monitor data integrity, and automatically alert users when exceptions occur. Reports can be automatically generated and deployed across the organization.

• TaskCentre

is an event-driven process management system that integrates with ERP and CRM to provide alerts, document automation, and automation of repetitive tasks according to defined business rules.

LEADERSHIP TECHNOLOGY

Financial Reporting and Budgeting

Financial reports provide the transactional data needed to analyze company performance and cash flow. • F9

is a basic, Excel-based tool for linking General Ledger data to Excel.

• BizNet

is an Excel-based analytics and reporting platform that integrates to a wide variety of mid-market ERP solutions, giving users the ability to “drag and drop” to create reports in real-time against multiple modules and databases.

• RenovoFYI is a web-based solution allowing ERP users

to create presentation-quality financial statements with built-in auditing and drill-down capabilities.

• Adaptive

Planning is a cloud-based Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tool that works with many ERP systems with a spreadsheet-like interface and guided analysis to help users understand information.

• Budget

Maestro is a budgeting application to

support the consolidation of information across management teams as well as business modeling and forecasting. It integrates to mid-market ERP systems like Sage and Microsoft Dynamics.

• Sage

Active Planner is a budgeting and planning solution specifically created for Sage ERP systems, automatically integrating with the general ledger to create consolidated budgets with a spreadsheet-like look and feel.

Application-Specific Business Intelligence • DataSelf

Business Intelligence leverages Microsoft SQL Server, Tableau and Excel to provide intuitive, industry-standard tools for deploying KPIs and reports. Packaged with pre-built templates, users can also build complex reports from scratch quickly. It features mappings to many leading ERP systems and predefined solutions to many vertical industries.

• Sage

Intelligence offered for Sage 100, Sage 300, and Sage 500 ERP customers, offers easy to use graphical financial reporting capabilities with an Excelbased interface. Users can consolidate data from multiple companies, divisions, and databases with pre-formatted reports or create their own reports.

• CRM

Built-in dashboards within CRM solutions such as SugarCRM, SalesLogix, and SageCRM provide visual, configurable analytics to measure sales performance, often available across mobile devices.

If you are still struggling, despite all the options, to get the data you need from your system to make fast, effective decisions, you are not alone. Blytheco’s experts leverage all of these tools and more to create, customize and deploy analytics with our clients to keep them on top of business performance trends. For more info email us at solutions@blytheco.com for an analysis of your reporting needs and advice about how you can get better information using the system you currently have.

bell•weth•er -noun: one who takes initiative or leadership

SALES&MARKETING

Dashboards – How to keep on top of it all! by Ginger Kittinger

ou are on the go, attending meetings, taking calls – how do you quickly and easily check in to see how your company is doing? I asked our Sales Engineers, Charles Rogers and Philip Laing, to tell me about the first-rate dashboards and remote access tools for your Sage products. Sage ERP X3 has a customizable dashboard that gives you access to what you want to see with drilldown into detail if you need it, such as Open orders, Sales by Customer, Sales Team stats and even local news and weather if you’d like. www.blytheco.com/ERP-X3

The Sage Intelligence Dashboard is a one-page summary of key business information. The report features “Top N” (N can be defined by you as the # you’d like to see) reporting on Customers, Items and Expenses, and contains both text and graphics to help with daily and long-term planning. In addition, comparative Profit and Loss figures are displayed for both the current month- and year-to-date figures. You can copy and modify this according to your unique business

Sage Payment Services lets you manage electronic payments and it integrates with your Sage software. And with Sage Exchange, you have a Virtual Dashboard you can customize to keep track of all of the transactions in and out of your business. From credit/debit cards, checks, ACH, Gift Cards and more – you can do it all.

needs. It is a module of your Sage accounting/ERP system, making it seamless to access secure, real-time data when you need it. www.blytheco.com/erp/mas-intelligence.asp If you want remote real-time access to your Sage 100 ERP system – check out Blytheco’s bly:Mobile app! This is a direct connection to your ERP system, which allows you to monitor all of the key financial modules you need access to and your sales team can check available inventory and create orders in the field! www.blytheco.com/blymobile Sage Inventory Advisor is the newest from Sage – a true SaaS inventory diagnostic, forecasting and management tool. This product integrates with Sage 100, Sage 500 and Sage ERP X3 systems to give a quick view, accessible from a web browser or mobile device, of where you stand on product inventory levels, projections, trends, and supply chain.

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

So whatever need you have, wherever you are – with Blytheco and Sage you can keep your finger on the pulse of your company.

