Advantage of an ERP for Small and medium businesses

When you are running a small or medium-sized business, it is natural that the SME might not be able to afford a high-end proprietary / MRP or Accounting software. This case happens when SME are not able to pay or afford huge Business software, also other cases where SME don’t go for fancy technologies. But after the introduction of different Open source ERP software, the pattern is moving to new technologies by many SMB’s and SME’s.

Let’s start with the brief introduction of one of the most important and common Business Software used in many organization – Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) –

*An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is an integrated computer-based application used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resource.

The main purpose of an ERP system is to provide you with the information from all the business department/function happening within the organization. All together and ERP is a process of getting information from the different department of the organization and capturing in a repository (system) for the purpose of reviewing, reusing and reporting as and when required.

Proper Management of Time: ERP reduce the wastage of time taken from the purchase order till providing the quotations. It allows the process planning a boost while reducing the errors and mistakes. Small and mid-sized businesses have become one of the most important driving force in today’s economy, accounting for the majority of employment growth. A better-equipped technology can leverage the new market for Small & mid businesses, even in the face of tight credit and a stagnant overall economy.

Low Routine Tasks: ERP reduce the routine tasking or feeding of the similar kind of information every time which can be considered as a huge waste as Human Resources are considered to be the most important cost while running the business, Deploying and ERP for SME (Small & medium enterprises) will provide a good opportunity of Optimizing the output while minimizing the resource. Also low human Error will increase the quality, quantity of the output.

Accountability and Traceability:  The best parts of an ERP system is that it allows you to keep track of every transaction happening in an organization. It answers all your “Wh” type questions who, when, where . . . & so on. An ERP system allows SME to figure out many things with the help of certain clicks. It also allows Traceability of thing in an organization. There is much another advantage such as Transparency which is the most difficult part in any SME to figure out thing for which you zero knowledge. It can help Business to have a check on the Strength, weakness, threats and Opportunities which can consider as an effective management for Small and mid-sized Businesses.

*Source of the Definition – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning

Automating Student Management System in CRM

  • by bista-admin
  • Nov 23, 2010
  • 0
  • Category:

CRM for Education institute/ MBA / Schools / colleges / Universities /

Automated Communication via Email, Phone, Chat, SMS Text Messaging:

Bista Education CRM has one of the most powerful feature of communicating automatically as per schedule by the user/client/lead.

The Dormancy Module which includes the tools such as Email, SMS etc which has an impressive ability to facilitate communication via all of these different  tools with the student as well as with the lead manager/lead handler.

Automatic Communication with Students in Education CRM.

Education considered to be one of the most important part of any human being and for education MBA or other institute, creating a lead and converting it into a student might be a difficult task because of the options available with the students from different colleges and universities for large number of course. The only way of managing your student properly is that a lead handler or a sales manager should properly follow – up on every stage the cycle of every student. We all know for different course there are different cycles to be follow one example is here:

  • Incoming call/ Outgoing call / email inquiry etc. by the student for the course.
  • Getting details of the courses.
  • Application for the admission form
  • Form Submissions
  • Call for the entrance examination
  • Call for second round of interview.
  • Selection phase
  • Admission Phase
  • Payment of fees
  • Balance fees payments if any.
  • Enrolment by the student in the institute
  • Providing the study material & thereby providing other services to Students.*
*(Cycle can be changed as per the processes)

Bista education lead management/student management software provide you to have a list of your business processes incase of student enquiry till the fees payment with predefine time of follow up, through email and sms to the students which act as important automatic reminder with respect to the student management, the lead nurturing, proper follow up which allow you to reduce the chances of loosing the lead. The same also allow you for better student management when there are many enquiries when campaign, advertisements and other activities on the services & courses offered by education institutes

Email & SMS can be predefine & personalize at every stage and can be sent to the students. Also Highly personalized e-mail communications can be easily automate as part of campaign management using sophisticated rules and work flow routing.

Dormancy Module make it easy for marketing and sales to track the status of all sales leads, with proper time to time follow up with high chances of closing the lead.

