Sage Accpac Accounting Software Vancouver Blog – Unisoft

More and more Canadian small to medium sized businesses are implementing customer relationship management (CRM) systems to improve their customer interactions.  Are you considering CRM for your business? If you are you should know how implementing a CRM system can create value in your business.

1) Increase Customer Retention: In a tough economy focusing on your existing customer base and customer retention is arguably a businesses top priority.  CRM let’s you manage all of your customer touch points and enhance the customer experience ensuring customers needs are met.

2) Discover more cross selling opportunities: Properly identifying cross-selling opportunities is a challenging task without being able to segment your customers. With a CRM system you are able to quickly and easily generate marketing campaigns targeted at a specific customer segment and then identify any opportunities generated from that campaign.

3) Enhanced customer satisfaction: Customer satisfaction can be invaluable to a business; if your customers aren’t satisfied with your service they won’t be referring you business.  Managing and automating the customer experience through a CRM system allows you to ensure the best possible service is given to all customers.

4) Reduced Operational Costs: Increased productivity leads to reduced operational costs and by improving communication in the office between staff you quickly reduce the time to complete common tasks. If you have all the information about a customer in one place (CRM) you are able to make better decisions and involve less staff and take less time to complete tasks.

5) Automate customer-oriented business processes: Automation of customer-oriented business processes such as sales, marketing and customer service allows your organization to respond quicker to customer needs in a productive and organized fashion. Automation ensures all customer requests are process appropriately and are not lost and is the key to achieving the above benefits of CRM.

Unisoft has been implementing business and accounting software systems for small to medium sized businesses for over 20 years. We have worked with companies large and small to create value and enhance their business processes.  Please feel free to contact us (604 926-3398 or sales@unisoft.net) to talk about CRM and the value it can create for your business.

There was a handful of new features in the Sage Accpac ERP v5.6 and Sage CRM v6.3 integration.  Here are some of the features:

• Integrated ERP/CRM Solo Support (Accpac 5.6)
• Customer/Vender Number Change Support
• Improved Salesperson Integration with Accpac 5.6 data
• Relationships Tab
• National Accounts in CRM

Salesperson Codes are Now Synchronized in CRM

Salesperson commision splits now show up on the customer statistics tab in CRM.

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New Sage Accpac ERP and CRM webcasts were released on unisoft’s website. Unisoft will be adding more webcasts on an ongoing basis so make sure to check back often.  There will be webcasts focusing severa categories.  Current Sage Accpac ERP and CRM users will be provided with webcasts on tips and tricks on how to use more of their business software and accounting system. There will also be a section for users on the new features in each version to keep you up to date on the lastest product developments. Finally, there will be a general business level section for managers and desicion makers to see how ERP and CRM software systems can help advance their business.

As the use of email is now the sole form of business communication for many businesses it is highly recommended that businesses use an email disclaimer.  This protect your business and help to esnure the privacy of emails. There are many sites that provide sample disclaimers that can be easily put to use. There are also applications to ensure every email has a disclaimer attached. I also think this adds a level of professionalism to your emails that can help build a trusting relationship with your customers. 

Unisoft will be attending the Sage Accpac third party conference or formally Third Party Advantage Conference (TPAC) from August 26th to 28th.  TPAC is a conference showcasing thrid party products that work with Sage Accpac ERP. The conference was founded in 2003 after the AOC, the old Third Party conference was discontinued.  All the major Sage Accpac third party developers will be there and will be a good time for Unisoft to get up to date on all their latest technologies and developments. There will be training sessions and exhibitions that will allow Unisoft to help find the best products to help improve our customers business systems. We will be posting back here after the Conference to give a quick summary of what of the Accpac conference.

This is a good question. For any business, small, medium or large, looking to utilize technology to their full advantage they will need to know what ERP is and how they can use it.  Essentially, ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning, another great IT acronym. However, this is not what we are after, we are after the concept that is making ERP software the next revolution in business technology.

ERP software is meant to be a solution for your business that can encompass and integrate all of your business processes and needs. It can include manufacturing, supply mangement, sales, financials, customer management  or just a few business activities. ERP systems are built around what your business needs.

Why is ERP software so important? Because it brings all your systems together and ensures every business process is integrated, bringng your business technology system closer and closer to mimicking your business. This makes all your company activities more efficient and enables you’re business to get more out of your investment. 

Ever since Unisoft began providing one of North America’s most effective customer relationship management solutions we have been met with some confusion regarding what CRM systems really can and cannot do. We hope this 3 part series of posts will help clear up some of this confusion as well shed some light into the intentions behind Sage CRM’s architectural design.

In many ways Sage Accpac CRM certainly is the all-encompassing “yes” solution.   It has been highly regarded for the ease of use and flexibility involved in the customization process as well as won out against its competitors for various user friendly features including an appealing and uncluttered interface, web deployment that provides real time access at anytime and from anywhere, integration with its host accounting solution (Sage Accpac ERP) and a wide range of readily available third party products that often also integrate with Sage Accpac ERP.  Nevertheless, customers often approach the prospect of purchasing a CRM system with unclear views about what they really want to achieve with the solution, or even worse, with little or no expectations at all.  In the first case this type of confusion can lead to a circle of indecisiveness which often stops at a dead end with no decision at all and in the second case customers that do go ahead with the purchase will often feel dissatisfied with the product because they never distinguished what they wanted it for in the first place.  In both situations the solution is simple: isolate your needs from your desires and come to a conclusion which is both satisfactory and realistic.  Of course, while we never want a client to settle for just anything that happens to come along, we also want you to remember that you will rarely find a solution that is perfect and so a little compromise is better than nothing at all.  

Join us next time when we discuss elements and functions that most customers should be looking for in CRM systems and how Sage CRM compares in this regard.

Sage Software and its CRM division has added a GM to handle Sage CRM and SaleLogix. This definetly a sign that Sage is continuing to build its CRM business on a worldwide basis. David van Toor is the acting general manager for the SaleLogix and Sage CRM operations in North America. He reports to Joe Bergera, who is GM of Global CRM. Prior to handling the CRM operations of North America van Toor was GM for Sage PFW and Sage BusinessWorks.