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bell•weth•er -noun: one who takes initiative or leadership

The Process Paradigm: Managing Change by Focusing on the Process, not the Outcomes by Alicia Anderson

n 1992, car manufacturer Volkswagen signed a new labor agreement including a generous 20% raise with the union representing workers for its new Puebla, Mexico facility. Workers subsequently conducted a walkout that cost the company $10 million per day, and the government was forced to intervene to end violence that ensued after police dogs attacked protestors. How could such a promising situation for workers degrade into such a devastating situation for Volkswagen? Union leaders had made a critical mistake. They had not involved workers in the agreement negotiations, or explained the basis for changes in a few work rules that went along with the sizable pay increase. Workers felt betrayed and left in the dark. Contrast that scenario with the approach of Gerhard Schulmeyer, the CEO of SiemensNixdorf Informationssysteme (SNI), the largest European supplier of information technology. Siemens’ acquisition of the troubled Nixdorf

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

group necessitated major cuts to headcount and resources to save the united company. Schulmeyer traveled the country to conduct meetings with more than 11,000 people, sharing a bleakly honest picture of the company’s situation and asking for ideas about how to remedy it. As many as 9,000 company “change agents” submitted ideas to leadership, who chose winning ideas on their merits in a decision-making process that everyone clearly understood. Within one year, the company was profitable again and employee satisfaction almost doubled, despite the challenges they had faced.

COVERSTORY How had Siemens achieved such dramatic and positive progress in such a short time while dealing with radical and difficult changes?

So how does a business manage even the toughest changes and improve performance using Fair Process?

The answer to both questions lies in the concept of Fair Process. The managerial concept of Fair Process posits that positive business performance is achieved by building a foundation of trust and openness throughout the company. It’s a focus on creating a foundation of good process while making change instead of the outcomes, and it addresses our basic human need to be heard, understood, and respected.

• When making a change, explain the why. Be transparent in letting your team know why the change is happening, even if it means sharing negative information. A culture of sharing leads to ownership of the problem across groups and shared responsibility for and commitment to resolution.

But why is Fair Process more critical now than ever? Creating and sharing knowledge are not negotiable in today’s knowledge economy. Innovation and ideas are the foundation of today’s technologydriven business environment and ideas can only be voluntarily shared, not compelled or incentivized with traditional rewards.

• Engage and solicit ideas from all players. Build the collective wisdom by generating diverse ideas from as many team members as possible.

Do not mistake Fair Process with managing by consensus or business as a democracy. Everyone does not need to agree on the changes – but the changes must be transparent and fair. Evidence shows that people will accept an outcome that is not favorable to them IF the outcome is based on objective, fair principles.

• Watch the signals. If leaders’ behavior is inconsistent or if rumors start circulating, anxiety builds and performance is compromised. Be proactive and clear in communicating what’s happening.

• Define expectations clearly. Minimize politics and favoritism by defining the rules early in the process, based on performance standards and penalties for failure.

For more information about Fair Process, we recommend the Harvard Business Review’s “Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, available at www.hbr.org.

bell•weth•er -noun: one who takes initiative or leadership

First 90 days of a CFO

by Apryl Hanson

hether you are a new CFO starting in a new role or you are hiring a new CFO this article highlights areas to create a successful transition. Being familiar with the numbers Prior to day one there should be general understanding of the numbers. If you are the employer you should supply financial statements for the companies past five years, and if you are the new CFO coming on board, this is a request you should make in advance of your first day. It is important for you to know the current budgets, forecasts and the business planning methods going forward. You want to hit the ground running, so reviewing this type of information on your first day wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t allow you to think strategically ahead of time about the areas you can impact. Reviewing in advance, you can be creative instead of reactive to impact the financial health of the business as soon as possible.

Financial System Strength Are the financial systems in place the right ones for the business? You should know prior to your first day what systems the company is using, and how the company has used them today. Having a clear picture of what your financial data looks like, how you will access it, and how clean the data is will significantly impact where your focus will be in the first 90 days. What do the internal controls look like? As the fiduciary for the organization, you need confidence that assets are secure, compliance requirements are being met, data is accurate and the systems are in place to ensure that continues. In addition to the financial systems used, does the company partner with outside companies to support their technology needs? You may want to reach out to better understand what you are walking into.

Understanding your first team We have a big saying within our Blytheco executive team â&#x20AC;&#x153;Your executive team should be your first team, your peers, the people that work together to keep the business running and advance the livelihood of the business.â&#x20AC;? You should know who the players are on your first team before your first day. But within your first 90 days you should spend time with each player understanding their challenges as well as areas they feel are opportunities for growth. This will help you become of better service to supply the information necessary to help them thrive. On an ongoing basis, regular meetings with these team members to review their areas of the business, and check in, will be helpful to keeping finance top of mind.

Understanding your work team Who will be the players on your work teams and what are their skills? Before being officially on board you will want to review resumes on your current team. Once on board you will need to develop a way to assess their skill sets and areas where training and development could

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

CORPORATEFINANCE improve their asset to you and the company. One on ones on a regular basis not only to understand work load, but skills should be where you spend time in the first 90 days. A start, stop and continue questioning technique will help you find improvement. • What do you think we should continue doing? (What are we doing right?) • What do you think we should stop doing? (What are we doing that isn’t providing value?) • What do you think we should be doing? (What are we ignoring that will benefit us?) These questions will help you identify areas of overarching concern and potential themes that you can gut check with your executive team. Right away you will be able to find areas ready for development.

