'Collaborative Commerce': ERP, CRM, e-Proc, and SCM Unite! A Series Study

In the early 90's, ERP came of age. Everyone had to have the functionality ERP packages promised. Since then, as Web and Internet technologies have matured, CRM on the front end, and e-Procurement and Supply Chain Management on the back end, these packages have come into their own.

Now in 2001, the catchphrase is "Collaborative Commerce," where we unite all of the above elements into one coherent system within and between organizations. This is the Big Kahuna, the zero latency, fully transparent, 360 degree exposure that is the stuff systems integrators dream of. Is it here? Are the technologies mature enough? Simple enough? In this part of the series, we take a look at the effort Baan and its new parent company, Invensys, are making in the push.

This, the third of a series of articles on Collaborative Commerce (C-Commerce) takes a look at the effort Baan and its new parent company, Invensys, are making in the push.

The first examined what it is and can be.

The second looked at J.D. Edwards.

A Look at Baan and Invensys

During much of 2000, in a series of TEC articles written by P. J. Jakovljevic, we all got the sense that Baan was in serious trouble. Mr. Jakovljevic noted that Europe's number two ERP vendor had been encountering sagging revenues and experienced seven quarterly losses in a row, all stemming from a seeming inability to properly digest and synthesize the corporate acquisitions it had made in the previous several years. These acquisitions were: Berclain, a Supply Chain Management (SCM) vendor, 1996; Beologic, a product configurator vendor, 1997, Aurum Software, a Sales Force Automation (SFA) vendor, 1997, and Caps Logistics, a transportation and distribution planning and management vendor, 1998. For more info see Baan - What Will The Future In Invensys' Stable Bring? Part 1: About Baan.

Mr. Jakovljevic particularly noted Baan's acquisition of Aurum, and suggested that if it wanted to survive as an independent ERP and e-Business force, or if it were to position itself for a takeover, it would be best to, among other things, divest itself of Aurum and its holdings (only at that stage when they did not have an imminent buyer!). With both the CEO and CFO of Baan gone in abrupt resignations, it seemed that Baan had some critical strategic thinking and moving to do to turn the ship around.

Note: You can access these articles by doing a search on "Baan".

Invensys Sweeps in and Clears out the Cobwebs

Invensys plc, long focused on automation and controls for manufacturing and industrial companies, made a surprising cash offer for Baan in June 2000. With what they were calling a 'Sensor to Boardroom' move, Invensys envisioned being the provisioner of automation and productivity tools from "web site to factory floor." They established a new division called ISS (Invensys Software and Systems), swept Baan under their arm, and started running at full tilt to show the world how they could bring the Baan and Invensys universes together.

Strategic Decisions and Acquisitions

Both Baan and Invensys moved quickly. Baan made a couple of moves around the same time as the takeover bid was happening: they negotiated a strategic alliance with Seagate Software (now known as Crystal Decisions) to make that company's Seagate Info their enterprise reporting solution, and they established a reseller and development alliance agreement with Top Tier, a maker of Enterprise Integration Portal (EIP) software.

In August 2000, Robert Karulf was named to lead a new CRM division, to be based in Golden, Colorado. Bruce Henderson, division chief executive of ISS, noted: "Mr. Karulf's appointment demonstrates Invensys' commitment to growing the customer relationship management (CRM) segment of Baan's e-enterprise business." Baan's president, Laurens van der Tang, said, "This appointment creates a dedicated CRM business unit that sharpens our focus on this important e-business market segment. We continue to be committed to delivering integrated enterprise solutions from front office to back office."

Additional moves in the ensuing months solidified the notion that Baan was in the C-Commerce game. In November 2000, Baan announced the establishment of a strategic partnership with Business Objects for E-Business Intelligence (management reporting and decision support tools).

In January 2001, Baan unveiled a suite of products, called iBaan, which is fully web-based across the entire integrated Baan. They released iBaan OpenWorld 2.0, including a new XML-based framework as "the embedded integration technology for its new generation iBaan suite of Internet-enabled value web collaboration solutions." The suite includes multiple components, with the aim of delivering Business Object Interfaces (BOI's) to integrate Baan solutions with 3rd-party solutions via graphical data mapping.

They established iBaan Portal, designed to provide employees with customized views of Enterprise-specific, web-based information. They also announced a new suite called iBaan Collaboration, a set of Internet-enabled tools designed to support "rapid configuration of open, flexible components to support emerging collaborative commerce business models." Pre-designed "collaboration templates" focus on collaboration efforts in the Supply Chain and Logistics spaces.

In February 2001, Baan added iBaan E-Service Remote, a web-based solution that enables a company's field force with the ability to document field actions and results on a laptop, PDA, or desktop computer for later synching with the main database.

The Vision

Baan is now iBaan, fully focused on the Internet via Portals and web technologies, across CRM, ERP, and SCM spaces. Every product has been renamed with a leading 'i'. The list includes:

* iBaan Sales - Including ERP, Product Configurator and Pricing Modeler, Sales, and Marketing pieces

* iBaan Procurement - Including ERP and E-Procurement modules

* iBaan Planning - Including ERP and SCM pieces iBaan Distribution

* iBaan Finance

* iBaan Service - including multi-channel contact center, a knowledge base, the ability to accept, track, and intelligently route service requests, and iBaan E-Service Remote, as mentioned above.

In addition:

* iBaan Portal - Enterprise portal for corporate information for employees

* iBaan Business Intelligence - Including "Enterprise Reporting" from Crystal Decisions and "Tactical" Reporting from Business Objects.

Not to be left out of the mix are the pieces that support the outside world; to help the universe of third-parties work in tandem with Baan (or should I say, iBaan):

* iBaan B2B Server - XML and Document Repository. Can either be used EDI-style (like a mailbox where messages are stored between partners), or in "push" or "pull" mode for information sharing;

* iBaan Collaboration - Streamlined application links along the Demand and Supply Chain

* iBaan OpenWorld - Business process and application integration levels of inter-communication.

How Complete The Vision?

What seems to have happened is that Baan, more than anything, has been organized and motivated by Invensys to "go for it," to go for the half-vision they were trying to promulgate in the press and the industry through the half-hearted and not-so-warmly received product rollout of Baan FrontOffice. It's quite possible that the top guard were, themselves, unsure of stepping beyond the safety net of Baan's stronghold in ERP. But Tender Feet were shown the door, and Men Who Walk Over Hot Coals came in with the Invensys wind. Refocused, re-energized, and going for the 'Net. (see, Baan Achieves A Speedy Recovery Despite The Tough Times).

