Eureka Solutions has completed the installation of business intelligence system Qlikview for major UK independent musical instruments distributor, Westside Distribution.

Westside, operating across the UK and Ireland from its Glasgow headquarters, is a long-standing user of the Sage 200 Suite and wanted to enhance their internal reporting systems.

IT manager John McAndrew needed a system which allowed company directors to call up sales and stock data quickly, as well as enabling account managers working in the field to access real-time information when communicating with clients.

Westside was founded more than 15 years ago, and distributes guitars, drums and numerous accessories to music retailers across the UK and Ireland. Many instruments are imported from overseas. The nature of the business – carrying more than 10 000 stock items – means that Westside’s team need to track stock, deliveries and sales very closely.

“We spoke to Eureka about integrating a business intelligence solution with our existing IT system, which includes Sage. It was important that this could be done if possible without a major database management job,” explained John McAndrew.

“Qlikview has the capacity to draw data from numerous existing sources and platforms, and deliver visual information in a very presentable way,” he added.

Eureka’s Managing Director Alistair Livingstone explained that Westside was an excellent example of a company benefiting from the integration of internal data and business intelligence using Qlikview.

“Our expertise as a Sage partner has received a real boost with our adoption of Qlikview as a complementary system which can draw data and present it in such an easy way for the user.

“Clients like Westside have built their reputation on their ability to respond to customer needs quickly and appropriately. To do this they have quite complex systems of buying, importing, managing and distributing goods, and they need to do all that efficiently. With Qlikview we have the means to deliver really first-class tools to make those jobs easier.”

John McAndrew of Westside praised Eureka for its role in implementing the system. “We know Eureka, and we know their reputation well. As always, the team performed above and beyond the call of duty. It’s always good when you can turn to a vendor for help, knowing that you will always get a positive response.”

To find our more information on business intelligence and QlikView contact Carolyn Clark on 01355 581 960.

Another requirement was the ability to store an available letter and number against each Stock Item in order to quickly add these onto a Sales Order and Purchase Order. Quantities can then be typed onto a grid and added directly onto the Sales Order without the extra step of generating a Stock Item of every combination.

Stock Item Amendments:
Each character variance is held against the stock item record. An extra tab being was added onto each stock record which held valid character combination for each particular Stock Item.
Additional Stock Item Dimensions can be imported via a CSV file import routine.

Each variation of a Stock Item is assured to have the same selling price as items held against the stock item.

Sales Order Amendments:
Once the Stock Items were set up they were then used to quickly add stock variations into both Sales Orders and Purchase Orders. An additional button was provided on both the sales order and purchase order screens called “add dim items”. This allows for quick searching of a particular product by code or name and adding it quickly onto sales order by typing values directly into the grid.

Modifying our original Stock Plus module to meet the needs and wants of our customer has created a more manageable system which enables the business to quickly and easily store the varying dimensions of each Stock Item.

For more details about our bespoke solutions please contact the office on 01355 581 960 or email development@eurekasoutions.co.uk

Reduce your postage costs by sending documents electronically from Sage via Spindle Professional!

April 29th, 2012 saw the Royal Mail drastically increase the price of stamps.

First class stamps have increased from 46p to 60p and second class from 36p to 50p.

Let us show you how Spindle Professional can help your business to avoid the costs of postage, envelopes and expensive printing with our Online Webinar!

This total document distribution solution saves the business valuable time and money. Spindle is an intelligent windows print driver that works with practically any application that can print. It electronically sends invoices, Sales/ Purchase orders, statements, delivery notes and many more to multiple locations by email, fax or print.

 Used by over 14,000 users within the UK and Europe, Spindle streamlines and automates communications ensuring all relevant people, departments and systems automatically receive copies of specific documents. It provides better control of the storage, retrieval and distribution of your documents, storing all invoices as PDF’s.

Sign up to our Spindle Professional Webinar

When?

10th May, 2.30pm – 3.30pm

A summary of the podcast is outlined below:

• QlikView can work with any source of data including bespoke systems and Excel spreadsheets
• Our customers are “overawed” by how simple QlikView is to use is with intuitive “point and click” dashboards meaning users don’t need to rely on IT to run reports.
• QlikView as a new kind of BI tool. Users don’t have to use it in a “hierarchical” way, they can start anywhere within their data and discover answers to things they would never have thought to ask.
• Business Intelligence is applicable to all sizes of companies, not just large enterprises.

Listen to the podcast

Are you drowning in Data?
Struggling to get vital information from your systems?

Eureka Solutions are out to tackle all of your reporting problems with our new
FREE Reporting Workshop for Sage 200 users!

At Eureka we are focused on ensuring our customers have the right information when and where they need it. We understand how vital it is for you to gain access and make sense of the data held within your business systems. We appreciate that gaining a true understanding of how your business is performing enables better decision making and opportunities to run the business more profitably and efficiently.