Solidify external relationships Because you will be representing the financial aptitude of the organization, you will need to have a plan to create relationships with external partners of the company. Bankers, lawyers, auditors and investors are just a start. You may also have strategic

partners, vendors and customers that it will be important for you to meet. Your executive team can help you create a key list of contacts to be introduced to. Some may be more important than others and may require face to face meetings opposed to verbal or e-mail introductions.

Map out the business What are the inputs, processes and outputs of the company? Why do people do business with your company? You need to be able to take to heart why people would buy the products and services from your company and the details of the transactions and customer experience. Understanding the business at a deeper level will help you support your teams with ideas of improvement.

The first ninety days of any job can be hectic and overwhelming, but understanding how to structure this time carefully can help the new CFO get a firm foothold on his or her new role, and drive success in his or her department and in the business as a whole.

bell•weth•er -noun: one who takes initiative or leadership

INDUSTRYNEWS

By HighJump Software

by Tricia Hartigan

f your business is part of today’s retail and manufacturing supply chain, you need every edge you can get. Companies like yours are focused on improving efficiency and flexibility in the face of fluctuating consumer demand and competitive pressure surrounding cost and service. This is why electronic data interchange (EDI) continues to grow in importance within this sector. EDI is literally everywhere, supporting the supply chain behind the scenes. When a consumer picks up a product in a “big box” retail store, chances are almost 100% that it got there via EDI. Nearly all communication between manufacturers and major retailers—including sending and receiving purchase orders, invoices, advance ship notices (ASNs) and functional acknowledgements—now takes place using EDI. Sooner or later, any company that wants to become a trusted supplier to a major retailer will be faced with a decision involving EDI. As a growing business, you need to consider an EDI solution that can support your efforts to improve customer service, business agility and profitability; not just cost you money with minimal valueadd. EDI relies on standard protocols, but all EDI solutions are not the same. What’s the key to deriving long-term, strategic value from EDI? It’s choosing a complete, endto-end EDI solution from a trusted provider; one that includes everything you need to successfully deploy EDI and integrate smoothly with your Sage ERP system. Integration between ERP and EDI reduces the need to print or rekey transactions when moving data between 18

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

the two systems. A top-tier EDI solution will also offer built-in validation and process control features that help ensure all the data your customer requires has been entered correctly. You’ll be automatically notified of invalid entries for unit pricing, purchase order numbers and acknowledgements before you send a transaction. This not only keeps your customers happy, but also helps maintain the integrity of the valuable data in your Sage ERP system. These capabilities make order processing faster and more efficient, while optimizing accuracy. As a result, you’re able to meet all of your customers’ EDI requirements and add new EDI trading partners easily, while at the same time, streamline your overall order fulfillment process. An integrated EDI solution can improve your insight into supply chain data, so you can answer questions and make decisions faster— accelerating your orders-to-cash cycle. If, you implement EDI without ERP integration simply to comply with customer mandates, you introduce duplication of effort into your order processing. For instance, after you receive a purchase order from a trading partner via EDI, you will then need to manually enter that data into your Sage ERP system.

Enhancing the Efficiency of Your Supply Chain Processes with EDI

HighJump TrueCommerce Introduces EDI Integration with Sage ERP X3 HighJump TrueCommerce EDI Solutions —the only EDI solution endorsed and exclusively distributed by Sage – has introduced an enhanced integration for Sage ERP X3. TrueCommerce Transaction Manager™ for Sage ERP X3 is the most robust, complete, and easy-to-use EDI integration available for Sage ERP X3. Backed by best-in-class EDI service and support, this integration offers the scalability, automation and configurability that Sage ERP X3 users demand—while enabling you to derive even more value from your ERP investment. If highly efficient order fulfillment is key to your business goals, you need seamless, reliable integration between your ERP and EDI systems. HighJump TrueCommerce has long been the EDI provider of choice for Sage customers of all sizes. This new Sage ERP X3 integration enables businesses to keep pace with growing EDI transaction volumes and maintain the high levels of customer service, communication and on-time, error-free delivery that are vital to success in today’s business environment.

The need to perform these time-consuming manual tasks to keep the ERP and EDI systems in sync can slow order processing to a crawl, introduce errors and drive up staffing costs. Inaccuracies with EDI transactions can negatively impact your supplier score, increase the frequency of chargebacks and put your company’s growth at risk. Some suppliers are unable to work with new customers because their standalone EDI solution makes order processing so cumbersome. To succeed in today’s business climate, you need an integrated IT system that delivers rapid time-tovalue, functions as a productivity tool and empowers your business to grow not just today, but well into the future. Industry-leading EDI providers like HighJump TrueCommerce EDI Solutions—the only EDI solution endorsed and exclusively distributed by Sage—offers integrated EDI for your Sage ERP software. This solution adds value and supports your business daily, from deployment onward through every transaction with your customers.