Now, that's all well and good. But the add-on products are not fundamentally changed from what they were a year ago. Baan still has Aurum at the core of their Sales Force Automation pieces, Apropos Technologies at the core of their customer service and support offerings, a fairly weak, non-real-time field force solution, Berclain at the heart of their SCM tools, and not one but two Business Intelligence tools from two different vendors, Crystal Decisions and Business Objects. TEC doesn't sense that all systems are assimilated into Baan R&D hands and are being given equal treatment. And, still no native HR/payroll solution, a surprising and lasting gap in their product line that prevents them from stamping the "One Stop Shop" logo on their iBaan suite.

We applaud, however, their aggressive move to allow third-parties to come to the iBaan show through iBaan B2B Server, Collaboration, and OpenWorld. These pieces are welcome and necessary in the C-Commerce world of interconnectivity. See, It Is Possible - SAP And Baan Strange Bedfellows.


SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/collaborative-commerce-erp-crm-e-proc-and-scm-unite-a-series-study-baan-and-parent-company-invensys-16474/

INFIMACS Becoming Ever More RELEVANT For Project-Based Industries. Part 1: Recent Developments

On September 26, as a result of partnering with its build-to-order, discrete manufacturing and maintenance organization customers, Relevant Business Systems, (www.relevant.com) a privately held ERP vendor for small to medium discrete complex manufacturing companies, has enhanced its INFIMACS II ERP Business Planning module by providing all of the functions required to prepare forecasts for products, create master production schedules (MPS) and evaluate the impact of the MPS on company resources, using rough-cut capacity planning (RCCP). Several MPS runs may be executed and saved without impacting the rest of the database, allowing users to consider alternatives, review what-if impacts and select the most appropriate production plan.

According to the company, INFIMACS II Business Planning also provides a sophisticated resource requirements planning (RRP) tool. Manufacturing resources, such as parts, labor, machine time, cash flow and maintenance hours, can be identified and entered into the system. To check capacity constraints, INFIMACS II compares this resource plan with the production plan to illustrate the projected load that a given MPS will place on the organization. If this rough cut indicates that resources do not exist to meet the MPS being tested, the user may fine-tune the MPS to bring the available resources into balance with production demands.

Furthermore, production planning can incorporate multiple forecasts, such as marketing and sales, spares and statistical trends, to streamline the process of moving from department forecasts to an overall production forecast. For increased flexibility, demand forecasts can be entered manually or developed by the system based on the statistical analysis of a part's usage history. When developed statistically, the user can specify whether the forecast anticipates actual demand level by period or a set monthly rate. In either case, the user defines a review horizon and time increment.

This is the last of a slew of enhancements Relevant has introduced to its flagship INFIMACS (Integrated Financial & Manufacturing Control System) product in the period over the last 12 months.

Note:
This is Part One of a two-part note on developments at Relevant Business Systems. Part Two will discuss the Market Impact and make User Recommendations.

Recent Product Enhancements

Unlike with most applications vendors, Relevant has not consolidated the product enhancements into a formal major product release schedule. Instead, as new functionality is added to the product, customers have immediate access to the upgrades. Some of more notable recent product enhancements are:

* In-depth Estimating Management - Users can generate estimates for new or existing products, customize estimates for customers or prospects or for internal use only, convert estimates to orders and/or quotes, convert prospects to customers and extract data in various reports and queries.

* AutoCAD parts and bills of materials (BOMs) transfer into the ERP creating the standard item master and BOM records within the INFIMACS database - The interface also allows AutoCAD 14 and AutoCAD 2000 users to input INFIMACS' information within AutoCAD drawings; users can also create a purchasing item master, validate all incoming data and generate messages in the error log, as the transfer process enforces strict quality control checks and balances.

* Automatic generation of vendor request for quotations (RFQs) from requisitions/estimates for direct material, indirect material and service items - RFQs are then processed through a cycle that includes vendor selection, price approval and purchase order creation.

* Increased customer dialogue by administering service calls - Users can add, maintain and track the status and severity of service requests made via phone, email, fax, web entry or any other means of contact; they can define service procedures, assign staff and manage workloads.

* On-line documents management/control - Users can attach electronic documents in any standard format to records or menus in the ERP system; they can also add reference items to BOMs, attach objects to records or programs, and attach their own help items to INFIMACS fields and menus.

* Serial number (tail) effectivity for the aircraft/aerospace industry - Within INFIMACS II, a table carries information on each serial or tail number for each item used, including the original date the serial or tail number was added, received or stocked, as well as item information, such as the original vendor lot number, inventory quantities, weighted average costs and the last inventory adjustment date.

* Component tracking by illustrated parts list (IPL) for aircraft and related maintenance organizations - Advanced MRO module quickly pulls together the unique BOM (IPL) needed for any particular job, even though on-condition repairs cannot be determined until after a technician review specifies the required labor and material; users can maintain information generated about the returned item from the initial receipt of the part through quoting, repair, shipping and invoicing.

* Returned items information from receipt to invoicing for maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) organizations - Users can use advanced MRO module to track work orders, purchase orders, sales orders, inventory, approvals such as FAA airworthiness Form 8130, and costs by both project item and condition code; the module maintains a capabilities file by item number that automatically determines if the user is allowed to perform the work which needs to be done, assuring the shop only undertakes repairs on items for which it is certified.

Partnerships

Concurrently with the above in-house product enhancements, Relevant has been forming partnerships with complementary solution providers, the most prominent been:

* Interface to Abra Payroll System from Best Software

* Interface to Best Software's FAS Fixed Asset Accounting System

* Incorporation of WorkWise (a division of Timeline, Inc.) Business Alerts, so that customers and personnel can be automatically notified of important status events via email. Using WorkWise Business Alerts, INFIMACS II invisibly monitors data fields for pre-selected activities. Users simply select the events to trigger the email, who should be notified, and the text or data to be sent. The alerts feature tracks events, dates, status of purchase orders, sales orders, work orders, inventory quantities, financial due dates and aging dates. It flags critical operations, expedites receipts, rates vendor deliveries, notifies buyers when a Purchase Order is mailed or acknowledged, updates planners when components are allocated or issued, and alerts customers that products are being shipped. Proper personnel are notified of schedule progress, if payments are due, or milestones are met, prompting immediate action.

