• New Sage Payroll Update v27.1 Released
    Includes ERR and CWPS enhancements
  • New Sage Payroll Update v27.1 Released

Tag: Sage 200

Basic inventory control changes that will give you a competitive edge

Trying to compete against companies with larger staffs, advanced equipment, multiple global locations, and (seemingly) unlimited budgets can present quite a challenge for a small to medium-size businesses.

Limited resources combined with slim margins mean that if you operate an business in Ireland, you know the importance of maximising your efficiency and orchestrating tasks with extreme precision in order to prevent staggering losses. Controlling waste, by it product or productivity is of paramount importance for success.

And although managing your customer service, marketing for new client acquisitions, and improving product quality all effect positive business benefits, governing your supply chain through enhanced inventory control provides rapid, measurable results; results that will translate into a heightened competitive advantage and long term victory.

Inventory Reduction

For many manufacturing, distribution, or retail businesses, a significant portion of company net worth is allocated by stock. But, the dependence on high levels of safety stock can have a negative impact on the strategies and company goals you’ve established, simply because your capital is employed in the form of inventory. However, by reducing your stock level amounts, you can liberate needed funds for marketing programmes and other customer acquisition or service plans.

  • Reduction techniques can take shape through a variety of processes, but tracking is the key. Sporadic or inaccurate stock counts create faulty data, which is transferred to the procurement level. Once there, unnecessary Purchase Orders might be issued, wasting money and labour, and possibly inventory through heightened shrinkage risks.
  • You can counteract the inefficiencies generated through faulty inventory counts by introducing bar coded items and specific batch codes for use in conjunction with electronic readers. With superior tracking methods, you can systematically reduce your inventory amounts and stabilise your procurement process.Supplier Agreements.
  • Another effective method for reducing inventory amounts and the holding costs—soft costs—that accumulate daily on stocked goods involves Supplier partnerships and agreements. Typically, consignment programmes offer valuable benefits for both parties, and Just-in-Time replenishment plans are modelled according to lean methodologies that often eliminate the holding charges on warehoused products.
  • Consignment plans allow you to house safety stock for order processing, but ownership isn’t transferred until allocation occurs. Just-in-Time programmes track your stock usage and initiate replenishment POs according to per-determined metrics.Maximise Your Warehouse Space.
  • Inefficient workflows can cause lengthy lead and/or picking times. And although it may seem like that extra 90 seconds spent backtracking to the packaging point, or the additional two minutes spent searching through commingled parts doesn’t make much difference, when you compound those costs hourly, daily, and weekly, your labour wastes rise exponentially.
  • Six Sigma models and other workflow configurations can help you maximise your warehouse space to streamline processing times. Most consultants rely on onsite spaghetti maps and other tools that identify and eliminate problem areas, which hinder seamless throughput.
POS integration
  • Employ technological innovation to boost your business competitive edge. Point of Sale (POS) integration means that replenishment models are designed according to the lean ideal, “Sell one; Make one.”
  • Integrating your POS data with your inventory software helps generate processing information that enhances picking and processing tasks by including customer order/replacement/and shipping information directly on the pick ticket.
Comprehensive Software Integration
  • The most influential method for controlling inventory and improving your supply chain efficiency involves the implementation of a unified planning system. Commonly known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, this type of comprehensive software integration merges all of your inventory, accounting, and customer service programmes into one user-friendly platform.
  • Your sales team, customer service, procurement, and floor operations become a single, cooperative unit through real-time data integration, which helps you maximise company efficiency and will give your company a definitive advantage.

How Award Winning Support can help YOUR business

 

Here at Pimbrook we believe in Customers for life!

Pimbrook staff will respond to you and your employees’ requests within an agreed timeframe, which can be as quick as a few minutes.

Types of Pimbrook Payroll or Sage 50 Support:

 Our Sage Support can be delivered through various mediums, including e-mail, telephone, applications and technicians.  The most common is the telephone.  But times have changed and we’ve moved with them.  Remote support is now the most useful tool in conjunction with the phone call. Letting us be right there beside you in your office instantaneously.

– Since now the two companies are the same, we have a range of different support contracts to suit different companies and different budgets.