The Reporting Workshop is designed to give you, our customer’s insight into a variety of options available for reporting within Sage 200. Including Sage 200 Standard Reporting, Sage 200 Workspaces, Sage 200 Business Intelligence, Excel Reporting and Power Pivot and QlikView Business Discovery.

When?

Thursday 24th May 2012, 9.30am – 12.30pm

Where?

James Watt Conference Centre, Scottish Enterprise Technology Park, East Kilbride, G75 0QD.  Free Parking and refreshments provided.

How do I register?

Please either Click the Reporting Workshop Button above, email anna.young@eurekasolutions.co.uk  or call the office on 01355 581 960.

As organisations grow communication of information throughout the business becomes more difficult. Systems can become disjointed with each department using different solutions. This can result in poor information flows, which in turn negatively impact on business performance.

Data is King

It is often argued, and rightly so, that data is the most important commodity that a business has. At Eureka Solutions we take this one step further. Our strap-line, “Turning data into information”, means that data needs to be turned into something meaningful. This meaningful insight can then be acted on.

With information critical to the running of your organisation, it is imperative that it is managed effectively. Having multiple systems for sales, accounts, order processing and warehousing for example can also result in inconsistencies throughout these disparate systems (not to mention increasing the cost of data management through duplication).

As well as causing data errors, disparate systems can also result in inefficiency with poor cross-departmental communications at the heart of the issue. Different departments can have a different view of what is happening in the organisation and this can impact negatively on performance.

The Cost of Inefficiency

According to a recent article on MyCustomer.com an Experian QAS study has found that poor data costs firms £1 in every £6 as a result of duplicate mailings, lost contacts, missed sales opportunities and lost customers.

Consider the infographic above. With disjointed systems different departments could have a very different opinion of this fictional customer. As far as sales and marketing are concerned, the customer is valuable to the company with a good ROI on marketing spend. However, if they were aware that the customer costs a lot to support and don’t pay their bills, how valuable would they perceive the customer to be then?

Furthermore if the support manager knew they were on hold the company would have saved £1500 and 30 hours of support time which could have been better used on other more ‘valuable’ customers.

Integrated systems give businesses a complete view of their customers which allow strategic decisions to be made about them. If everyone in the organisation had the whole picture about the customer in the above example, the value placed on them as a customer would likely be much less. As a result the strategic decision about whether to target this customer for growth would be very different.

The Customer Experience

In many organisations the customer facing staff are often sales executives who have no access to accounts information. This can have a negative effect on the customer experience. For example, if a customer calls about a simple invoice or order status query this information may not be readily available. The sales rep may have to put them on hold until they found out the answer or even have to ask the relevant department to call the customer back. As well as being inefficient, in an era where providing an excellent customer experience is business critical, not arming customer facing staff with the information they need to effectively service inbound enquiries can have a detrimental impact on the customer experience.

These are just some examples of how important it is to have well integrated business systems and I could have given many more. I’m sure we can all think of a time when having better information flows across your organisation would have been beneficial to you, or indeed where you have been serviced ineffectively due to poor departmental communication.

I’d be interested in hearing your own personal experiences and welcome your comments.

Euan Harris is Marketing Team Leader at Eureka Solutions, a business software company specialising in developing and implementing integrated business systems. For more information please call 01355 581960 or alternatively you can follow Euan on Twitter.

Looking at a recent blog by Sean Farrington it reminded me of the problems faced by many businesses in regards to their data and how they use it. More times than not business users get lost in the multitudes of data clogging up their systems. Useful information that could be beneficial to the success of the business gets lost in over complicated and confusing systems. Ordinary users trying to carry out day to day tasks are unable to understand the perplexity of the data and therefore have to base their decisions on gut instinct rather than on facts and figures.

Organisations have to be more intelligence in how they collect and interrupt their data. Having a lot of data doesn’t guarantee success; it’s how the business uses and analyses the data that is important. A business discovery system can be deployed in order to help tackle the problem of data and is becoming more popular in increasing business agility with quick measurable success.

Business intelligence shouldn’t be confusing. It should ‘empower ordinary people to derive extraordinary insights’. It should encourage users to explore their data and discover information.

The data held within our own business systems is highly valuable. It is living data that can help a business user decide what to do tomorrow, today, right now.  Analysing your own business figures can show every angle of your business, the strengths and weaknesses. This gives users the intelligence to make effective changes to the business in order to make it more profitable, productive and secure.

Business Discovery gives every user the right tools to extract and manipulate data, turning it into information. It carries insight to everyone within the organisation, giving every user the ability to make better informed decisions.

Business Discovery is business intelligence for the people. It pulls data from multiple systems and stores it all within one database. This data is associative meaning that every piece of information is linked. It stops the user working for the information, letting the information work for them!

In a world where everyone wants everything right now, Business Discovery is a fast and reliable system that empowers every user to derive their own insights, make better informed decisions and operate leaner, smarter and more profitable.

For more information on any of the above topics please email anna.young@eurekasolutions.o.uk or phone the office on 01355 581 960.