* Partnership with Viquity to reduce entry barrier to e-commerce and provide the discrete industry with an integrated e-procurement solution. As a result, the Viquity INFIMACS II Adapter is envisioned to connect INFIMACS II ERP system to the Viquity Dynamic Commerce Network (DCN), Viquity's e-business platform for direct procurement transactions. The combined solution should allow purchase orders, demand forecasts, invoices, and other actionable documents to be exchanged in real-time between business partners through the Viquity DCN.

* Interface to C/S Solutions' wInsight and C/S Glue export programs from INFIMACS II Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) - Users can directly export Earned Value data into wInsight to create reports, charts and graphs of WBS and Earned Value data; as government contractors working to meet DoD, DOE, FAA or DCMC requirements often use wInsight to create reports, it is regarded as the de facto government Earned Value reporting standard.

* Partnership with SupplierMarket.com. As a result of, users are able to buy and sell built-to-order components, parts, and equipment seamlessly via their familiar INFIMACS purchasing and quotation screens. As an Internet marketplace for manufactured direct materials, SupplierMarket.com is envisioned to receive and process RFQ information via XML transmissions from the INFIMACS user and will then locate and match ideal trading partners.

Other Product Initiatives

Last but not least, in order to attract many small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) that do not have the technological infrastructure, such as ERP systems, to electronically communicate and integrate with their customers and suppliers, the company has also introduced INFIMACS ADvantage Entry Level ERP system. INFIMACS ADvantage provides the immediate basic needs for up to 24 users at build-to-order (BTO), engineer-to-order (ETO), and contract manufacturers. It also offers a growth path for future upgrades and expansion to INFIMACS II, as, according to the company, large manufacturers using INFIMACS II rely on the same, basic functionalities in a core set of 12 modules over 80% of the time.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/infimacs-becoming-ever-more-relevant-for-project-based-industries-part-1-recent-developments-16503/

Enter Enterprise Incentive Management and Incentive Compensation Management

Companies with large sales forces, huge product portfolios, and complex incentive plans with many variables need to offer variable pay based on individual or corporate performance. This need creates opportunities for a new enterprise software category called enterprise incentive management (EIM) or incentive compensation management (ICM), which should provide managers with decision support tools to model various compensation scenarios, measure the impact of those plans on sales performance, and effectively communicate incentive compensation objectives to the selling organization.

Part Four of the series Thou Shalt Motivate and Reward Workforce Better.

For a comprehensive background discussion of incentives and compensation, see Thou Shalt Motivate and Reward Workforce Better, Are Sales Incentives Even in tune with the Corporate Strategy?, and What Makes Incentives and Compensation So Tricky?.

Best-of-breed players like Callidus Software, Centive (formerly Incentive Systems), Incentive Technology Corporation (ITC), which is the recent spin-off from Centive which continues to sell the former Centive's CompCentral on-premise software), Oracle, SAP, Practique Associates, and one of the first companies in this market, Synygy, all provide EIM or ICM solutions. By and large, they enable powerful, flexible ICM by automating many of the major tasks related to sales compensation:

* modeling compensation plans from strategy to execution
* processing and calculating incentive compensation, from sales transaction to accounts payable (A/P) system integration
* maintaining multiple levels of reporting hierarchies, for complete organizational support
* effective dating applied to all major compensation plan components, for flexibility and change management
* supporting business units running on different fiscal calendars and in different currencies
* automating dispute resolution, providing for easy entry, research, and communication of compensation-related disputes

In general, insurance, health care, financial services, and certain manufacturing companies (such as high tech) are prime users of full-blown EIM solutions. Large enterprises with several hundred sales employees use these systems to model, set up, administer, analyze, and report on incentive management plans that compensate employees and distribution channel partners for the achievement of targeted quantitative and qualitative objectives, such as sales quotas, product and territory milestones, and customer satisfaction. That's to say that these software products enable companies to access applicable transaction data; allocate compensation credit to appropriate employees and business partners; determine relevant compensation measurements, payment amounts and timing; and accurately report on compensation results. Furthermore, additional analytics software allows customers to analyze the effectiveness of their incentive programs, which in turn gives them insights into driving greater sales performance. By facilitating effective management of complex incentive and sales performance programs, such products should allow customers to increase sales revenue, make better use of their incentive budget, and drive productivity improvements.

In other words, automating incentive management should not just enable businesses to pay workers more accurately; they also make user companies more accountable, by providing them with better modeling and reporting (so they can react to changing dynamics and improve relationships with their employees). As a result, some EIM providers have lately been drifting away from simply providing big, calculating, number-crunching solutions that help user enterprises pay their employees right, and are rather trying (more in tune with the performance management space) to help companies align strategic company objectives with sales execution. This way, they can be regarded as the execution platform for business performance management (BPM) and corporate performance management (CPM) (see Financial Reporting, Planning, and Budgeting as Necessary Pieces of EPM). Naturally, the focus for EIM is on all customer-facing roles that may have an impact on revenues. Initially used, therefore, for sales force compensation, EIM applications are also finding traction in call centers; in financial institutions for bank tellers involved in cross-selling and up-selling; and in retail situations where employee compensation is tied to store productivity and profitability.

As for a simplified description of how an EIM suite works: one starts by configuring the software to model the internal rules and structure of the user enterprise's commission and bonus programs. The software then imports sales and other performance data from a company's enterprise resource planning (ERP) or back-office system (meaning the sales and service order management and human resources [HR] modules), and calculates the commissions, whereupon it feeds the payment data back into the company's payroll system. Along the way, the software generates reports for managers which can also be used in audits to catch errors and cheating attempts, which is especially important in environments where one of the biggest expense items is cost of sales.

In addition to these policing capabilities (which are not to be sneezed atcompanies keep missing their earnings because they cannot audit their compensations), managers can also use the applications more strategically, to model changes to their incentive-pay programs, for instance, so that they can better understand the financial effect of new rules before instituting them. Business users, without needing to be at the mercy of the information technology (IT) department and nerdy programmers, should be able to leverage intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) with all-too-familiar drop-down menus and check boxes, in order to quickly implement any business rule changesof course after verifying the potential outcome before the payment even takes place.

EIM Constituencies

Naturally, many different organizational parts are affected by and are in need of EIM, starting with top or executive management. In fact, two critical concerns of corporate executives are

1. delivering consistent and predictable financial results; and
2. ensuring customer satisfaction.

Furthermore, to continually succeed, it is imperative that executives stay abreast of market conditions and adjust strategic business objectives when necessary. Executives must operate their businesses nimbly enough to shift from one major initiative to the next within a very short time frame. Whether the key initiative is revenue growth, driving a competitor out of the market, reducing discounts, expanding internationally, or introducing a new product line, EIM systems can play a crucial role in aligning the actions of the entire company and its partners with overarching corporate objectives.