TrueCommerce Transaction Manager for Sage ERP X3 supports a comprehensive range of integrated documents including purchase order, purchase order acknowledgement, invoice, advance ship notice (ASN) and credit memo transactions. Built-in item translation, price verification, ship to validation and other capabilities eliminate manual data entry while ensuring optimum efficiency and order accuracy. All transactions processed between Sage ERP X3 and TrueCommerce EDI are logged within the EDI solution, making it simple to resolve disputes and eliminate exceptions, duplicate transactions and chargebacks. To further enhance order fulfillment productivity and efficiency, TrueCommerce Scheduler allows users to automatically perform import/export functions for integrated transactions at scheduled times. TrueCommerce EDI also offers web-based add-ons to simplify labeling, streamline shipping, manage packing lists and more. For more information about TrueCommerce EDI Transaction Manager for Sage ERP X3, visit www.blytheco.com/truecommerce or contact Blytheco at (800) 425-9843 x2500.

bell•weth•er -noun: one who takes initiative or leadership

8 Tips for a Best-Practice Expense Process

hile most companies would like to adopt a best practice expense process, it can be hard to know what’s most important and where to even begin.

Here are eight simple tips to help make submitting, approving and reimbursing expenses more efficient, more appropriate and less frustrating.

by Amy Higgins

Tip

Start with a firm, fair expenses policy

All too often, an expense policy1 is an afterthought that may not be properly aligned with the business. It does the job, but it may not be clear, fair or appropriate. Having a fair, clear and unambiguous policy is the start of any best-practice expenses policy. Companies also have an obligation to themselves, and to the IRS, should they enquire, that the expenses being reimbursed are genuine, and that the organization is not reimbursing individuals for inappropriate or personal expenses.

“

Make sure to review and update your policy regularly – then, publicize it internally and explain it clearly. This is crucial because as research by Concur discovered, and a recent Amadeus poll confirmed2, approximately half of employees say they don’t even understand their Tip policy!

simple

Keep the processes

Tip

A process that is both robust and quick helps ensure that the right person approves the expenses appropriately, and that it adheres to the corporate governance.

Collect the right amount of (relevant) information When it comes to the details, the secret lies in the balance. Don’t ask for a novel, but don’t simply accept the price and date for each expense item either. Capturing relevant expense information will help ensure there are no delays in employee reimbursement and help avoid potential problems with compliance later on.

KISS – keep it straight and simple. Too much complexity could demoralize employees and tie up precious man-hours.

When it comes to expenses, the old acronym – KISS (Keep It Straight and Simple) – applies. Keep your process straight and simple, and people are more likely to comply. If your systems are bogged down with layers of administrative complexity such as triplicate forms and pre-approval, it’ll have a demoralizing effect on the your employees and tie up precious man-hours. Worst of all, having too much complexity can easily lead to serious mistakes. By making the process too 20

complicated, companies also run the risk that people may exaggerate their expenses to compensate for the pain of claiming them in the first place.

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

Companies ask for receipts not because they don’t trust their employees, but because the IRS requires receipts as proof. Remember that some expenses can require different information for tax purposes. For client entertainment Tip expenses, for example, it is a requirement for tax purposes to capture the company name and the name of all attendees.

Submit and approve expenses on time Best practice means having a clear, published timeframe for submitting expenses. It’s important to do the right thing by your employees and pay them as quickly as you can, in line with your published payment timetable.

INDUSTRYNEWS

However, it works both ways – it’s also important to ensure that claimants are submitting their expenses within a subscribed time frame. When filing delays happen, not only does it hurt employees’ pockets, but it can cause cash-flow challenges for the business and associated accounting nightmares.

Tip

Check expenses and make managers accountable

While we advocate swift approval of expenses, it’s also crucial that managers have the courage to push back on inappropriate or non-compliant expense submissions. As we said earlier, approximately half of employees say they don’t understand their policy – and this goes for managers too. By engaging with the management team and explaining the rationale behind the policy, it is possible to get their buy-in.

Tip

Make it easy to submit and approve expenses away from the office

In these days of mobile and global workforces, trying to catch up with someone to approve your expense report is getting harder and harder. If people have to wait and constantly chase their manager, it can lead to delays and frustration. Allow managers to check and approve expense reports while out of the office. It helps if you can use a tool that allows approvers to say ‘yes, this is okay to pay’ while they’re out and about; so they can approve reports anytime, anywhere. The beauty of having access on a mobile device is that it’s faster to submit and approve expenses on the go.

Audit your processes and receipts

Tip

Auditing your processes

How good is your end-to-end expense management process? When was the last time you conducted an audit? Some see expense auditing as an unwelcome intrusion. On the contrary, regular auditing can actually make your expense procedures work better by ironing out the glitches in your operational procedures and helping to maintain a fair system. Auditing your receipts

spending what they say they are, and that the receipts match and are valid? In our experience, we’ve seen everything from brown paper bags being used as evidence for buying juice for a sick colleague, to a photograph of a gas pump being used to justify a mileage claim. These are not valid receipts. You need to have some guidelines within your processing functions around random audits. You might also choose to audit items that are particularly tax sensitive or items over a certain value.