You can choose the support contract that ensures you minimize downtime, your staff are productive and satisfied, and you are getting the most from your Sage Software

Advantages of Payroll or Sage 50 Support Contract

Immediate personal contact- leading to less down-time

Less time spent by staff trying to resolve technical issues themselves- taking them away from other tasks

Better return from your software investment/ maximum productivity of the solution

Advisory and consultative support which means  better use of your systems

Direct access to accredited & Knowledgeable Technical Experts

Increased employee/customer satisfaction- due to smoother business processes

Sage 50 Support
Regular Contact:

We don’t just leave you alone until you have a problem.  We will contact you as a valued customer throughout the year, advising you of training and updates,  and just to make sure your system is running the way it should

This pro active contact allows for pre-emptive corrective actions-

Results in decrease in system downtime

Providing better product quality, ensuring your staff are using the software to its optimum- thereby raising worker morale & productivity.

 

But don’t take our word for it.  Look at some of the testimonials from our long standing valued customers.

 

Contact us today to find out more.

 

 

 

 

Scalability : Can your warehouse software grow with your business?

Scalability.

The 21st century’s term for basic, frugal common sense. But, it actually means much more for expanding new businesses and established companies that need to adjust their costs according to the fluctuations in the global and national economic climate.

Scalable technology helps prevent costly wastes. Software applications designed to enhance productivity and reduce supply chain maintenance expense are an effective resource for many SMBs, but can present problems if the software isn’t designed to adapt to the business success it creates. And this can be particularly problematic for distribution or manufacturing companies that operate with high volumes of inventory with very slim margins.

Scalable Software 101

Scalable software typically refers to in-house business applications such as finances, inventory management, and CRM programmes that are able to adjust to expanding data amounts or an increased number of users. And this is extremely crucial for warehouse software.

Essentially what starts with a limited amount of space and usable resources adapts as your business grows, and changes as new demands become necessary for maintaining operations. For example, with scalable warehouse management software, your company can achieve the benefits of streamlined workflows through real-time information, but avoid paying for large amounts of database presence until you actually need it.

Static Dangers

In today’s mobile society, using static systems to perform business requirements costs your company time, money, and outreach potential. With a static software model, once you’ve achieved your short-term goals, the company must purchase brand new applications and repeat the training process.

Moreover, in today’s fluctuating business environment, just leaving well enough alone can spell disaster. If you’re not moving forward to meet growing demands your business can stagnate, suffer, and fail.

Scalable Designs

When considering warehouse software for your business there are a few things to keep in mind. Scalable designs should feature:

  • Flexible inclusion for inventory based businesses
  • Inventory management techniques that adapt to meet changing demands
  • Embedded development for your specific uses (such as touch screen kiosks, electronic counting, etc.)
  • Expansive abilities that include purchasing, shipping, customer, and vendor data

You can orchestrate profitable growth when your warehouse software features cross-platform solutions that incorporate the various aspects involved in your inventory intensive business. A scalable model that includes the critical elements of customer and procurement orders, inventory control techniques, and intuitive reporting and analysis capacity can save large amounts of capital expenditure and grow right along with your business needs.

Although there are limits to every type of hardware and software design, by integrating scalable warehouse software, you can ensure that you’ve purchased long-term solutions for your business.

Contact us today to see how our software can help you scale YOUR business.

Maximise Transparency across your Supply Chain

Although the current economic environment in Ireland is slowly gaining ground according to experts, businesses throughout the nation are still working to develop new methods and internal procedures that will stimulate their financial gains and produce long-term benefits.

Conventional methods used for batch tracking and traceability help identify problems from the point of sale, working backward. But, that does little for anticipating or eliminating the complications before they occur.

Fortunately, new tracing capabilities are transforming internal procedures and maximising the transparency of the supply chain by allowing organisations to embed every detail of the product’s life cycle into each specific item record. This advanced type of provenance and traceability data can then be utilised to analyse quality controls, safety, and reliability with heightened accuracy. Moreover, it helps to maximise your company resources, whilst simultaneously strengthening your supply chain performances.

However, before you can introduce new technology tools, there are a few things to consider. These steps can help you develop the foundational groundwork required within your company dynamics, so that your enterprise resource planning system will achieve its maximum potential.

  • Initiate a Strategic Planning Process

Without clearly defined goals and a system for achieving them, improving transparency along your supply chain will remain in the realm of the subjective. Although you could hire expensive consultants to review your current management procedures, examine your floor layout, and create costly, and complicated overhauls, for most production and distribution model businesses, third-party consultation simply isn’t necessary.

Initiating a strategic planning process simply requires opening the channels of communication between your staff members and fostering an environment that rewards innovation. Logically speaking, who knows better what is working and what isn’t in your company than your employees who deal with the situations every day?

Creating an atmosphere that welcomes employee suggestions and seriously considers them helps establish a sense of unified purpose that will engender positive innovation.