Regarding EIM programs, executives have traditionally faced various concerns:

Limited ability to align compensation programs and strategic direction
Traditional manual and spreadsheet-based processes make it difficult to figure out how to motivate sales to execute on simple elements of corporate strategy (such as "sell more product XYZ").

Limited predictive impact analysis
Predictive analysis is necessary to forecast the impact of new or modified plans, for instance. Aggravating the problem is lack of access to historical performance data; consolidating prior period spreadsheet data is time-consuming, and often difficult to organize for any meaningful analysis. Executives are thus forced to create and modify incentive plans based on mere hunches, as opposed to a fact-based forecast of financial impact.

From a financial manager's standpoint, incentive compensation represents a significant line item in the budget. Finance staff (and ultimately the chief financial officer [CFO]) are responsible for accurately accounting for variable compensation costs, especially those associated with sales incentive management. Compliance with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) dictates that organizations accurately and properly account for payments made to individuals based on transactions (a product sale, for example). Given the overall fiduciary responsibility that organizations are exercising, the following business issues clearly need to be resolved:

Unacceptably high levels of overpayment
Finance departments not only need to account for the disbursement of funds, but also need to identify errors and inaccuracies. Spreadsheets and in-house systems do not allow for easy analysis of incentive plan payouts, making it extremely difficult to identify potential discrepancies.

The need for more reliable testing and modeling tools
Finance departments are particularly concerned with cost-effectiveness and return on investment for incentive-based compensation programs; without tools to analyze and predict the cost-effectiveness and value-add of proposed plans, they are subject (like their executive counterparts) to "hit and miss" management of incentive-based pay budgets.

Cumbersome and error-prone accounting and auditing
Spreadsheet systems (to say nothing of manual systems) do not lend themselves to easy tracking, resulting in a difficult and time-consuming auditing process.

Sales executives and management, who require tools for creating and changing incentive compensation plans, are also driven to EIM solutions by various factors:

Lack of "operational agility"
Sales management teams have traditionally been limited to an annual plan modification policy, whereby they cannot make on-the-fly changes to existing incentive plans as dictated by market conditions, new product introductions, sales promotions, or corporate strategy shifts.

A shortage of timely data about plan effectiveness, employee performance, and financial impact
Compensation plan data needs to be consolidated in a format conducive to analysis (to properly understand the effect of compensation plans on staff behavior and to develop more effective plans). Management requires analysis and reporting tools that facilitate accurate, timely, and straightforward examination of incentive plan data; this information is required via a mechanism that can be accessed anytime, anywhere (the Internet).

Difficulty in managing commission pay disputes
Traditionally, sales management has to comb through spreadsheets for exact transactions, conduct follow-up analysis and fact checking, check accounts and inventory, and verify records before a resolution can be made. There is thus an acute need for a more efficient pay dispute resolution process to reduce administrative time, and maximize time spent on revenue-generating activities.

Compensation administrators are responsible for the calculation of the incentive compensation payments that go out to the sales force and partner channels, and while working extremely long hours ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of those payments, they must field frequent (and often irate) inquiries from the people they're compensating. As the last line of defense between compensation plan design, and implementation of those compensation plans in a system to calculate payments, they face some key EIM difficulties:

Limited ability to implement management's desired compensation plans
Without the flexibility to support whatever compensation plans are right for the business (the plans executive management wants, and that are appropriate for overall business strategy), compensation administrators are forced to do manual calculations, or to rely heavily on overbooked IT staff to code around system limitations.

Limited ability to query or access all aspects of compensation results
Compensation results include payments, quota performance, sales credits, or performance measures; manual adjustments also need to be made, when necessary. In many cases, while questioning their payments and other aspects of incentive compensation (and then placing calls and sending e-mails to the compensation administration group), the sales representative or channel manager catches an error that needs to be manually corrected by the compensation administrator.

IT Has To Make It Work

Last but not least, IT departments are often the unseen victims of manual incentive management processes, since they are after all responsible for building custom integrations between various transactional, payroll, order management, inventory, and other systems to facilitate the data integration that feeds incentive management systems. They also then have to generate the formulas that spreadsheets execute, and make the modifications desired by the sales and finance departments. Needless to say, almost everyone turns to IT when they need "a quick report run" (while we all know that creating custom reports and performing custom data extraction tasks to support incentive compensation management is time-consuming and cost-intensive), and the workload can be staggering.

In addition to strained resources (the eternal mandate to do more with fewer resources), the key EIM issue for IT includes non-IT-related workload. Namely, in many cases, IT staff is called upon to create reports and gather required data for executives, finance teams, and sales organizations, although these service-asking users should be self-sufficient (and should themselves be compensation analysts, instead of leaving that job to IT staffers). Consequently, IT staffers are taken away from IT's core function: maintaining business systems, maximizing the value of technology within the organization, and streamlining efficiencies through innovation.

Logically, given the many types of users in the system, each type requires characteristic dashboards or user interfaces. For example, salespersons should be able to log into their dashboard and see exactly where they stand (in terms of their objectives and goal attainment) this period, this quarter, or this yearor if there are any escalations. They can thereby see commissions earned to date, attainment against quota targets, and even their ranking against peers. And the dashboards should be interactive, since sales representatives might have to drill down to transaction-level detail to see exactly how their commissions were calculated. If they should perceive a problem or have a question, they should then be able to send messages to their manager or the compensation administrator, and track progress as the issue is resolved.

On the other hand, sales managers and senior executives need access to an executive dashboard as a decision support system for team performance and plan effectiveness, whereby security setups would control what they can see. For example, a regional vice-president (VP) of sales should only be able to see information about his or her subordinates. This dashboard should provide real-time information to help managers see how their teams are doing, who is hitting quota and who is lagging, and which products are selling best in each territory.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/enter-enterprise-incentive-management-and-incentive-compensation-management-18830/

Why Service Matters: Enterprise Solutions, Market Differentiation, and IQMS

IQMS (www.iqms.com), a privately-held company located in Paso Robles, California (US), has experienced a period of growth over the past few years when other companies have experienced decline. Its flagship product, EnterpriseIQ is one of the industry's leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for repetitive manufacturing environments, particularly suited for injection plastics molding/extruding and rubber industries. With its products, the company experienced a 12 percent growth globally in 2003 when 700 new licensed users reportedly joined its client base. Closing the year with a 15 percent increase in revenue, IQMS responded to this increase by expanded its US Midwest office, offering additional training and sales support to clients.

