Technology in Practice

For both food manufacturers and distributors, efficiently managing the shelf life of ingredients and products results in less waste, greater profits, better cash flow, fewer regulatory/administrative headaches and happier customers. The supply chain of perishable food products is fraught with time-sensitive challenges. The process becomes complicated when suppliers are inconsistent when it comes to the shelf life of the ingredients they deliver, and customers have varying requirements for the shelf lives of the products that are delivered to them. Food manufacturers and distributors need to be in complete control of their information processing systems, which is why Sage X3 is the management platform of choice for food manufacturers and distributors as it was designed to address their specific logistical challenges. Managing and Monitoring Ingredients Ingredients used in food and beverages need to be carefully monitored and tested from the moment they enter the system to the time they’re delivered and used. With Sage X3, producers and distributors are able to monitor the quality/freshness of ingredients at each stage. They can schedule testing per the freshness “window” of every ingredient, and receive alerts to know when it’s time to test. Additionally, the system allows for a range of testing protocols, including pH, viscosity, temperature, weight and other critical criteria. Managing Finished Stock Sage X3 also enables producers and distributors to monitor the shelf life of finished food products in multiple storage facilities. Users can create rules for handling specific categories, which can be universally applied to similar products that are subsequently entered into the system. Rules can also be configured to meet the shelf life demands of each customer as some retailers have specific shelf life requirements for specific products. Tracking and Moving Expiring Inventory The inefficient management of products nearing their expiration date can be tremendously costly. With Sage X3 you can set alerts that give you sufficient notice to take the appropriate steps when stock is nearing its expiration date. You can set alerts on entire product categories at all your warehouses, enabling you to systematically manage a wide diversity of food products. This allows you to move large inventories before they near expiration and turn a profit – or give you ample time to move expiring stocks by offering customers a discount and limiting potential losses. Emergency Readiness Sage X3 is also a key tool in HACCP management. When a food product is recalled due to a safety issues, you will be required to document its procurement and handling, manufacturing and distribution. With Sage X3, information can be easily accessed allowing you to identify which items are at risk and enabling you to halt the product at any point in the supply chain. It also affords you the traceability to simplify the otherwise onerous task of HACCP reporting. Shelf management, traceability and quality assurance are key ingredients in successfully managing food manufacturing and distribution. Sage X3 allows you to efficiently handle all these processes according to your specific needs, while giving you the flexibility to respond to changing customer demand or circumstances at all points in the supply chain: from production, to warehousing to delivery. For more information about how Sage X3 can help your Food & Beverage business, please contact us.

While COVID-19 has made risk management a priority for organizations around the world, it’s not the only threat to your business operations in 2020 and beyond. The hard truth is that there is a wide range of risk factors that can interrupt your business operations. From major natural disasters to disruptions to your third-party suppliers, you need to be prepared for – and protected against – anything that could throw off into your carefully-planned workflows. 1. Identify the risks The key first step in any risk management plan is to identify and rank the threats that are most likely to interrupt normal business operations at your organization. The relevant threats will vary between sectors, so there’s no real one-size-fits-all approach. For example, manufacturers may need to be most wary of equipment failure, while the threat of fire or flood may be much greater for retailers that warehouse large quantities of inventory. Corporate and professional services firms, on the other hand, may need to think more deeply about the threat of a cyber attack. 2. Minimize the risks Now you know the risks that are most relevant to your business, you can implement a risk minimization plan. While it’s unlikely you’ll be able to eliminate these risks, there are measures you can put in place to significantly reduce your exposure to them. For example, a predictive maintenance plan can help prevent equipment downtime, and installing a warehouse sprinkler system may significantly reduce the risk of fire damage to inventory. Likewise, implementing appropriate cybersecurity software and data protection protocols will help protect your organization against hacker attacks. 3. Plan for action When a threat materializes, fast and effective action is required to minimize the damage to your business operations. You should have a contingency plan in place for each of the business threats you’ve identified. Each plan should set out clear roles and specific action points for relevant employees, and the plan should be widely communicated and easily accessible across your organization. Consider developing both an internal and external communications plan in order to begin your action steps. You also need contingency plans for each identified threat. Think of these as blueprints for building bridges over the threat in order to continue business operations during the recovery process. 4. Protect your bottom line When a threat strikes, even the best-laid plans may not be able to completely protect your organization against financial loss. That’s why you need a good business interruption insurance policy. These are designed to cover – at least in part – revenue lost due to an interruption in your normal business operations. While business interruption insurance doesn’t remove the threat, it may enable you to keep your doors open while you address it. Whether you’re dealing with a global pandemic or a much more localized risk, the right planning, preparation and protection will help to keep your business afloat through the storm – and give you peace of mind beforehand.

