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Sage SalesLogix
NEWSLETTER
Volume 5 Issue 2, February 2007
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Sage SalesLogix was named
Product Of The Year by Customer
Inter@ction Solutions Magazine.
The reviewers cited product
technology advancements, vendor
vision, leadership, and commitment
to quality as the criteria
on which the award was based.
The magazine featured its Product
of the Year Award winners in
both the January and February
2007 print issues. |
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| Sage SalesLogix iReports
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| The SalesLogix iReports business
intelligence tool provides a variety of
graphical views of Sage SalesLogix data. |
Would you like the ability to quickly
perform statistical analysis on your
Sage SalesLogix data to gain insightful
business intelligence? Now you can with Sage
SalesLogix iReports, a business intelligence tool
that provides a variety of graphical views of Sage
SalesLogix data. Let's learn more.
KPI Dashboard
The power of iReports begins
with the KPI dashboard.
Think of this dashboard as
the main summary for iReports.
The KPI dashboard,
as its name implies, provides
you with key performance
indicators about your business,
such as total sales or
opportunities year over year.
Provided your security profile
allows it, you are able to
drill down into the summary
information to get more
detail. With the tabs on the
KPI dashboard you can navigate
to the nine other dashboard
views available in iReports. More than just
static views of data, each view allows you to set
business rules and alerts to monitor changes in
your business. Alerts can trigger events and notifications
to keep the right people informed. Let's
take a look at what each view provides.
Forecast Dashboard
Understanding sales trends and making appropriate
adjustments can make a big difference in
sales performance. The Forecast dashboard allows
you to analyze your sales pipelines, forecasts,
and close rates. You can determine the
stage at which opportunities are being delayed,
and analyze which prospects to focus on to maximize
return.
Forecasts can be segmented by representative,
product line, or region.
A historical analysis of past
sales provides assistance in
accurately estimating future
sales.
Win/Loss Dashboard
The Win/Loss dashboard
view helps you understand
how well you are closing your
opportunities. The graphical
chart shows win and loss
units by month, while the grid
below provides detailed information
for each opportunity
won or lost. Perhaps you
want to view opportunities in
the manufacturing industry,
to determine if your win/loss
ratio is higher or lower than the general market. If
wins are higher, you might choose to focus sales
and marketing efforts on that industry.
Opportunities Dashboard
Your sales representatives will especially appreciate
the Opportunities dashboard. With this view
they can find the opportunities with the best
chance of closing in the current period. For example,
with a couple of clicks they can access a list of all opportunities in their territory of over
$100,000 that are in stage 3 or 4 of your sales
process. Once the dashboard has returned the
list, the sales representative can build a Sage
SalesLogix Group or export it to a worksheet to
use while working the opportunities.
Maps Dashboard
The geographic Maps view shows analysis
information overlaid on a map.
Data can be viewed by region, country,
state, city, and metropolitan area. You
can drill into the information from the
Region, Country, State, City, and Metropolitan
Area views. You might want
to see Sales by state for a specific sixmonth
period, or Opportunities by
territory for the current quarter.
Ranking Dashboard
The Ranking view provides ranking
information for any key performance
indicator (KPI) you choose. Rank Accounts,
Sales Representatives, Opportunities,
Products, or any other entity in the Sage Sales-
Logix database. The top ten Accounts is most
common, but you can display whatever number
is most meaningful for your situation.
You also can rank from the bottom. Perhaps
you want to locate your customers with
slower sales and try to improve their performance.
Once you have the list, with a few clicks
you can use the Goto command to create a
Group, and then launch a targeted marketing
campaign to that Group.
Activities Dashboard
Do you know on average how many customer
contacts are made before a sale closes? What percentage
of them are meetings versus phone calls
versus e-mails? The Activities dashboard provides
a great view into how Activities affect revenue. It
really shows the power of face time with customers.
If you are an Account Manger, you can select
a Customer record and receive a list of just how
many contacts you've had with the customer.
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| The SalesLogix iReports business
intelligence tool provides a variety of
graphical views of Sage SalesLogix data. |
The KPI dashboard provides an instant picture of the
effectiveness of your sales activities.
Marketing Dashboard
The Marketing dashboard tracks the key metrics
required to determine the effectiveness of
marketing programs. This view will help you
analyze campaign response rates, sales success,
conversion rates, and the impact of marketing
programs. To get a complete view of your marketing
return on investment (ROI), the dashboard
pulls in data from marketing, sales, and
finance systems, and takes full advantage of the
Sage SalesLogix Leads and Campaign management
tools introduced in version 6.2.3.
Customer Service Dashboard
For the service side of your business, you want
to analyze the reasons for customer calls, resolution
rates, and average length of time to resolve
an issue. The Customer Service view gives
you an instant picture of service levels with the
ability to drill down to details of particular cases
or tickets.
Details Dashboard
The Details dashboard provides a single-screen
view of the Sage SalesLogix details for the selected
record. It presents the Account Detail view
with all the tabs spread out on a single page, so
that every data point related to the Account can
be viewed simultaneously.