Part Two of IQMS Prospers by Helping Enterprises Work Smarter series

At first glance, IQMS resembles many of its peers from the lower-end of the enterprise applications market, not only in terms of its budding global presence, annual revenues, and install size figures, but also in terms of its industry-specific software that reduces implementation and training costs. For example, an average EnterpriseIQ implementation typically only takes between three and six months. However, despite the like corporate profile and product similarity, IQMS has a comprehensive, one-source delivery and service where all of its product development, training, implementation, and support are provided by its own employees, rather than third party providers. These employees are American Production & Inventory Control Society (APICS) certified and have extensive implementation and proven project management experience. They also have strong manufacturing and accounting backgrounds. This, in addition to its implementation methodology that balances on-site consulting, classroom training, and Internet-based training, are notable differentiating traits.

IQMS also has an upfront nature that makes it stand-out from its peers. Its maintenance contracts include all product upgrades and technical support, without any hidden costs. This, combined with IQMS' great reputation for customer support, highlights the company's open lines of communication. Customers are almost never put on hold or have to go through an annoyingly long automated process. Rather, calls are answered by a knowledgeable person, not a recording. The vendor happily lets anyone talk to any of its satisfied customers within selected industries of focus and that have had similar issues as the prospective customer. IQMS also proclaims its confidence by offering a one-year, money-back guarantee.

Still, although indisputably impressive, one could dig up similar value propositions from other players in the market. Also, on the surface, the product has many pedestrian functional and technological capabilities. For example, it has a Microsoft Windows-based platform for the client side and networks features familiar user-friendly interface with familiar navigation that involves easy jumps between tightly integrated modules and drill-down capabilities. The database resides on the server that performs operations on that data at the request of clients. Data is then transmitted over the network and users access the information from clients/workstations; ultimately, its a process that uses very little code. Furthermore, the front-end Delphi graphical interface allows users to manipulate or search for data, while Microsoft Terminal Server (MTS) and Citrix Metaframe clients are used for wide-area network (WAN) links.

Part Two of the six part IQMS Prospers by Helping Enterprises Work Smarter series

Part One presented the company background.

Part Three will continue a discussion of product differentiation.

Part Four will review IQMS' Single Database Solution and quality management.

Part Five will cover integrated EDI and miscellaneous utilities.

Part Six will present challenges and make user recommendations.

EnerpriseIQ Modularity

The EnterpriseIQ system is also modular, with a broad core package, and many optional modules that extend the product's functional scope. Consequently, the IQ Accounting & Financial Management modules include the "usual suspects" like general ledger (GL); accounts payable (AP); accounts receivable (AR); cash management (including disbursements, receipts, and cash analysis); budgeting; multiple currency capability; bank maintenance; customer and supplier status; standard costing; auto-invoicing; cost variance analysis; bank reconciliation; employee maintenance; tax code tracking; and so on. Another common feature is FRx Reporter, a powerful financial reporting system from FRx, a Microsoft company. The product, which has recently been re-branded as Microsoft Business Solutions Analytics (MBSA)—FRx, reads directly from EnterpriseIQ GL. With this feature, it is fairly easy to create and use customized financial reports, since the product was designed by accounting professionals for their peers. It has customizable formatting similar to Microsoft Excel, linking data from multiple sources with a drill-down viewer capability—from the summary level to underlying account and transactional detail. For more extensive information on the product, see FRx Poised To Permeate Many More General Ledgers.

Moving onto the IQ Sales & Distribution suite, one will also find many typical modules and capabilities, such as inventory availability, capable-to-promise (CTP), order entry, order tracking, shipping schedules, pick tickets, advanced shipping notices (ASN), bills of lading (BOL), packing slips, return material authorizations (RMAS), consignment inventory, freight maintenance, rework tracking, commissions, sales analysis, distribution centers, release management, customer specific sales pricing, tiered pricing, forecasting, and so on.

Linked with this suite is a native IQ CRM system, which also tackles some basic supplier relationship management (SRM) functions, and that features the Internet and a personal digital assistant-enabled contact management system. The product was devised to improve customer and supplier relations by tracking sales and marketing/procurement efforts and customer and supplier issues through, for example, notes, activities, follow up, alerts, etc. As a result, the product is workflow-enabled and provides customized alerts and scheduling, while its true integration with other EnterpriseIQ modules ensures centralized data management.

Likewise, the IQ Purchasing suite also seem to offer common capabilities like purchase orders, requisitions, material exceptions list, purchasing approvals, receiving, supplier management, supplier RMAS, 1099 contractors management, purchasing history, receiving inspection tracking, alternate purchase pricing, supplier performance analysis, supplier consignment inventory, and so on.

Differentiating IQMS' product from its peers' offerings, however, is the native IQWorkforce HR module. It enables employee benefit management and tracking, training and skill set management, application process management, and review and termination tracking. As with native CRM capabilities, the benefit of this module comes from consolidating information in a single database. The result is more reliable tracking of training in accordance with quality management standards; improved employee communications; centralized employee activity; and reduced management tracking activities. Moreover, the system also features a native payroll system that also centralizes employee activity. Automatic tax code updates, direct deposit, and electronic bank transactions are also supported.

All the reports and forms throughout EnterpriseIQ use Business Objects' Crystal Reports, which are relatively affordable, easy to use, and fully customizable. Further, in addition to financial reports by FRx, IQMS' partnership with CorVu provides the following analysis and executive information systems (EIS):

* CorManage—automates the user's balanced scorecard, Six Sigma, total quality management (TQM) systems, and economic value added (EVA), which is the financial performance measure that comes closer than most other to capturing the true economic profit of an enterprise. It is most directly linked to the creation of shareholder wealth over time.

* CorBusiness—provides business intelligence (BI) management with end user online analytical processing (OLAP) analysis, interactive reporting, database queries, executive dashboards, and key performance indicator (KPI) alerts.

* RapidScorecard—provides administration and data entry facilities for the CorManage product by automating proverbial Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard systems.

* CorPortfolio—enables executives to fairly quickly review reports, analyses, and business commentary from virtually any data source, collating them into an electronic portfolio.

What Then Is Unique About IQMS?