A screen shot of the Education CRM is below for your perusal. For more technical specificaiton and functional demo of this tool you can mail us on info@bistasolutions.com

automatic communication with a lead, lead management software, sales management, crm

SugarCRM Editions Comparison

  • by bista-admin
  • Nov 18, 2010
  • 0
  • Category:

SugarCRM Implementation

SugarCRM one of the leading Open Source customer relationship management (CRM) software available with three different editions which allows the organisation / user to choose as per the requirements.

SugarCRM Community edition: SugarCRM community edition is freely downloadable from the SugarCRM website http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ ; SugarCRM free version allows a user/manager to maintain the customer lead, Opportunity, Sales, lead tracking, marketing automation, managing accounts etc.

Sugar Professional: SugarCRM Professional version is very much ideal for small and Midsized of businesses. Sugar Professional is not a freely available, but on a per user licence basis.

Sugar Enterprise: SugarCRM Enterprise is ideally targeted to large organisation where advance level of CRM is required for decision making. Sugar Enterprise is little costlier as compared to Sugar Professional with some add on features such as customer Portal, workflow etc.

SugarCRM Product comparison Matrix is divided as per the User Experience, Sales Force Automation, Customer Support, Reporting & so . .on for a detail information you can check on the following link: http://media.sugarcrm.com/datasheets/EditionsComparison.pdf

Updates : Asia open source software conference

The 2010 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Asia conference (FOSSASIA) will be held in Ho Chi Minh City from November 12-14 with a focus on lightweight computing and women in IT.

The event is expected to draw the participation of 500 experts, and programmers from Vietnam as well as the UK, Germany, France, the US, Greece and India.
Open Source India brings the open source community to one floor, to explore what’s new and exciting in open source languages, tools, and techniques. Why should you be here? Sharpen your skills, keep pace with evolving technologies, and connect with the thought leaders and energy that drives open source!

• Get expert training for your software developers, IT Implementers, senior decision makers, business heads, CTOs/CIOs, researchers, FOSS enthusiasts through our amazing workshops!
• Hear the latest on new and hot technologies including big data, cloud, IoT, IT infra management, OpenStack, web development, database and mobile app development
• Meet up with the passionate developers and innovators of open source projects
• Get answers about leveraging open source to make your projects even more secure

What happens here?
CONFERENCES: Our speakers share new approaches, proven best practices, and exceptional technical skills on topics ranging through big data, cloud, IoT, IT management & security, open stack, web development, database and mobile app development. Also hear success stories from CIOs about how they leveraged open source!

WORKSHOPS: Practical training in the skills, tools and techniques needed to build a solid foundation in the constantly evolving developers world.

NETWORKING & CAREER GROWTH: Meet and network with the kind of people who could define your future career and help you become a thought leader.

Read More . . .

SugarCRM expands social and iPhone support

SugarCRM has added mobile and social capabilities to its Sugar 6 software in a bid to capitalise on the growing use of social media and smartphones in the enterprise.
Highlights of the Sugar 6 update include social customer relationship management (CRM) and media management features, as well as enhanced mobile, email and language support.

The SugarCRM Social Cloud enables customers to connect the software with social networks including LinkedIn and Twitter.

Sugar Cloud Connectors and social feeds, meanwhile, enable the sharing of anytype of external data, including video and social networking information, or anyrecords from the CRM system.SugarCRM has also added email management and communications capabilitiesallowing Sugar 6 to integrate with Microsoft Outlook 2010.

“The idea is to let users see the latest useful information regarding their clients within one interface,” said Tom Schuster, vice president of EMEA at SugarCRM.

“The additions will cut down the time spent searching for information, and help to enrich conversations between users and their clients by providing personal elements on top of factual information.”

A Twitter Connector tool is designed to put this into practice by showing a customer’s contact information and latest tweets.

Sugar Cloud Connectors and social feeds, meanwhile, enable the sharing of any type of external data, including video and social networking information, or any records from the CRM system.