Pay people on time

Tip

Have you ever waited for someone to pay the money they owe you? It’s not fun. Once employees have gone through the process, complied with policy, filled out the right expense forms and attached receipts, it’s only fair to pay them on time. Plus if people know they’re going to be waiting for their money, they may think twice about making those valuable trips that build your business. It’s important to pay employees’ expenses in line with the published payment schedule. Ideally, payments should go straight into the employee’s bank account, or directly to settle their corporate card bill, on a timely and reliable basis. If people are paid when they expect it, they can budget appropriately. Prompt payment can also improve morale and productivity.

Conclusion The adoption and consistent application of a best-practice expense process is proven to save time and money while improving your employees’ experience. Moreover, having a best-practice solution that is available online and on mobile devices leverages the investment that companies have already made in existing technology. Lastly, a bestpractice expenses process provides access to data for analysis and review that can continue to inform the policy and highlight opportunities for further cost savings. In conclusion, using a best practice process enables the effective handling of expenditure in a way that is consistent with your policy, your company’s needs and your employees’ needs. To learn more about Concur, go to www.blytheco.com/concur

Are you checking that your employees are actually

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Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

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INDUSTRYNEWS

The Sales Tax Landscape Is Changing. Be Ready. Optimize your sales tax processes with automation. by Liz Anderson

lose is NOT good enough when it comes to sales tax compliance. With soaring state deficits and a growing number of online sales subject to sales tax, the compliance landscape is changing rapidly. In an effort to capture more revenue, states are hiring more auditors and passing new laws to redefine nexus (physical presence in a tax authority that would require a company to collect and remit tax). The current federal legislation to require remote sellers (such as online retailers) to collect sales tax has broad bipartisan support and has already passed the Senate. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Since 2007, an increasing number of states have passed Amazon laws requiring remote sellers (NOT just online retailers) to collect sales tax for the first time. You may be asking yourself, “Do Amazon laws apply to me?” or “Do I have to worry about click-through and affiliate nexus?” The truth is, if you do business in multiple states, chances are the changes will affect your business in one way or another. Prepare yourself by studying up on the laws:

Amazon Laws Since the early ‘90s, states haven’t required out-of-state retailers to collect and remit sales taxes unless they had nexus in that state. In recent years, many states enacted Amazon laws to require more multi-state online retailers to collect sales tax for the first time. Amazon laws vary from state to state and typically contain one or more of the following elements: Affiliate & Related Entity Nexus, Click-Through Nexus, and/or Consumer Use Notification.

Let’s take a closer look at each: Affiliate & Related Entity Nexus Affiliate nexus describes a type of relationship between an out-of-state seller and its in-state affiliate that triggers a nexus obligation. An affiliate is usually considered an entity within a state with activities directly benefitting an out-of-state seller. Many state laws designate what kinds of affiliate relationships trigger sales tax collection obligations on remote sellers, so tracking each state is a good idea. Example: In California, an out-of-state retailers must collect sales tax if they are related in any way to any entity located in the state. This includes entities that conduct business on the out-of-state seller’s behalf, as well as entities that use a similar patent or the same trademark.

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

Click-Through Nexus This is specifically aimed at multi-state retailers that use web advertising—when that in-state web advertisement clicks through to a remote ecommerce portal in order to complete a sale. Thus, if a buyer clicks through an ad on a local site to a remote ecommerce site, click-through nexus is triggered. Example: New York was the first state to establish clickthrough nexus. Under the New York legislation, web advertisements that promote in-state sales trigger nexus.

Consumer Use Notification Some Amazon laws also include a consumer use tax notification component, which requires vendors to notify consumers of their use tax obligations on their purchases where they were not charged sales tax and/or to report in-state sales to revenue authorities. Consumer use tax is a tax paid by the consumer on tangible items, for which they were not required to pay sales tax by out-of-state retailers. Example: For the second year in a row, Amazon has sent a friendly email reminder to its customers in Tennessee, reminding them to pay use tax on their purchases.

Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 The Marketplace Fairness bill currently before Congress would expand state authority beyond click-through, affiliate, or general Amazon laws. If it becomes law, the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 would allow states that adhere to sales tax simplification rules to require multi-state online retailers to collect sales tax if they exceed a certain remote sales dollar threshold (currently proposed at $1,000,000 in gross annual receipts). On May 6, 2013 the Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 by a vote of 69 to 27…If this bill becomes law, states would gain authority to make remote sellers collect sales tax, some within 180 days of the bill’s passage.

regulations, substantially cuts down time to file and close the month, and gives you a system for exemption (reseller) certificate management. We do it all. And when it comes to understanding and staying in compliance with taxability rules, Avalara walks you through the changing landscape of sales tax.