Nevertheless, going beyond these common capabilities that are frequently met by many other competitive offerings, one will notice that IQMS is truly an interesting enterprise applications provider, almost bordering on an anomaly. For one, IQMS' use of an Oracle database, which, despite the vendor's sensible rationale to leverage it, remains atypical for the market segment it targets. Namely, we can only think of ICICI-Infotech (see ICICI-Infotech's North American Strategy for Success) as another vendor comparable to IQMS that is also Oracle-centric, albeit ICICI-Infotech is focused on different industries. IFS, which, like IQMS, supports the Windows client/Oracle database combination, targets much larger companies than IQMS.

Another feature which demarcates IQMS from its peers is its focus on the unique needs of plastic processors and extruders. This is not a highly contested market by ERP providers; there are only a few vendors that have well-attuned offerings that cater to the market. One only needs to look at ones desk to see how ubiquitous the product is: telephones, staplers, monitors, computer housing, etc. all contain plastic. Plastics usually comes from converting raw resins to the molded form, which is then assembled as a final product, or shipped as is. Examples of "processed plastics" include extruded railings, frames, cables, etc. Because they cannot be disassembled and reused or stocked, they fall under the process manufacturing category, which is a manufacturing process focused on formulas, not BOM; ingredients, not discrete parts; bulk manufacturing, not pieces; and pack recipes, not packages. For more peculiarities of process manufacturing, see previously published TEC articles, such as Processing Manufacturing Software: A Primer, Process Manufacturing: Industry Specific Requirements and What Makes Process Process?.

EnterpriseIQ tackles both situations, although it uses a BOM to describe a "process". Namely, by changing units of measures (UOM) and the way the rate of production is displayed and calculated, the product supports a sort of a process formula. It also uses a different (though highly related) BOM for more standard, discrete manufacturing assemblies. Users can link a "process" BOM to an "assembly" BOM to create the final part. To illustrate, one could make the process portion first, temporarily store it in the warehouse, then later build and fill a custom container to the customer specifications. Thus, two BOMs, each with different core functionality, are tied together to deliver the final, end user component.

Moreover, as opposed to only being a planning or scheduling tool in terms of a machine or work center EnterpriseIQ is molding or extrusion die-based tool. Quotes and BOMs support family tools, and there can be multiple alternative BOMs that make the same end item. Part costing and pricing can be done for individual items of family molds. It also supports standard and actual cavitation, which happens when some cavities within the mold are blocked. EnterpriseIQ overcomes this by creating complex tools, and the plant maintenance module tracks cycles on tools, dies, and even mold inserts.

From the scheduling perspective, the product highlights tools and dies grouping, creates visibility for out-of-service tools/dies, and evaluates any auxiliary equipment conflicts. From the raw materials vantage point, it can track regrind, (a waste material from molding and extrusion operations, which has been reclaimed by shredding or granulating), scrap, sprue (the main feed channel that connects the mold-filling orifice with the runners leading to each cavity gate; it is also the piece of plastic material formed in this channel) and runner (the secondary feed channel in an injection or transfer mold that runs from the inner end of the sprue or pot to the cavity gate) materials. It also has multiple ways to make or track material blends, an can perform the so-called "Runs-the-Best" tracking.


SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/why-service-matters-enterprise-solutions-market-differentiation-and-iqms-17877/

Spotlight Report: Sage Accpac ERP

"What does 'Accpac' stand for?" I ask Sage Accpac ERP's product marketing director Scott Pledger, during our phone call a few weeks ago. There's an extremely long pause at the other end of the line: it's practically an unfair question. After all, Accpac ERP was first developed 30 years, 3 companies, 3 brandings, and 6 product iterations ago.

Accpac was launched in 1979 by the Basic Software Group, a Vancouver, BC (Canada) company founded three years earlier. The product's target market back then was much the same as it is now: the small to medium business (SMB) accounting space—Pledger describes its positioning today as "somewhere above Peachtree and Simply Accounting, and below Sage ERP X3."

Peachtree, Simply Accounting, and Sage ERP X3 were not around as niche segmentors in 1979 (Sage was not founded until 1981). Regardless, the Basic Software Group soon found it had a winning product in Accpac—back then, a Microsoft disk operating system (MS-DOS)-based accounting package. Adoption rates were boosted by the fact that it soon became the recommended accounting software of the (then) "big eight" public accounting firms.

In 1985, the Basic Software Group was sold to Computer Associates, which in turn sold the product to Sage in 2004. As for the product's branding history, the accounting system has gone from "Accpac" to "ACCPAC" to "Sage Accpac ERP."

While all this was happening, the actual product was undergoing substantial evolution from its origins as a basic accounting package. Accpac incorporated modules for operations support in 1996, and for customer relationship management in 1999.

In 2005, the MS-DOS version was sunset, with over 100,000 units having been shipped to customers. The Windows version (launched in 1994) counts 275,000 users in 170 countries.

So what does "Accpac" stand for? Scott Pledger gets back to me later that day with an e-mail:

"It seems that the 'old-timers' here believe that 'Accpac' stood for 'A Complete Comprehensive Package for Audit Control'."

I can't really tell if he's being serious or not (or whether it's the old-timers who are pulling his leg), but his reference to old-timers does underscore the venerability of the product. More on that later.

Market Positioning

The top four target markets for Accpac ERP, according to Scott Pledger:

* professional services (such as accounting, legal, and consulting)
* industrial equipment, supply and service
* food and beverage
* building materials supply and service

Sage says its philosophy is very much focused on "supporting growth," which is marketing-speak, which means that it needs some parsing. In Sage's case, it means that if you're going to upgrade to a larger package, Sage wants to make it possible to keep you in the Sage family (this was made abundantly clear by Sage's decision in 2007 to manage Sage Accpac ERP and Simply Accounting—Accpac's smaller brother—under one business unit). The question is, how versatile is Sage Accpac ERP in terms of supporting companies of differing sizes?

Scott Pledger emphasizes Accpac ERP's appeal to global, growing companies. Accpac ERP supports multicurrency, multilanguage, multiple branches, and support for different financial and accounting regulations, including International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Accpac has also been available as either a hosted or on-premise solution since 2000.

Sage Accpac ERP's Competitors

(Note: segments quoted off the cuff rather than analytically derived)
Low end: QuickBooks
Midrange: QuickBooks Enterprise, NetSuite, Epicor
Upper end: Microsoft Dynamics GP, SAP Business One

Who's Using Sage Accpac ERP, and Why?

Sage cites Accpac ERP's ability to promote collaboration between departments—"both in terms of sharing information and facilitating communications. " So what does this mean? Sage explains:

* Front-line staff can enter orders directly into the order fulfillment system and track the status of the order to provide the customer with updates.
* HR staff can enter new employee information into the payroll system.
* Customer credit approvals can take place automatically without the typical back-and-forth between the accounting team and the account manager.