Business Process Management Training – Managing Workflows

Bista BPM & Workflow Training offers you & your organization Business Process Management Training which allow your employee to create different Business Processes & workflows. This training also allows your business to have a better view of your different processes of different department. Bista BPM Training allows you to create end number of work flows for your organization with less dependency on the vendor. Bista BPM training includes Basic and Advance course with 1 month of unlimited tickets in creation, implementation and integration of your business processes.

Bista BPM training offers you training on one of the leading open source tool using ProcessMaker which is a web-based workflow automation tool. Bista training can be achieved online as well as onsite to a group of employees of your organization.

Following are the course outline of the training.

  • A quick overview on Business Process Management
  • Implementation of BPM tool using ProcessMaker
  • BPMN and other standards ProcessMaker and other tools
  • Managing Processes and Managing Users in Processmaker
  • Process Mapping
  • DynaForms
  • DynaForm Fields
  • Dependent Fields
  • Managing Cases
  • Reporting in ProcessMaker

ProcessMaker Advanced Training includes the following

  • Process Supervisors
  • Sub-Process Case Tracker
  • Web Entry
  • Conditional Notifications
  • Process Permissions
  • PM Tables
  • Events
  • ProcessMaker Integration
  • Invoking web services from ProcessMaker
  • Using ProcessMaker web services

What’s More ! BPM Training materials such as Notes, Videos and other materials are also provided so that new employees can learn on BPM implementation easily.

Your organization can also register for “Trouble Ticket Support” annually.

Remember* : One Business Process will be implemented by Bista Solutions as per your choice which will cover at the time of training with your employees.

For more information, you can email us on info@bistasolutions.com

Introducing SugarCRM for your Sales Force

SugarCRM is an application that helps in managing the Customer Relationship/ lead management / Marketing Automation/ Campaign management and other activities of an organisation. SugarCRM started as Open source Project on SourceForge, and the company still maintain a fully open source version. SugarCRM offers flexible, web-based and a cost effective customer Relationship management tool (CRM).

SugarCRM allows the organization to improve the Salesforce management and customer management while creating efficient and effective sales. SugarCRM source code availability to developer’s and customers allows them to do the customization, Modification, changes in the CRM. SugarCRM can be deployed in a hosted, self-hosted or third-party hosted environment. SugarCRM also allows the Vendor independency where the Company never committed to the same vendor.

It also allows with other information such as Reporting tool, Dashboards for quick actions. SugarCRM Products includes Sugar Community Edition, Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise. The Community Edition is Open Source and free to download.  The Professional and Enterprise editions are offered under a commercial license.

My next posting will be on the Comparison of SugarCRM Editions for a better differentiation.

SugarCRM Customization & Implementation

SugarCRM Expertise – SugarCRM customization – SugarCRM Implementation

Open source software development firm Bista Solutions has announced the launch of its new implementation and customization services for SugarCRM across the Globe with its centers in USA & Canada.

SugarCRM is an open-source software-solution which produces the Sugar Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. SugarCRM develops CRM software in three editions viz: Sugar Community Edition, Sugar Professional & Sugar Enterprise. SugarCRM makes Sugar Community Edition available free of charge, and sells annual subscriptions to Sugar Professional and to Sugar Enterprise.SugarCRM implementation experts who have the experience of implementing SugarCRM in different verticals. Our experienced team of experts follow a
systematic approach towards implementation to make sure that the implementation is a success. We follow the following process for implementation

SugarCRM is a commercial open source customer relationship management software (CRM) that is widely used by many modern day organizations. At Web Werks, we offer offshore SugarCRM development services which includes SugarCRM development, SugarCRM customization, custom SugarCRM development, SugarCRM custom module development, SugarCRM data integration solutions to businesses of all sizes.