Drill-Down Capabilities
From each of the dashboard views, you can drill
down as needed to view the detail behind the
charts. iReports interacts intuitively with other
Sage SalesLogix screens to access and display
the relevant information.
Connect With Other Data Sources
The power of iReports can be extended beyond
your Sage SalesLogix data to include data from
your accounting or other business application.
Customized dashboards can then include metrics
such as customer payment history or product
availability. There are even some pre-built
connectors available to transform your data silos
into one centralized view of all information
related to your business.
Export Options
For even more analysis and customization,
you can export most of the iReports grids and
charts. A simple right-click on the grid and
chart allows you to copy it to the clipboard and
then paste into Microsoft Excel or virtually any
other Windows application.
Deployment Options
iReports has been designed to work in all the
configurations that Sage SalesLogix supports.
Whether you have a traditional LAN/WAN setup,
remote offices, remote laptop users, or even
remote web users, iReports delivers data to the
desktops of all your team.
The Web Viewer provides all the same
interactive capabilities through an Internet
browser. Users access published dashboards
and have the same drill-down capabilities as the
desktop version. For remote laptop users, iReports
data synchronizes at the same time as the
rest of the Sage SalesLogix data.
Security And Performance
iReports uses the same security mechanisms as
other Sage SalesLogix tasks, so you can be confident
users will see only the data that their security
profile allows.
iReports has been fully optimized to speed
data load time, even when your data sources are
very large. iReports uses a separate data repository,
or warehouse, so the performance of your
main Sage SalesLogix database is not affected.
Data from this file loads from 10-100 times
faster than a direct database load, ensuring excellent
performance.
Compatibility
iReports can be configured to work with Sage
SalesLogix 6.2 and above.
iReports empowers your executive management,
sales, marketing, and customer service
teams, providing an easy-to-use single
point of analysis for everyone - from executives
to power users to customer-facing employees.
Give us a call to schedule a demonstration
of this powerful new tool. |
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| Front Office - Back Office Integration |
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How many software applications store customer
information in your organization?
If your company is like most, different types of
customer information are kept in two or more
applications. In the most common scenario, an
existing back office, or accounting application
has been acquired in the past by the finance
and/or operations departments. More recently,
the sales organization has deployed a front office,
or customer relationship management application
to manage sales pipelines, customer
service, and marketing. Each application contains
different kinds of customer information
in data silos.
Impact On Staff Productivity
This lack of a holistic or central view of customer
information impacts the effectiveness of
staff on both sides of the equation. Sales representatives
may work on new opportunities
without realizing the customer has exceeded
their credit limit or has an invoice seriously
past due. When the sales team closes a deal, the
order must be rekeyed into the back office system
by the accounting staff, incurring both the
unnecessary overhead of duplicate data entry
and the possibility of errors.
Impact On Customer Satisfaction
Imagine the annoyance of a customer who
places an order with his sales representative,
only to find out a week later that the order is on
hold in the accounting department. When the
order is finally released, an entry error results
in the wrong product being sent. This is a serious
problem in the current highly competitive
business environment, in which customer satisfaction
is critical to organizational success.
Barriers To Integration
Departments that make up the front and back
office have opposing views and needs, often creating
conflict between staff members. It is important
to recognize this phenomenon when
considering integrating the front and back office.
Back-office team members have concerns
about access to confidential information, and
may believe that customer-facing staff "tell the
customer what they want to hear," and ignore
internal procedures. Conversely, a front-office
team member sees accounting as creating unnecessary
bottlenecks in the sales process.
Benefits Of Integration
Integrating the front and back office applications
can not only deliver access to critical customer
information across the entire organization,
it can enhance relationships between
internal departments. When executed properly,
integration can result in increased productivity
and efficiency across all departments, enhanced
customer satisfaction, and ultimately,
greater profitability.
Nuts And Bolts While the benefits of integrating the front and
back office seem clear; what exactly does that
mean in terms of the actual data that is shared?
The exact needs of individual organizations
may vary according to industry-specific requirements,
but a minimum level of functionality
is useful to virtually every organization.
Front Office Needs Back-Office Data
The front office needs back-office data to respond
to customer inquiries, including:
Customer-related data: Contacts, terms,
credit limits, past due amounts, and shipping
addresses.
Order-related data: Invoice history, open
invoices and payments, open orders, return
orders, item prices, price codes, and quantities
available.
Warehouse information.
Back Office Needs Front-Office Data
Orders generated by the front office need to automatically
flow into the open order file in the
back office. Updates to customer information
such as new contacts, new addresses, and telephone
numbers needs to be synchronized into
the back-office system.
Create The Win/Win
Customer-facing staff win by having all the
data to answer customer's questions in their
grasp. They can quickly get past the current order
or invoice status questions and move on to
closing the next sale. Accounting staff win by
the elimination of duplicate work re-keying
orders and reducing the time spent answering
questions from the sales team.