As far as specifics are concerned, Sage provided me with details for the two customers below:

Organization: The Island Lake Resort Group
Location: Canadian Rockies
Business category: Hospitality
Size: 230 employees and 5 companies (including restaurants and 3 resorts)
Benefits (cited by the customer):
• two to three days a month saved in time spent processing financial statements
• integrated accounting and customer relationship management (CRM) data as well as data from third-party point-of-sale (POS) and reservation systems
• remote access to system (note: this is obviously a critical benefit for resorts)
• improved targeting of clientele (50 percent increase in bookings year-over-year)

Organization: Posera, Inc.
Location: Canada and US
Business category: Developer of point-of-sale software and hardware to the hospitality and restaurant industries.
Size: 90 employees and 4 locations
Benefits (cited by the customer):
• integration between Sage Accpac and other applications eliminates duplicate data entry and provides real-time information to the staff
• in one position, four hours a day saved in time spent maintaining licensing databases (a process Accpac manages automatically)

Sage Accpac ERP Challenges and the Road Ahead

It's never easy getting software vendors to talk about the real challenges and difficulties they face—at least, not while their public relations (PR) people are within earshot. But Scott Pledger is blunt, perhaps because the challenge is staring us in the face.

"We have to fight the perception that Accpac is 30-year-old technology," he says. In an industry that routinely urges customers to stay on the sexy side of the technology curve for their own putative safety, that's a legitimate concern.

To that end (among others), Sage Accpac 6 is due to be launched in the latter half of 2010, and it's going to sport a youthful set of specs, including Web 2.0-flavored drag-and-drop widgets, role-based tailoring and portals, a focus on interconnectivity to other Sage products, "simplified" business intelligence (BI) and reporting tools (including the ability to analyze metadata through online analytical processing [OLAP] data cubes), and the Sage Web Toolkit (SWT) (conceptually based on the Google Web Toolkit).

High-level Overview of Sage Accpac Functionality

The radar graph below demonstrates the degree to which each area of Sage Accpac contributes to the overall solution. For example, you'll note that the Accounts Receivable module is relatively stronger than the Fixed Assets module. In the case of Accpac, this is a strong indication that product development has focused on accounts receivable functionality to a greater extent than on fixed assets.



SOURCE:


http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/tec-spotlight-report-sage-accpac-erp-20476/

Intuitive Manufacturing Systems Shows Maturity in Adolescent Age Part One: Company Overview

Quite opposite from playing an April Fool's trick, on April 1, Intuitive Manufacturing Systems (www.intuitivemfg.com), a privately held company offering enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for small and mid-size manufacturers, announced its ten-year anniversary. Namely, in 1994, the founders of the other ERP vendor PRO:MAN sold all interest in the company and started a new one: Intuitive. Since then, Intuitive has been offering enterprise software for small and midsize discrete manufacturers around the world with the flagship product, Intuitive ERP, which was designed from the ground up with 100 percent pure Microsoft technology and with well-established manufacturing practices in mind. The relative young age of the company has provided an organization and a development environment free from the burdens of supporting unwieldy sets of legacy systems and technologies; nonetheless, the company is founded on a solid foundation with many of its staff having thirty years or so of experience in manufacturing systems.

Intuitive's first product, MRP9000 (renamed into Intuitive ERP in June 2000), was built around the concept that the software should support standard business practices and that the underlying technology should be flexible and affordable. Hence, standard manufacturing and accounting practices such as those prescribed by American Production & Inventory Control Society (APICS) and Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (GAAP) were the building blocks of the product. The product has since matured into a broad ERP software system designed to manage most aspects of a small and mid-size manufacturing organization. Today, Intuitive has over 900 customers worldwide, in industries ranging from aerospace to bicycle parts, from circuit boards to boat docks. The Intuitive ERP product is also installed in over twenty countries, is available in sixteen languages, is fully multicurrency-enabled, and is supported by a network of direct offices and business partners worldwide.

Yet, Intuitive continues to pragmatically expand its operations and to unveil significant enhancements to its latest product release. Intutive's founder and co-chairman, J. Patrick Carey, had worked in the industry in various sales, service and consulting capacities for over fifteen years before he founded PRO:MAN in 1981, which was a provider of a PICK/UNIX-based manufacturing software system for small and mid-sized manufacturers. In 1994, Carey sold off his interest in the company, but, with his retained knowledge of manufacturing, he established Intuitive Manufacturing Systems.

According to the vendor's CEO Sara Gillam, back in 1994 the management had to decide between the status quo of a maturing UNIX system and putting a Microsoft Windows wrapper/faade around that aging technology, or making the bold step of completely reengineering the product in the Windows environment. The apparent choice was aimed at being on the leading edge of technology in 1994, but also now, ten years later, Intuitive is continuing this vision by deploying the new generation of software technology—Microsoft .NET. The vendor was indeed a member of the official Microsoft .NET Early Adopter Program which began stealthily in the early 2000s. While lately, many competitors are claiming to use so-called "fast start" programs to aid in leveraging .NET technology, Intuitive claims to have been there at the very beginning, at which time it did not see any of these ".NET evangelists" that are present nowadays.

This is Part One of a four-part note.

Parts Two and Three will discuss the market impact.

Part Four will cover challenges and make user recommendations.

Relationship with Microsoft

With headquarters in Kirkland, Washington (US), Intuitive is located only a ten minute drive from Microsoft's main campus, and it continues to enjoy a close relationship that has allowed it to not only discern Microsoft's future moves, but to gain invaluable aid from Microsoft in leveraging its latest technology. For that reason, Intuitive feels very confident that it will be significantly ahead of any other ERP vendor in releasing a pure .NET-based solution.

To that end, after eighteen months of research and development, mid-2001 Intuitive completed a prototype of its Microsoft .NET architectural framework that takes full advantage of .NET, extensible markup language (XML), and the new features of Microsoft SQL Server, and released a plan to convert the entire Intuitive ERP product—meaning every business logic feature, every line of code—to pure .NET technology. With the release of Intuitive ERP 6.0 in December 2002, the second phase of this plan was complete, as it was likely the first ERP product to release several areas of functionality built on a 100 percent Microsoft .NET managed code architecture. Then, in early 2004, Intuitive announced the beta release of Intuitive ERP 7.0, the only enterprise software solution with a pure Microsoft .NET "managed code" (i.e., a new type of software that leverages a new .NET set of tools and prefabricated components) framework and over 50 percent of standard product functionality released in .NET, which has been generally available since March 2004.