New features in Acumatica Cloud ERP 2020 R2 includes Multiday Appointments and Negative Extended Prices Lines on AR invoices! Contact us if you have any questions or would like more information about new features and enhancements in Acumatica ERP 2020 R2.

The release of Sage X3 version 12 contains improvements in how to track revisions made to Order documents including Quotes, Sales Orders, and Purchase Orders. Revision number tracking can help us determine the number of times the order had undergone changes. Prior to version 12, users were prompted to save a revision and they could select “yes” or “no”. If “no” was selected, the revision was not tracked. Now, we can force the revision. Also, prior to v12, you could not reprint an old version unless you modified the native reports. Now, with all native reports, you can select the revision. In version 12, for Sales Orders, you will need to tweak the Parameter SALREV in VEN Sales chapter – Group ORD. There is the same parameter available for Quotes and Purchase Orders: Not managed: you will not receive a prompt and revisions will not be tracked Managed on demand: will prompt the user whether they would like to save the revision Managed automatically: revision tracking is mandated with no prompt You can now decide to print a specific revision of the sales documents or purchase documents: This will allow the visualization of the complete revision history from the Sales Order screen as well as quote and PO, and it shows the difference in Red of what was changed for that revision. In version 12, you can see the entire document in each version. Prior to v12, it was only by line that you could access revised information – much more cumbersome and difficult to identify the revisions: Access each version to see what was changed, here in red: You can also see the original order and any other version of the document by selecting the revision in the left list: With this new functionality, you get much cleaner and efficient access to revised documents for sales quotes, sales orders, and purchase orders. For more information about how Net at Work can help unleash the power of your business or for any questions regarding Sage X3, please contact us.

Sage X3 has several widgets that can be customized and added to landing pages to create a unique user experience. One in particular is the Calendar Gadget. In a previous blog post, we told you how to add the Calendar Gadget to a homepage. The Calendar Gadget is based on a query and with a little set up can be color coded to signal different event stages. This blog post details the process to configure the color coding of the Calendar Gadget. ADDING CRITERIA TO MY QUERY Follow Setup > Usage > Reports > Graphical Query Locate Query STO005. This is the query that the calendar is based upon. The Allocation Status field can be added to the query to indicate if an order is allocated, partially allocated, or not allocated. Select run from the right-side menu to see the full query. ADDING COLOR TO A CALENDAR Follow Setup > Interactive Components > Dashboard View Search for Code RSTO0051 Locate Rows 9 and 10 Color column is for the event color and category column is for the legend descriptions, these will generally be the same. This will link the values in the query to a color defined by the local menu parameters (below). Select the ellipsis and select a value from the query. Locate Rows 11 and 12 This will define the legend and the event colors. Local Menu-Category is for the calendar descriptions and Local Menu-Color defines the colors associated with these descriptions, these too will often be the same. Enter Local Menu – 416 This local menu is associated with the allocation status. CREATE A MENU ITEM Follow Administration > Authoring > Menu Items Select create new menu item. For more detailed information regarding calendar colors, visit the Sage X3 Online Help Center.

This video will show you how to add a custom field to a screen in Acumatica Cloud ERP. This customization does publish to the Acumatica instance that will log everyone out. Make sure to have all users out of the system before performing this or use a test system. Contact us if you have any questions or would like more information about Acumatica features and enhancements. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