Making It Happen
Understanding the benefits to be gained
through front-office to back-office integration,
Sage Software provides pre-packaged
integration bundles between Sage SalesLogix
and Sage Software accounting and ERP applications,
including Sage MAS 90 and Sage
MAS 500 ERP. These bundles can deliver the
integration at relatively low cost. If you already
own a Sage Software ERP solution, you
have the ability to quickly implement a very
powerful integration. If you are in the process
of selecting a new accounting or ERP system,
the available integration bundles can be
a powerful factor in the decision-making process.
Give us a call to discuss your front-office
to back-office integration needs. |
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| Tips & Tricks |
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You can use Intellisync for SalesLogix to add a
group of Sage SalesLogix contacts to Microsoft
Outlook. Here's how:
1. Create an Ad Hoc Group in Sage Sales-
Logix named 'SyncSalesLogix'.
2. Create a Category in Outlook named 'Sync-
SalesLogix'.
3. On the Intellisync for SalesLogix Configuration
window, select Contacts>Configure>
Advanced Settings.
4. When the window appears, Click the Conflict
Resolution tab, and ensure that either
Sage SalesLogix or Outlook is set as the
winner.
5. Click the Filters tab>New.
7. Type 'SyncSalesLogix' in the box, and click
the OK button.
8. On the Conditions tab, click Field and then
select Categories.
10. In the Operator box, click the drop-down
arrow, and then select Contains.
11. In the Value box, type: 'SyncSalesLogix'.
12. Click the Add to List button.
13. Click the OK button, twice.
14. The Intellisync for SalesLogix configuration
window reappears. Verify that the filter
appears in the right pane.
15. Click the OK button twice to close. |
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| Spotlight On
Sage SalesLogix
Coming Soon v7.2 |
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Sage Software has announced Sage SalesLogix, version 7.2 is scheduled for release
in June 2007. This release will feature the all new, state-of-the-art Sage SalesLogix
Web Client and Sage SalesLogix Mobile, making it easier than ever to bring Sage Sales-
Logix to your sales team in the field. Here's a sneak preview of what's to come.
Enhanced User Experience
The challenge with Web-based user interfaces has been to provide the same easy-to-use
navigation and entry capabilities that are available with traditional Windows client interfaces.
Sage SalesLogix 7.2 incorporates important new technology standards to provide
users with the same rich experience they are accustomed to, including: drag and
drop tabs, middle pane, modal forms, minimal screen refresh, context-sensitive help,
and intuitive navigation. In conjunction with the new Web Client, the Windows Client
also is updated with new icons, screen colors, and layout, enabling users to quickly access
the information they need.
Expanded Mobility
In Version 7.2, Sage SalesLogix Mobile gives your mobile sales team more options:
Windows Mobile for Smartphone support.
New charting capabilities for the BlackBerry will allow you to create and display
customized charts, and new Detail Panels provide quick at-aglance
access to key information.
A new Mobile Subscriptions option allows remote users to search
for and retrieve additional records that they may not have synchronized
ahead of time.
New Web Platform
Sage SalesLogix v7.2 leverages the latest technology standards to lower
your total cost of ownership, including:
Standards-based architecture - including ASP.NET, AJAX, CAB,
and Web services. Web services easily integrates into your existing
IT environment and facilitates future growth and expansion.
Web services-based - Integrate with other applications in your environment
via Web services or extend your Sage SalesLogix functionality
by leveraging other Web services-based applications.
Layered n-tier architecture - an application model that separates
the business logic layer from the user interface layer. This approach
enables customer and business partner customizations to easily
move forward as new product releases become available - supporting
easy upgrades.
State-of-the-Art Customization And Development Tools
The Web and Mobile products share a common development and
customization environment, so that customizations can be written
once and deployed for both Web and Mobile applications. By using
the Web and Mobile products, you can eliminate the need to manage
synchronization for Windows Client users and thereby simultaneously
increase the productivity of your sales team and reduce IT administrative
burden.
Most customizations in Sage SalesLogix version 7.2 can be accomplished
using a new codeless, wizard and template-based approach.
Without the need for extensive Web and programming knowledge,
staff can quickly create customizations. Advanced customizations still
can be accomplished using standard development tools or the included
code editor.
In addition, Sage SalesLogix v7.2 can be instantly deployed to one
or many servers with a single click. Sage SalesLogix v7.2 helps your IT
staff with tools to reduce time spent creating customizations and managing
remote users. At the same time, your mobile salesforce can become
more productive with the new Web Client and Mobile device options.
This is a high-level view of some of the features that will be introduced
in Sage SalesLogix v7.2; we will update you as more details are
available.
Give us a call with any questions. |
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© Copyright 2004-2010 Tango Marketing, LLC. www.tango-marketing.com All Rights Reserved. This newsletter and its content have been registered with
the United States Copyright Office. This content is licensed by Tango Marketing LLC and can be distributed by licensee until 07/31/2010 at which time the licensee must cease
distribution and use of this content unless permission in writing is obtained from Tango Marketing LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is strictly prohibited.
The capabilities, system requirements and/or compatibility with third-party products described herein are subject to change without notice. Sage, the Sage logos, and the Sage product
and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc., or its affiliated entities. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.
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