This substantial product redesign should allow Intuitive ERP to take advantage of the many new features of the .NET platform, satisfy the industry's e-business requirements, and better position the product to adapt to even more advanced technology in the future. Intuitive is glad to be saying goodbye to the old problems of Component Object Model-based (COM) software that the development world has often referred to as "Dynamic Link Library (DLL) Hell" in the past, owing to objects' sharing, and unfortunate consequent inexplicable conflicts amongst these objects.

Conversely, IT departments will be able to appreciate .NET software by the .NET feature known as "side-by-side", which allows multiple versions of the same application to reside and run on the same computer at the same time. Namely, with .NET, one does not have to uninstall or upgrade an old version of a software product, since the new version can be installed right beside the old one, and the user can run them both until she or he decides to remove the old version. Also, much .NET software can be installed simply by copying files to hard drives, while .NET avoids the Windows Registry and its many inherent problems.

Key Enhancements in Intuitive ERP 7.0

Furthermore, the .NET framework should provide the vendor the ability to develop software with less code in less time (Intuitive claims 40 percent smaller software footprint and 65 percent fewer code lines, based on its own analysis of the released version 6.0.2 versus released version 7.0), which means the system becomes faster, more robust, has fewer bugs, easier to modify, while the vendor can provide innovative new features at a faster pace (multifold, according to Intuitive's product managers) than the competition. To that end, key enhancements found in Intuitive ERP 7.0 include, among others:

* An entire .NET managed code-based sales cycle, from customer relationship management (CRM) to quoting through order entry, picking, shipping, invoicing, accounts receivable, return materials authorization (RMA), and service and repair, which entails a new slick user interface (UI), faster processing speed, and other above-mentioned benefits of .NET managed code. One of the related enhancements is the ability for every user to set the order entry screen according to the preferences, by simply clicking and dragging fields on and off the order entry panel. In addition, users may set up templates for different types of orders, and select a different template with one click, whereby the same click and drag customization facility is being adopted across the entire Intuitive ERP system (of course, in the functional areas that are .NET-enabled).

* A .NET managed code-based "Planner's Workbench", material requirements planning (MRP) engine, available to promise (ATP)/capable to promise (CTP) engine, and sales forecasting modules. A Planner's Workbench provides a planner many of tools to optimize the shop floor in one place and at once, such as

1) graphical display of an item's inventory, including safety stock and surplus, and all activity for that item with drill-down capabilities into those activities;

2) search for inventory problems based on preset parameters (such as., inventory surpluses over certain number of days, critical shortages, etc.), again with drill-down capabilities into actions to resolve those problems; and

3) search for order problems in a similar manner like above (i.e., preset parameters like late raw material deliveries, pending late orders, etc.). Further, the .NET MRP engine obviates the traditional difference between "regenerative" (full-blown) MRP and "net change" MRP, given MRP runs now often take seconds and occasionally minutes, rather than customary several hours.

* Support of rich media files across the .NET-based system, as the user can link an unlimited number of types of media, such as computer-aided design (CAD) files, drawings, video clips, images, quality control (QC) documents and so on to any field in the system (i.e., a specific field in the form for detailed instructions, a specific ID like part number, customer number, or vendor number, an order number, and a combination of these).


SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/intuitive-manufacturing-systems-shows-maturity-in-adolescent-age-part-one-company-overview-17352/

Your Reference Guide to SMB Accounting Software Features

So, you're looking for an accounting system.

This reference guide provides insight into the accounting features and functions currently available on today's market for small to medium businesses (SMBs). It will help you determine which features your organization needs—or doesn't need.

You can also download an extended guide in Excel format at TEC's Accounting Software Request for Proposal (RFP) Template page.

But first, here's a brief overview:

What Are Accounting Systems?

Accounting systems manage procedures for accurately entering, tracking, and maintaining information related to an organization's financial operations. These accounting applications typically support general ledger, accounts payable and accounts receivable, payroll, job and project costing, and multinational accounting.

Many SMBs require that other functions (such as inventory control, manufacturing management, and financial reporting) also integrate with their accounting system.

About This Guide

Although a full accounting system RFP can contain upwards of 4,000 features and functions, we'll focus on the "big picture" features for now, for (obvious!) considerations of space.

You'll notice that we've grouped accounting features by broad category. These categories correspond to a high-level functional breakdown of software features. In this reference guide, we provide a brief explanation of how each category impacts your accounting processes.

If you'd like more information about a full listing of accounting software features and functions, please visit TEC's RFP Templates page.

Reference Guide to SMB Accounting Software Features

1. General Ledger

Chart of Accounts
The chart of accounts is, for all practical purposes, the business management system. If revenues and costs are not captured and segregated into the best suited categories, the financial statements you produce will be useless.

Transaction Processing
This category describes features that address typical journal entry processes, including general transaction processing, workflow period closing, batch layout configuration, and job cost adjustments.

Month- and Year-end Closing
While you can bill revenue and collect cost information, if this information is not published in the form of financial statements in a timely manner, the statements themselves are essentially useless.

Control Reports
All business management systems must have some form of controls to make sure information is input correctly. Software features covered in this category are designed to accomplish this task.

Financial Statements
Financial statements drive the company. However, for smaller companies this may not be true to the same extent, since the owner or manager should have a "feel" for operations rather than relying on printed reports. Larger companies cannot do this, simply because they are too big.

2. Accounts Payable

Vendor Master File
Master files are the starting point in any application. For accounts payable, the vendor master file must be set up first, as that drives the rest of the accounts payable functions.

Purchasing Controls
While anyone can issue a purchase order, the process should be controlled. This category covers the purchasing process as well as control systems you can use.

Data Input
Once a purchase order has been sent and goods received, the obligation for that purchase needs to be recognized. This category reviews the various steps required to actually get information into accounts payable.

Payables Analysis
Once an invoice has been input, it needs to be approved and scheduled for payment. This category covers those steps.

Check Writing
Once an invoice has been processed and approved, it needs to be paid. This category addresses various check-writing features, including bank account assignment and check formats.

Control Reports
While you may choose to assume that information has been input correctly, that is not always the case. The features in this category address reports that give users the ability to check information to make sure it has been input correctly.

Financial Reports
Once data has been input into accounts payable, users will probably need to review slices of that data to determine if costs are in line, where costs are being incurred, and how those costs compare against other benchmarks.


SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/your-reference-guide-to-smb-accounting-software-features-19938/