The AvaTax suite includes: AvaTax Calc which provides address validation and delivers real-time sales tax calculations based on up-to-date sales and use tax rules including: sourcing rules, product taxability and jurisdiction assignment. AvaTax Certs is a complete exemption certificate management service. From wizard-driven online collection to associating the correct certificate with transactions, AvaTax Certs ensures you maintain compliance and reduce your audit risk. AvaTax Returns reduces the time your company spends on sales tax return processing. AvaTax Returns automatically processes e-file, hard-copy and Streamlined Sales Tax returns for businesses of all sizes.

But don’t just take our word for it. Over 10,000 businesses have outsourced and automated their sales tax management to AvaTax. With all of the changes going on at a state and federal level, it may soon be the end of Nexus as we know it. Be prepared. Read more by downloading a free white paper:

www.avalara.com/BellwetherEndOfNexus

One thing is clear…businesses can no longer assume that just because they do not have a physical presence in a state, they are free from sales tax obligations. Thus, it is more important than ever to proactively plan and stay ahead of the curve. By optimizing sales tax processes with an automated solution, such as AvaTax by Avalara, businesses can stop worrying about what additional changes may be heading their way! Prepared Businesses Use AvaTax. End-to-End sales tax compliance. AvaTax by Avalara is a suite of products that replaces manual look-up tables, the need to stay on top of rules and

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INDUSTRYNEWS

Scanco Helps You Achieve Your Dreams of Warehouse Optimization by Tess Boros

ake a moment to picture your own version of the perfect warehouse. Do images of perfectly stocked shelves come to your mind? Are you picturing items being tracked through every stage of the warehouse processes? Are you imagining a system of order rather than your current system of chaos? The perfect warehouse is not created overnight. It requires a lot of planning, hard work, and dedication. If your goal is to build the perfect warehouse, you will need to begin by optimizing your current warehouse processes. When properly carried out and with the help of the right tools, warehouse optimization can increase your companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall profitability, efficiency, and order accuracy. Here at Scanco, we believe that the most successful companies are the most knowledgeable

companies.

For

true

warehouse optimization to work, you need to have the proper tools in place and need to be able to locate your items and orders in an instant. Warehouse management systems, barcoding software, and barcode scanners can help you achieve your own version of perfection and help you attain higher levels of warehouse optimization. Keep the following characteristics in mind as you prepare to transform your warehouse to the warehouse of your dreams.

An Optimized Warehouse is a Technology-Driven Warehouse Over the past few years, we have seen technology grow and evolve to fit every business need. Items in the warehouse can now be tracked using barcode scanners and scanning software. Processes can be made

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

more efficient with warehouse management systems (WMS),

evaluating your current picking methods, and implementing

and mobile computers have enabled warehouse workers to

cycle counts to replace the once-a-year inventory count. With

view item and order information wherever they are in the

an organized warehouse, your workers will be able to focus

warehouse.

on improving warehouse processes and, as a result, achieve

The most successful warehouses today can contribute their success to one thing: an optimized warehouse. An optimized warehouse is one in which its processes are made more efficient through the use of the proper technology. Warehouse automation tools, such as barcoding software, WMS systems, and mobile computers, can have a profound impact on picking accuracy, order turn-around times, labor costs, productivity, and profitability.

warehouse optimization.

An Optimized Warehouse is an Automated Warehouse If your warehouse is currently operating by manual processes, you will never achieve full warehouse optimization. Manual processes lead to wasted time, duplicated efforts, and unnecessary costs. If you suspect that your current processes are causing you to lose valuable time and money, it may be

The barcode label, for instance, is the backbone of most warehouse management systems today and can hold quite a bit of information about any product in the warehouse. When used properly, barcode labels can track the progression of inventory throughout your warehouse from the moment it hits your dock. If you receive a product without a barcode label, you can print one for the product and choose the information you wish to be imbedded in the barcode label.

time to re-evaluate your processes and procedures. When you are operating with automated processes and procedures, your warehouse is operating at maximum efficiency. Sit down and determine the changes that need to take place to achieve an optimized warehouse. Could your warehouse benefit from using an automated picking solution? Are you wasting time in the reporting process? Do your workers spend too much time searching for and locating

Once the barcode label has been scanned in the receiving

items? An automated warehouse can solve these problems

process, the product can be put away, moved, and picked

and lead you to full optimization.

using the barcode on the item. This guarantees that your you to view the products currently stored in your warehouse

An Optimized Warehouse uses Scanco’s Automation

and see where in the warehouse they are located. Your

Scanco believes in making your dream of the perfect warehouse

inventory never gets lost or misplaced. Barcode labels allow

warehouse management system will track the movement of your inventory through the warehouse and deliver real-time information back to your ERP system, giving you the visibility you need to make the right decisions for your company.