As standard in Sage 200, you are not able to change the warehouse for an entire order but instead have to amend each individual sales order line to the new warehouse as the default warehouse automatically deactivates after a SOP order line has been added.
The customer was also looking to have the ability to change the warehouse on a Sales Order header to another warehouse which will automatically change every line on the Sales Order to a new warehouse.

Due to back to back Purchase Orders, the customer was looking to have the ability to amend every Purchase Order line on the related purchase to the same warehouse.  Again as per the Sales Order default warehouse it does not allow the header warehouse to be changed. A similar requirement, as above, is required on the Purchase Order side. 

Using our addons we tailored a solution to meet the requirements of the customer.

In terms of the Sales Order Warehouse, our developers began by amending the ‘Sales Order Create New Order Full Form’ and ‘SOP Amend Order Form’ to include an additional drop down field called ‘Warehouse Update’. This drop down included a button labelled ‘Apply’.

When the customer wanted to change the warehouse for all lines on the Sage 200 order they selected new warehouse within the new drop down and hit apply. This looped through all the lines on the Sales Order and if applied logic is followed correctly the default warehouse will be amended for each line on the order. The lines that fail the applied logic are highlighted in red.

If the Order is allocated, dispatched or invoiced it cannot be amended.  In order to overcome this problem a ‘De-Allocate All’ button was applied which was used to remove the allocation for all lines on the order. Once the orders are back to an unallocated line the routine allows for warehouse amendment.
The ‘POP Order Create New Order Form’ and ‘POP Amend Order Form’ were also amended to include an additional drop down field called ‘Warehouse Update’ with the same button labelled ‘Apply’.

As with the Sales Order if the user wanted to change the Warehouse for all lines in the order they would select the new warehouse and hit apply. This looped though all the lines on the Purchase Order and if applied logic is followed the default warehouse on each line is amended.
The applied logic will not amend lines which are received.

These are two separate routines, not linked in any way. Even in the event of a back to back order the user would have to first amend the Sales Order Processing Warehouse and then enter the Purchase Order Processing routine and run.

The bespoke work carried out created a time saving solution to a customer’s problem, tailored around their specific needs. If you have any problems and are looking for a solution please let us know. We are only too happy to help!

For more details about our bespoke solutions please contact the office on 01355 581 960 or email development@eurekasoutions.co.uk

Lunch and Learn Seminar – Tuesday the 15th of May, 11.45am-1.45pm

QlikView is a whole new approach to Business Intelligence

QlikView’s Business Discovery Platform from QlikTech has simplified the process of accessing and analysing business information. It makes it easy to view dynamic dashboards and conduct interactive analysis with data from any source, enabling you to make faster, smarter decisions to improve business performance.

Why Should I Attend?

Do you base crucial business decisions on gut instinct a lot of the time because you simply cannot get the right factual data to hand when you need it? You are not alone! Many businesses suffer from a lack of factual, timely & meaningful information about their business when they need it most.

QlikView can alleviate these problems and allow you to gather, store, analyse, interact with, and report on crucial business information. It gives you access to the critical business information held within your organisation.  This information can then be turned into action to foster better, more informed decision making and help you solve key business problems.

Event Details:

QlikView: the Next Generation of Business Intelligence
Date: 15th May 2012
Time: 11.45am-1.45pm
Venue: James Watt Building, Scottish Enterprise Technology Park, East Kilbride, G75 0QD

For more information call the office on 01355 581 960 or email anna.young@eurekasolutions.co.uk

Their Requirements included:

•    The budgets to be imported for both costs and revenue
•    The need to record budgets at project, phase and project item level
•    The ability to import budgets by period where a valid period exists.

To avoid any future data corruptions, full validation of the Sage 200 Project Accounting module business objectives would have to comply.

Solution.
The import routine was designed in Sage 200 2011 and made use of the Sage 200 business objectives.  The new import included an import form which allowed for the import of budgets into Project Accounting. The form launched from within the standard Sage 200 menu structure with the standard user access restrictions still being applied.

The new form allowed for the manual import of budgets against projects. The user was then able to choose whether to validate the project budgets to make sure the file is correct and not import the items or validate and import.
Once the chose was made the user would press ‘OK’ launching a file import from which a CSV (Comma Seperated Values) file must be selected.
The routine imports the budgets into Sage 200 Project Accounting, against the existing projects only – if a project does not exist it must be manually imported to allow for the import to succeed.

Budgets can be imported at project level, phase level or project item level as required

The import file would then be in the form of a CSV file. The value that was entered would automatically be checked and would override sub revenue budgets – all values imported into previous budgets would be lost.

All the validations would need to succeed; otherwise the file would not be able to be imported. An error screen would be provided which would state any rows in the CSV file which have failed to import and the line number.

The bespoke work created for our customers enabled their users to import their specific budgets against projects within Sage 200 Project Accounting.

For more details about our bespoke solutions please contact the office on 01355 581 960 or email development@eurekasoutions.co.uk