  • Eliminate Communication Barriers Between Departments

Maximising transparency requires a free flow of communication and information within your organisation. Data flow charts can help you visualise obstructions, but the most important point to remember is to foster sharing among your departments. For instance, placing importance on regular, consistent counts, which get transferred to specific sales members; allocating specific single user subscriptions that designate task ownership for heightened accountability.

This type of departmental communication helps improve transparency across your supply chain, because essentially, every process involved, from the point of sale to replenishment, impacts your company’s performances.

  • Integrate Data into a Comprehensive System

The biggest limitation to supply chain transparency is working with a myriad of separate planning, scheduling, customer, vendor, and accounting software programmes. It’s almost impossible to create the supply chain visibility you need to successfully compete in today’s global marketplace without total data integration.

However, there are many affordable systems available that offer the framework for data integration across business channels, and include sophisticated procurement, inventory, and distribution management such as:

  • Real-time employee access to purchase requisitions and orders
  • Enforcement of purchase order approval protocols—eliminating quality control problems from substitutions or inferior product replenishment
  • Comprehensive inventory costing methods for improved analytics
  • Packaged shipping integration with each point of sale

Improving your supply chain transparency with a comprehensive system offers long term benefits. With the ability to benchmark and establish standardised methods for sharing data, it helps to promote a better employee understanding of the needs and challenges your company faces. Moreover, data integration delivers prescriptive and predictive analytics across the entire length of the supply chain for enhanced decision-making.

Contact us today to see how Sage 200 can help YOUR business

How big a role does distribution play in maintaining your bottom line?

Finding actionable methods that control costs is a crucial component in business operations. Whether your company serves the general public, such as in retail or food service, or you transact the distribution of goods.

However, in a manufacturing or distribution model, controlling operational costs is more complicated. Separate and/or multiple warehouses, third party shipment orchestration, and other supply chain maintenance tasks are so inter-related that it’s often a challenge to differentiate exactly which areas need improvement.

For companies in Ireland that operate warehousing and distribution as part of their business structure, the recovering economic climate makes it doubly important to control wastes in these areas. Even seemingly harmless inefficiencies can compound over time and dwindle your already slim margins into nothing.

Therefore, it’s important to know exactly how big a role your warehouse and distribution processes play in maintaining your healthy bottom line.

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Many businesses perform analysis procedures quarterly, or even yearly. But, in today’s mobile marketplace, that type of reporting can quickly spell disaster.

Waiting for performance data is cost-prohibitive. Even if your reports are generated on a monthly basis, the wastes that can occur before you become aware of them can have a big impact on company profits.

According to a recent survey conducted by Warehousing Ireland, “40% of finance professionals said their firms relied almost exclusively on manual or spreadsheet methods to keep track of the business… 30% of managers complain of a lack of integration between internal systems; around a fifth complain of poor integration and communication with suppliers and with distribution partners.”

That kind of inefficiency in performance tracking can equate to huge losses in your company’s bottom line.

Supply Chain Woes

Maintaining inventory is costly. Every day that you house an item at your warehouse facility, holding charges (soft costs) accrue. And although, these costs may seem marginal, they are almost entirely responsible for any gaps between your projected operational costs and your actual costs each year.

Inefficiencies in your supply chain procedures can compound quickly. The most common problems include:

  • Lack of transparency across company departments
  • Sporadic, inaccurate or misleading stock counts
  • Lack of actionable vendor management programmes
  • Poor customer relationship management protocols

Poor communication between your administrators and floor personnel can result in multiple/duplicate purchase order issuances. The subsequent overstock then becomes subject to high shrinkage rates, or stock out situations engender costly rush shipments.

Lack of vendor management planning can also generate labour wastes if replenishment shipments aren’t scheduled precisely.

Warehouse Layout/Stocking and Workflow Constraints

Disorganisation in stocking and workflow designs at your warehouse produce a number of wastes. Every time an employee has to back-track to pick an item for the same order, it creates unnecessary expense.

Moreover, poor workflows generate lengthy lead times. The order takes longer to process and there’s a greater chance for order inaccuracy.

Bottom Line

How important is the role of your warehousing and distribution to your bottom line? Massively. So important that it often represents your entire profit margin.

Consider some benchmark metrics tabulated for the top 20 percent of global distributors by WERC:

  • Distribution costs as a percent of sales are less than 1.6 percent (most other companies range from 2.9 percent to 8.9 percent and more)
  • Distribution costs per unit shipped are less than €0.28 (most other companies range from €0.77 to €10 and more)
  • Days on hand inventory is less than 15 (most other companies range from 30 to 78 and more)
  • Shrink as a percent of total inventory is less than 0.1% (most other companies range from 0.2 percent to 1.8 percent and more)

 

 

Implementation tips for developing Sustainable Warehouse Solutions

Developing Warehouse Solutions

Warehouse Solution, whether you operate discrete or process manufacturing, perform distribution services, or stock goods for retail, developing sustainable warehouse solutions is essential for achieving long-term success.

The conscientious decision to focus on what is commonly known as the triple bottom line—economic, environmental, and social dimensions—involved in operation is a comprehensive business philosophy. And with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in place, enacting sustainability measures becomes much easier.

What is sustainable warehouse management?

warehouse solution
Essentially, sustainable warehouse management is a system designed to meet the present needs of society without compromising the opportunities and resources available for future generations.

Although it involves the entire scope of the business process, sustainability is closely associated with environmentally sound procedures. Indeed, Global Reporting Initiative’s G4 guidelines cover this aspect, but most recently, they’ve released a linkage document that will assist the compliance of the latest EU directive for the disclosure of non-financial and diversity information.

Warehouse ERP Implementation

Introducing and developing sustainable warehouse solutions is often a challenge, even with an advanced ERP system. Many distributors employ third-party supplier’s (VMI) and logistics (professional carriers) to orchestrate the chain of supply.

However, even these challenges can be reduced with the following implementation tips and techniques. First, divide your sustainability analyses by aspect and type, and then update your core performance indicators within the system with appropriate coding so that the qualitative and quantitative data can be collected and reported properly.

Ignoring the economic performance and market presence aspects, the following list can help you implement the metrics and indicators used to evaluate company sustainability.

Environmental

  • Materials—a percentage of the input usage of recycled materials
  • Energy—energy consumption of the primary source (direct)
  • Water—total usage amount for the facility
  • Emissions, effluents, and wastes—direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions by weight, oxide emissions by type and weight, and amounts of non-recyclable solid waste

Labour Practises (Social)

  • Employment—employee counts and turnover rates by age group, gender, and region
  • Health and Safety—Injury occurrence rates, work-related fatalities, occupation-related disease, lost days, and absenteeism
  • Diversity and Equal Opportunity—Basic salary allocation by gender and employee category. (Also see the recent G4 linkage document for simplified EU compliance.)

Human Rights (Social)

  • Investment and Procurement—total numbers and percentages of agreements that have gone through human rights screening
  • Child Labour—any measures that have been taken to help eliminate child labour
  • Freedom of Association—measures that support the right to exercise freedom of association and collective bargaining, and any identification of these rights at risk.

Society (Social)

  • Community—the nature and scope of any programmes, practises, or initiatives that have a positive impact on the operation of your community, and the effectiveness and outcomes of those endeavours.
  • Corruption—the amount and percentage of business units that have been examined for risks related to corruption
  • Consumer Health and Safety—this will naturally vary depending on the type of products housed in your facility, but basically, any assessments made concerning the improvement or life cycles of the products that could impact consumers.

With an advanced ERP system, many of these indicators are already integrated, and the reporting framework can be easily customised to include new governmental regulations and directives.

Effective ERP implementation for a sustainable warehouse involves collecting the right data and then making informed business decisions based on the performance reports that your ERP system generates.

 

Introducing our Event with the Waterford Chamber of Commerce

Waterford Chamber of Commerce
Learn at Lunch: Move Your Accounting Software into the 21st Century

Date: Thursday, 27th October
Time: 12.30pm (registration & lunch); 1.00–2.00pm (presentations)
Venue: Edmund Rice Heritage Centre, Barrack Street, Waterford
Cost: This is a free event with lunch included. Places are limited.
Bookings: Call Jemma at 051 311136 or email jemma.archbold@waterfordchamber.ie

Do you need to:

·     Manage your growing business’ finances, supply chain and reporting online?

·     Keep your business fully compliant with legislation, and secure through automated back-ups and enhanced security?

·     Use fully flexible, with optional modules that can be added as your business grows?

The old phrase, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, is often the rationale for trundling along with an accounting system. But now with the availability of cost efficient cloud accounting and financial solutions, such thinking could be holding your company back from significant benefits that include: cost savings, productivity improvements, real-time business insight, and even increased revenue.

On the day there will be an opportunity to win a six-month subscription to Sage 200 online for your business (T&C’s apply), so bring along your business cards.

Speakers:

·     Nigel Pim – Pims Business Systems

·     Stephanie Davies – Brook Software Solutions

·     Sarah-Jane McGurrell – Sage Ireland