  • SugarCRM Development
  • Sales and Leads Managing Systems
  • Campaign Management
  • Client Account Management
  • Payment Module Management
  • Billing and Invoice Management
  • Call Management

SugarCRM can be used by anyone because of its flexibility that it provides and cost effectiveness making it an ideal affordable solution for small, medium and large sized businesses. We have all the expertise and experience in CRM consulting and SugarCRM implementation that will enable you to fully leverage the functionality of SugarCRM for your business benefit.
You can hire our dedicated SugarCRM developers who have hands on experience in developing SugarCRM based applications and customization service. Our SugarCRM developers team will put tremendous efforts and dedication to develop quality websites and Internet applications using SugarCRM that will stand out of the competition and contribute to overall success of your business.

Technologies

Defining business objectives
Deployment and Configuration
Customization and Integration
Data migration
Mock Implementation
Functional training
Proactive and reactive support

Bista Solutions – Experts in Open Source Software development, already implemented projects for SugarCRM & vTigerCRM with exclusive customization to the clients across the globe.

Visit www.bistasolutions.com for more information

Odoo, Readies Major Product Line Upgrade Odoo v6

Odoo (previously known as OpenERP), the leader in open source ERP and business applications, has announced today the availability of the Release Candidate of Odoo v6, a major software line upgrade that makes implementation and use of a comprehensive set of business applications — CRM, Purchase Management, Manufacturing, Warehouse Management, Project Management, Accounting, and Human Resources — far easier, more affordable and accessible for companies of all sizes.

The Release Candidate is a finalized version of Odoo v6, which is available to the Odoo community and customers so they can evaluate and provide feedback for a final version release in December 2010.

Odoo was designed to overcome traditional barriers that prevent many companies from acquiring the ERP and business applications they need to run and support their businesses. The current success of Odoo’s software — with 1,000 downloads daily — is based on the absence of any licensing fees, the flexibility to customize the application without costly and time-consuming development requirements, the availability of over 500 software modules developed by the Odoo community, and the flexibility to deploy applications either on-site or online.

With v6, Odoo brings this vision one step further: Bringing Together the Best of Salesforce.com and SAP

Odoo, the leader in open source ERP and business applications, has announced today the availability of the Release Candidate of Odoo v6, a major software line upgrade that makes implementation and use of a comprehensive set of business applications — CRM, Purchase Management, Manufacturing, Warehouse Management, Project Management, Accounting, and Human Resources — far easier, more affordable and accessible for companies of all sizes.The Release Candidate is a finalized version of Odoo v6, which is available to the Odoo community and customers so they can evaluate and provide feedback for a final version release in December 2010.

Odoo was designed to overcome traditional barriers that prevent many companies from acquiring the ERP and business applications they need to run and support their businesses. The current success of Odoo’s software — with 1,000 downloads daily — is based on the absence of any licensing fees, the flexibility to customize the application without costly and time-consuming development requirements, the availability of over 500 software modules developed by the Odoo community, and the flexibility to deploy applications either on-site or online.

With v6, Odoo brings this vision one step further:

Read More . . . .

Bringing Together the Best of Salesforce.com and SAP

Another Successful BPM Implementation – AgroTechnology Transfer and Commercialization Center, Ltd.

“AgroTechnology transfer and commercialization center successfully uses ProcessMaker to benefit the company’s business and its government clients. We have automated most of the company’s business processes and achieved very good level of work transparency and efficiency”.

Bekembaev Arman, Business Development Manager – AgroTechnology Transfer and Commercialization Center Ltd.

Overview

AgroTechnology Transfer and Commercialization Center is a private/public joint venture that promotes advanced technology, products, and know-how in the agroindustrial sector of Kazakhstan. The company was faced with a rapid increase in paper-based processes that were running out of control as it attempted to manage the processes that were central to its work: developing project descriptions, establishing cooperaton with external experts, and evaluating projects. These processes generated a vast amount of information that could not be easily analyzed to improve process efficiency.

The paper-based business processes needed immediate automation to eliminate duplicated effort and errors in documentation. The introduction of ProcessMaker workflow software in the company’s working processes optimized labor expenditures.

Read More

This Implementation & Customization Powered by Bista solutions “Official Gold Partner’s of Processmaker“