An Optimized Warehouse is an Organized Warehouse You can have all the tools and related technology you want, but if your warehouse is not organized, it will never be fully optimized. Take the time to study the current layout of your warehouse and pinpoint any areas of concern. From picking methods that are not appropriate for your industry to bin locations that increase workload, there are many ways in which warehouse efficiency can be decreased by a warehouse’s current processes.

come true, which is why we have created the Automation Series for Sage 100 ERP and Warehouse Automation for Sage 500 ERP. Offering Sage 100 ERP and Sage 500 ERP users an affordable and easy-to-use barcoding solution, Scanco’s Automation works with users to automate warehouse transfers, physical counts, shipping and receiving. With Scanco’s Automation you have access to real-time reporting, giving you the ability to view what users are in process of picking, picked, and fulfilled orders. When an important customer calls about their order status, the answer will be at the click of a mouse. Help your company achieve full warehouse optimization today with Scanco’s line of Warehouse Automation solutions. With its robust reporting capabilities and barcode tracking

If you suspect that your processes are not at the level at which they should be, you should consider reorganizing your warehouse. This could include revisiting bin locations, re-

system, you will not be disappointed. To learn more about how Scanco can help you optimize your warehouse go to: www.blytheco.com/sage100/scanco.asp.

bell•weth•er -noun: one who takes initiative or leadership

INDUSTRYNEWS

Why E-Commerce with ERP Integration is Important by Brian Nunes

commerce with ERP integration plugs a business’s ecommerce site directly into their ERP, allowing customers access to a wide array of information. An ERP system holds specific information about pricing, payment, shipping and history for each individual customer. It also tracks inventory, sourcing, financials, HR, warehousing and manufacturing information, giving a business anbyenterpriseGinger Kittinger level software solution. What’s missing in ERP software is an innate ability to interface with ecommerce. That’s what Website Pipeline does and here is why having this piece is so vital. Existing Customers – Protect and Serve.

Customers not only want access 24 hours a day, they expect it. If one business does not meet their expectations there is always another business that will meet that customer’s needs. Offering account access via the ecommerce site with history, customer-specific pricing, quantity discounts, tax schedules, product/SKU aliases, product information, inventory levels, shipment tracking and payment details gives customers the ability to manage many aspects of their account whenever they want without relying on a representative to access their information. Attract Similar Customers. Existing customers exhibit predictable online behaviors and personas that can be leveraged to create content specific to those personas. Using that content to create web pages, which cast a net for new traffic in search engines, will attract similar customers. Product pages, fed by product information directly from the ERP, provide additional data for the search engines to access. Reduce Costs, Improve Efficiency. Ecommerce with ERP integration provides a personal web portal experience creating a more efficient and timely transaction for the customer that requires less direct contact. The majority of interactions between customers and employees have to do with checking prices or inventory, researching products, placing orders, tracking shipments, requesting receipts or return labels, inquiring about account history and paying invoices. Ecommerce with ERP integration grants the customer access to all this information from any internet-connected device, which reduces customer service

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

demands significantly. Without the hours spent interfacing with customers and entering data into the ERP, employees have time to focus on new customer acquisition and other business objectives. New Markets. In today’s marketplace, online sales show year-over-year gains where traditional avenues generally post losses. If a business is not already poised for online growth, they are behind the eight ball. Ecommerce with ERP integration is vital for expansion because it keeps data up to date uniformly across all business software. This shared mass of data is more flexible than having individual solutions. It is far easier to adapt one system than multiple systems. Ecommerce has risen over the last decade, and today businesses are adapting their systems to include mobile platforms. With Website Pipeline’s complete Ecommerce with ERP integration solution, adding mobile capability is as simple as installing a new module. As technology evolves, Website Pipeline continually solves new challenges and creates modules that can easily be incorporated into existing sites on their platform. Ecommerce is a significant investment and it is important to ensure that this asset can keep up with new technology. Website Pipeline offers an adaptable solution that communicates with a business’s enterprise resource planning software.

You can learn more by visiting www.blytheco.com/websitepipeline

Built-in Logic Makes Sense of Budget Allocations Consolidated Services Group, Inc. (“CSG”) has more than 25 years experience in the Medical Claims Management industry, and provides Managed Care, Utilization Review, as well as a proprietary PPO to auto liability, workers’ compensation and group health insurers. FIndInG the RIGht MIddle GROUnd When it comes to budgeting tools, CSG Assistant Controller Frances Farella has used a lot of them, from a low-tech spreadsheet-based system to high-end software like Hyperion. When the company that she worked for was acquired by CSG, she realized neither was ideal. When she moved to the combined organization, Farella used Excel to build the budget. “After the first year of using Excel as our primary budgeting tool, I realized it was going to be the last. I couldn’t go through another year of Excel. It was painful,” Farella said. CSG uses many allocations in its budgeting and finance, to reflect the different branches and shared services of the company. “Excel just couldn’t handle the allocations upon which our budget is built. Whenever I had to adjust an allocation, it took forever to make a change and flow things through properly.” Farella went shopping for a solution in between spreadsheets and big-company applications. “I wasn’t looking for another 6-figure package. After doing our due diligence, we decided Budget Maestro was what we needed,” she explained.

AllOCAtIOnS MAde eASy With two legal entities — the parent CSG and CHN — and multiple divisions under the corporate umbrella, Finance uses allocations regularly to spread employee time and direct expenses across more than one company or division. Unlike with Excel, Farella can now manage these allocations and related changes easily. For example, one person’s salary could be allocated to five different departments. With Budget Maestro, Farella simply allocates a specific percentage to each one. “If I want to change the percentages being charged to each department, or change the departments in the allocation, I can do it very easily in Budget Maestro and the system automatically recalculates everything. It’s a simple process.

Excel just couldn’t handle the allocations upon which our budget is built. - Frances Farella, Assistant Controller

Faster, easier, Better Budgeting & Reporting Budgeting and reporting have become a breeze for Farella, who uses Sage 100 as her General Ledger system. Using the Import feature, Farella easily and quickly imports the numbers into Budget Maestro so she can run an analysis of actuals to plan. Now, when she makes changes to the budget, to the organization or to the allocations, everything flows through thanks to Budget Maestro’s built-in financial logic. CSG’s department managers are responsible for their own operations and budgets. The Finance team developed custom reports in Budget Maestro for 20 different departments, to help managers track actual vs. budget results. “The reports are built on the templates that come with Budget Maestro, and allows our Finance staff to drill down into their numbers if needed. It took someone a week to build and prepare those reports in Excel. Now, at the end of the month, the whole process to import actuals and run reports takes two hours at most,” said Farella. “Since we’ve recently implemented Link Maestro for Sage 100, it has even further reduced the time for importing of actuals.” The improved reporting capability makes the monthly closing of the books easier too. “We’re able to generate our actual vs. budget results within hours after we close, and drill drown to analyze significant variance fluctuations.” “During budgeting season, from September to December, our Finance staff uses Budget Maestro almost every day. It’s definitely helped us in facilitating the budgeting process. In short, Budget Maestro has been good for us.”

View Budget Maestro for Sage in action: http://go.centage.com/blythecoquicktour © 2013 Centage Corporation. Centage and Budget Maestro are registered trademarks of Centage. All other brands and products mentioned are registered trademarks of their respective holder(s). All rights reserved.

About Centage Centage™ Corporation is a leading provider of easy to use budgeting and forecasting software for small to medium sized organizations. Since 2001, thousands of managers at all levels use the Budget Maestro™ family of solutions to streamline their budgeting, forecasting, financial consolidation, performance analysis, and reporting process to improve the accuracy and efficiency of their overall business planning process. Centage Corporation is headquartered in Natick, MA. Connect with Centage: Web | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Blog.

HUMANRESOURCES

Solution Spotlight:

Keeping Track of All Things Human by Ginger Kittinger

hether your company has 50 employees or 5,000 employees, you have a lot to monitor and track. How do other HR Professionals do it? The right technology can make the difference… For the Sage HRMS user, some great products can really help you stay on top of things. HR Actions, Employee Self Service and Sage Alerts & Workflow are the top tools that Susan Jimenez, Blytheco Senior HRMS Consultant, told me about.

HR Actions If you want to tame the paper lion, this module can help. HR Actions allows you to create paperless forms using any field from Sage HRMS, so your employees can give relevant info to the Human Resources team electronically. Then you can run them through any required approval processes and once complete, import directly into your system. It allows you to track a form through every step – you will always know exactly where it sits. To make sure you can enforce company policy, the workflow includes business rules, so nothing gets by. A real-time dashboard lets you see the status of every form and gives you control at every step.

more. It also gives managers a view of their direct and in-direct reports, all which saves you time. It has mobile access which includes custom reports and data views, which is great for remote employees.

Sage Alerts and Workflow If you feel you are always playing catch-up, Sage Alerts & Workflow can help. It provides a way for your company to automate business processes and ensure you don’t overlook important business decisions. It allows you to: •

Automate reports to management and supervisors

•

Monitor data for any type of activity required, such as reviews, certifications or anniversaries

•

Identify trends or problems across the entire business

•

Automate reminders to keep ahead of the game – it’s that nudge the tells you when you need to do something

Sage Alerts and Workflow is your “invisible assistant” automatically identifying and responding to critical business conditions. So don’t fret, you can do it! Do some research and find the right tools for your company!

Employee Self Service This is a great way for your employees to be able to take care of themselves to a certain extent. They can access their personal data, like recent pay stubs, current pay/deductions, benefits and 30

Bellwether Magazine | Third Quarter 2013

More info at: www.blytheco.com/sage-hrms/hr_actions.asp www.blytheco.com/abra/abra_employee.asp www.blytheco.com/abra/knowledgesync.asp

Being Re-worked

Give us 8 days, and we’ll automate your customer ser vice. www.websitepipeline.com/8days

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5564 Hilliard Rome Office Park Hilliard, OH 43026 800.425.9843

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going on in your business; are you too close to see?

Being too close to your everyday business demands can distort reality. Let Blytheco help you gain a new perspective on your business processes today. To learn more about how to leverage your current business system, download our fact filled eBook at the website below.

www.blytheco.com/blyopti Visit us at booth #696 at Sage Summit in Washington, D.C.

Process Produces Performance