Cloud Hosting Options for Sage BusinessWorks These days it seems like everything and everyone is “on the cloud.” However, it is important to know what that means before moving your Sage BusinessWorks to the cloud. There are undeniable benefits to hosting your Sage BusinessWorks in the cloud, including instant access to real-time customer data, reports, and analysis, via PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet, anywhere and anytime with internet connection capabilities. Also, users can access the same features, functionalities as a Sage BusinessWorks deployed on-premise, but without the cost associated with building an in-house server or the hassle of maintaining the backup of huge data, or dealing with its security issues. But as moving to the cloud has its own challenges, businesses need to understand what it entails. To help with some of these challenges, in a recent webcast our experts outlined the five cloud-clarifying concepts that you need to know before moving your Sage BusinessWorks to the cloud to help run your business, secure your data, enable your company’s growth goals and ensure business continuity. Know Your Services – Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Know Your Service Level – How much does it cost when you’re not online and your data is completely inaccessible to both you and your customers? Know Your Deployment Options – Private, Public, Virtual, or Hybrid Cloud options Know Your Risk – Are there risks in moving Sage BusinessWorks to Cloud? Understand Your Cost – How to retain your investment (ROI)? Watch On-Demand Webinar: [blogpromo type=’webinar’ link=’https://www.thecloudatwork.com/resources/the-case-for-hosting-sage-erp-in-the-cloud/’ btntext=’Watch Now’ iconlabel=’Recorded Webinar’] The Case for Hosting Sage BusinessWorks in the Cloud Sage Cloud: Moving On-Premise Sage ERP to the Cloud[/blogpromo] For more on information on Sage BusinessWorks or cloud hosting options – contact us here.

Human Resources leaders have a lot on their minds in general, and the global pandemic only amplifies their worries. While we wait to understand the longer-term ramifications of COVID-19, we continue to be tasked with running successful businesses staffed by skilled and engaged personnel. According to a 2020 Gartner survey on priorities for HR Leaders, the top concern of HR professionals was building critical skills and competencies in the organization. Why are HR professionals worried, and what can help relieve their fears? The future of work is changing—are you prepared? Everyone can agree that the future of work in America is full of changes. Trends like the gig economy, remote workforce, workforce aging, artificial intelligence, and changing demographics are already impacting the skills and competencies workers need today and will certainly continue to do so into the future. Competition for talent remains high, especially in certain critical segments like technology and financial services, and perhaps surprisingly, manufacturing. By 2030, the global talent shortage could reach 85.2 million people—costing companies trillions of dollars in lost economic opportunity. The dramatic skill shifts and resulting skill gaps cannot be solved by recruiting alone, training and retraining will both play pivotal roles in ensuring organizations have the right employees in the right roles. Ignore employee development at your peril A 2018 Work Institute report predicted that one in four workers would leave their jobs that year—and predicted the attrition rate would increase to one in three by 2020. Nearly one-third of that turnover was attributed to unsupportive management and a lack of development opportunities. The most obvious response to increasing employee retention, then, is creating more effective training and development programs. The skills gap is real The shortage of critical skills and competencies is the most commonly cited issue affecting HR leaders—cited by 86% of HR technology leaders in the Gartner survey. Addressing these skills gaps is the top priority for growing the business. HR leaders revealed that they lack the skills they need to drive future performance, that they struggle to develop critical talent segments, and that their current learning culture does not support effective new skills development. On a more macro level, 19% of current skills will be irrelevant in three years. Employers that do nothing about these glaring and growing skill gaps risk irrelevance themselves. All roads lead to workforce training Creating a workforce prepared to meet the demands of the future is a complex undertaking, involving multiple moving parts, especially now, as more training will need to evolve from the classroom to on-demand to address the increase in more employees working remotely. However, it is clear that employee training and development is a crucial component of any solution. Employee development programs provide a two-pronged approach to solving the critical skills shortage. In addition to providing the training necessary to meet the skillsets required for the future, employee development programs have been shown to improve employee retention rates—preserving your vital in-house talent. Drive digital business transformation Another one of the top five priorities for HR leaders in 2020 in the recent Gartner survey is driving digital business transformation. Driving digital transformation was among the top two priorities cited by 35% – 43% of almost every type of HR subfunction leader. The challenge is that 43% of HR leaders stated their organizations do not have a clear, consistent strategy for digital transformation. The solution – become a digital business expert. Actively engaging in digital strategy discussions on how to make HR more agile. Enable your HR teams to participate in meaningful discussions about digital business transformation. Explore HR solutions that align with your changing needs and address the challenges mentioned above so HR can sleep better every night.

In this video we cover how to set up widgets on dashboards in Acumatica Cloud ERP. We also go in depth about using filters to display different variations of your data using saved filters. Contact us if you have any questions or would like more information about new features and enhancements in Acumatica. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }