Previously known as “Early Watch”, SAP has revamped this intelligent system protection service and created a winner. This service can be set to periodically run and keep your IT staff, Vision33 TOTAL Care and SAP constantly aware of your system’s health. In the near future, SAP will be able to deliver new version, patches, hot-fixes, analysis and update queries directly to your system. If you need to send your database to SAP, this service will simplify that process tremendously.

Customers running SAP Business One for three (3) or more years or customers with very high transactional volumes have seen their SQL Databases grow exponentially. This can cause the performance SAP Business One to degrade. Data Archiving will allow you to move older data to the side, while maintaining visibility into that data. The result – it will make the system faster, enhance the user experience, increase customer service and protect the historical data.

August is National Inventors Month, and in honor of those creative types who are always on the lookout for ways to make the world a little bit better, Vision33 is running a little competition for a chance to win a 64GB Apple iPad® Wi-Fi (valued at $699) along with Omnigraffle for iPad diagramming software (valued at $49.99) to go right along with it!

The theme of the contest is Reinvent Your Ritual, and this month we’re challenging you to get creative in dreaming up the perfect process for managing sales leads for your small or medium sized business. This is your opportunity to redesign your old, inefficient process or work-flow and make it more efficient, streamlined, profitable, up-to-date, environmentally friendly, and otherwise just better for everyone involved!

In your typical workday have you ever noticed:

• important tasks are falling through the cracks?
• key information is not readily accessible to the people who need it?
• too much paper is being wasted?
• systems are being misused or going unused?
• simple tasks are taking too much time and effort?
• other slowdowns, frustrations, or just general bad business practices?

If so, there are likely many opportunities for process improvement and we want to hear about your great ideas below!

Enter by completing 3 simple steps:

Rules and Important Dates

Official Contest Rules
Contest opens: August 11, 2010 8:00am PDT
Deadline for entries: August 31, 2010, at 11:59pm PDT
Judging of entries: September 1-8, 2010
Winner announced: September 9, 2010

Many small and medium sized businesses experience growing pains when their accounting software fails to grow at the same pace as their business. As you go about completing your daily tasks, you may be experiencing increasing limitations and the frustrations that go along with it.

If you can empathize with any of these feelings and situations, please retweet this to your colleagues (it may finally be time to make a change to your current business software systems…):

1. You have more disparate ‘islands of information’ inside your business than you would have time to visit on a Caribbean cruise.
2. Predicting financial outcomes for your investors and shareholders is more accurate when you use a Magic 8 ball than the answers you get from your accounting system.
3. It takes more time to close the month than you took for your last vacation.
4. The database and transaction processes are really only understood by a few ‘inside experts’ and held as tightly as the Coca Cola secret recipe.
5. The only way to get a report or sales order to print correctly from your system is to take a screenshot.
6. You feel like you are on a roller coaster ride at Disneyland every time you launch your current software, unsure of what surprises will await.
7. When you ask for the user manual, one of your employees gives you a file folder that they have scribbled notes on the back of.
8. You have a bruise on your forehead from opening the wrong spreadsheet for the 10th time today.
9. You have mandated employee breaks to help the system from getting overloaded from too many concurrent users.
10. You KNOW your current software has cost you more in lost employee productivity, delayed orders, and custom workarounds than a new system would cost, but you can’t get that data from your existing accounting software!

What pains have you witnessed as a result of outgrowing your accounting software?  Tell us about your funny (or not-so-funny) experiences in the comments below!

SAP Business One customers have always received a free add on for Fixed Assets. That was great, but it never worked properly in the US until now.

This add on will provide greater accuracy, free up your accounting time and track every fixed asset your business owns. You will no longer need to keep this detail in spreadsheets or a third party product disconnected from your accounting system.

How will the new and improved Fixed Assets support in SAP Business One impact your accounting processes? Let us know in the comments below.

Currently, SAP Business One has down payment capabilities, but you have never been able to include Tax and Freight in the down payment amount.  That seemingly small oversight has caused significant pain to users but in SAP Business One 8.8, this is no longer a limitation.

Companies using down payments to defer revenue recognition or secure 100% payment for special orders up front (including tax and freight) will benefit.  You can also partially apply the down-payment, tax, and freight to multiple invoices.

How will 100% down-payments improve the way you do business? Let us know in the comments below.

Long the standard report writer in the USA, SAP did all of their customers a favor when they purchased Business Objects and inherited Crystal Reports. The old Print Layout Designer (PLD) will be phased out and over the next few years all reports will be Crystal Reports instead.

To help speed that process the general release version of 8.8 includes a conversion tool, enabling PLD reports to be converted to Crystal Reports.

In later editions of 8.8, we will also see the tight integration of another Business Objects product, Xcelsius. With busy executives needing the convenience of Dashboards and KPIs, Xcelsius will make these tools core.

How will Crystal Reports integration impact the way you do business? Let us know in the comments below.

Like so many small to midsized businesses, you finally make that big leap of faith – trading in your XL spreadsheets or small accounting software package for an integrated business software solution. It’s time to play with the big kids. Things are coming together – your employees are buying in and for the first time ever you are getting an accurate picture of your balance sheet, speeding inventory returns and improving margins on your products and services. Then – you get the news – a new version of the software is being released.

So many growing businesses are making that initial investment in business software and then struggling with the decision to upgrade when a new version is later released. Point in case – SAP recently released its latest version of SAP Business One 8.8. The latest version brings a host of new features like Crystal Reports integration, Data archiving, remote support platform and on and on. But if you don’t feel that new product features alone are relevant enough or beneficial enough to your daily operations to warrant the upgrade, the bigger question to ask your software provider is ‘Why or how will this upgrade benefit my business?’

After working with hundreds of SMBs through business software upgrades, myself and the rest of the Vision33 team have had the opportunity to help customers find the value in upgrading that is ‘unique’ to them. Many have come back to myself and our Consultants weeks and months later saying they understand firsthand now why they needed to take that step. So – at a strategic level, here are the key benefits we hear.

1. Higher ROI and TCO
There is an initial investment in business management software and a continued commitment to annual software maintenance.  Only by being committed will you really achieve a strong ROI and see your TCO decrease.

2. Things last longer and work more efficiently when routine maintenance is performed
If software were a car, an upgrade would be an oil change. Being committed to maintenance/upgrades ensures a long-life and highly productive investment. It keeps your investment in top operating shape.

3. Minimizes changes and disruptions to your business
Technology is changing faster than ever. Believe it or not – keeping up to date a little at a time through an upgrade will protect you from the paralysis of having to implement something brand new. Waiting too long between versions can put your software on an unreachable island.

4. Learning in steps is easier than starting from scratch
New features bring new value to business. The latest features can be the easiest to learn because as a user you become smarter and more skilled. It’s simply a new destination to arrive at.

5. Builds confidence
Employees love working for businesses that use the most up to date tools, as it gives them a sense of security in the business owner’s commitment to the company growth. It helps them do the best at their job and communicate that confidence to customers on a daily basis.

Have you recently upgraded your business software or are currently thinking about it? What are your thoughts?