The beginning of a New Year provides an opportunity to reflect. In the recent past, the role that information technology (“IT”) plays within the market place has been significantly elevated. The days when “IT” was perceived to be a glorified way to post to accounting has become a distant memory! Today, “IT” systems are recognized as one of the most important strategic assets a business can possess. When used wisely, “IT” systems allow companies to expand markets, implement creative solutions for customers, and gain competitive advantage.

Importantly, “IT” produces the information needed to help managers make better decisions. Key performance indicators (KPIs) measure the things that matter most to the organization’s success; an astute analysis of the data provides insight into the strategies and tactics that result in long-term success. Simply put, “IT” is the core asset that helps decision makers more effectively manage all of the other assets within the organization.

If you were a large corporate entity in today’s technology-driven marketplace, your VP of “IT” would probably be an executive board member where she or he would be expected to make a major contribution to the corporate strategy. The responsibility of the VP would be to determine how “IT” can be used to solve the corporation’s unique business problems. This role is vital to the ongoing success of any company in today’s competitive environment.

E&A’s marketplace is the SMB (Small/Medium Business) sector. While our customers may not be fortune 1000 organizations, the role of technology and the business issues our clients face in the marketplace are no different from large corporations. Of course, the main difference is that in place of the VP of “IT” and the large department of consultants, programmers and analysts that perform this kind of work in a large corporate setting, SMB customers rely on companies like E&A for these services.

In fact, hundreds of SMBs look to E&A as their primary source of “IT” solutions. Even for the small group of E&A customers who might have some “IT” personnel on staff, E&A remains their source for many vital services. E&A understands how our customer’s challenges can be solved with technology. E&A not only understands the business applications, but through our close relationship with Infor we have gained insight into technology’s future direction and what it means to our customers. Whatever knowledge that might be lacking among any given individual on the E&A staff is overwhelmingly made up for by the collective knowledge of our team. That’s what makes E&A so compelling for many SMBs today.

If you are still viewing your “IT” as a necessary evil instead of a competitive opportunity, you are doing a disservice to yourself and your business!

This New Year, I encourage you to explore how E&A can play a more active supporting role in your company’s planning and problem-solving processes. Allow us to work with you so that we can apply our wide-ranging business and technical experience to the task of helping your business grow and be more profitable.

October 1st begins E&A’s new fiscal year. With that, all the activities associated with our year end are in process, including the analysis and review of our customer survey. I would like to thank everyone who participated!  I cannot overemphasize the value of your input.  The survey data drives E&A’s investment decisions in important areas such as the E&A advantage, E&A University, and a variety of  other programs that are designed to help you, our valuable customers get the most from your technology investments.

One of these initiatives is the EAROI, which we introduced in the previous newsletter.  Let’s review this powerful tool in more detail, so that you can truly appreciate how EAROI represents a unique solution that, to our knowledge, is not available anywhere else in the world of “IT” and ERP services today.

Simply put, EAROI is all about cash and how can you increase the cash in your business.  While it is true that many accounting and consulting firms might offer similar kinds of review and consulting services, they can at best only work with a high level analysis of the cash to cash cycle. With EAROI, however, we can leverage our ERP systems expertise to look not only at your cash cycle at a high level; but we can also allow you to drill down to detail and determine precisely how you can improve your cash position. That’s why EAROI is unique! 

With EAROI, you can discover which specific vendors, customers or products might need to be managed differently to improve your cash position.  While others might or might not be able to tell you about a potential problem, only EAROI can help you quickly get to the root cause or causes of the problem—and that will get you started on the path to putting more money in your pocket, sooner.

EAROI has three primary components. First, E&A performs an analysis of your cash to cash cycle. How fast does your inventory product convert to cash? The second component of EAROI is a product analyzer. This powerful tool will help you determine how to improve your product mix, margins and pricing.  The final component of EAROI is a “what if “analyzer that will help you determine the impact of your changes. To determine this type of information a detailed analysis of every transaction of inventory that flows in and out of your system must be performed. I believe it is the first of its kind and will help those who use it increase their profits and even more importantly, increase their cash!

EAROI is just one of several initiatives E&A will launch this fiscal year. E&A is expanding to a new level of service to our customer base by providing tools that analyze the results of “IT” to help set business direction.  No doubt, FY2012 will be an exciting year for all of us!  We look forward to working with you to ensure that you remain a ‘best in class’ organization in the industry you serve. 

Early in 2011, E&A formally introduced its revolutionizing concept for software implementation called ISOC^TM (Initialize, Stabilize, Optimize, and Capitalize). ISOC is an evolution of an approach that started several years ago developed around E&A’s core belief in continuous improvement as a means for the small to medium sized business (SMB) to gain real value from their information technology.  Through the ISOC systems management process, E&A's customers can successfully implement high caliber business solutions with the assurance that:

• Systems solutions are properly fitted to the business environment
• Resources expended are not disproportionate to the desired outcome
• Resources are not expended unless absolutely necessary - and not until the time needed
• Solutions are delivered in the most efficient timeframe possible
• Risk tolerance is commensurate with the systems solution objective

The E&AROI Factor, which was first introduced in 2009, comprises the Optimization Phase (or the third component) of ISOC. While there is always some immediate payback when a new software system is installed, the E&AROI Factor is where the pursuit of significant payback with an upgrade or new implementation really begins.

The E&AROI Factor is a strategy guided by the principles of Vision, Leadership, Commitment and Value. It is a discovery process designed to define a general plan for improvement in components of the business process that can drive high payback for the organization. E&AROI Factor has already helped many customers increase the value they received from their ‘IT' system. However, many customers have not invested in this offering and continue to miss opportunities for real payback.

This year E&A is taking E&AROI Factor concept to the next level by infusing it with focused initiatives. As the first step of our continuous improvement program, customers will gain insight into their performance in areas like the order to cash cycle, and cash to procurement cycle. Both of these areas can have major impacts on cash flow and need to be reviewed regularly for improvements. Application of the E&AROI Factor will provide a blueprint for the organization to assess and improve in these two key areas of the business process by providing insight into the following:

• The need for standardization of critical processes
• The delivery of the “critical data” in a timely manner
• Development of key KPI’s to facilitate management by exception
• Identifying the causes that drive shipment delays
• Determination of the optimum product mix
• Assessing vendor reliability
• Assessing the organization’s reliability in servicing its customers
• Quantifying the “true” contribution of product to the bottom line
• Appraisal of the product conversion cycle from inventory to cash by the application of Inventory Dollar Days and Throughput Dollar Days TOC concepts

E&AROI Factor evolves the purpose of inventory management from merely fulfilling orders to driving growth in volume and profits by dynamically managing product mix/contribution and improvement of the overall conversion to cash process. By the application of E&AROI Factor, the organization will put itself on the fast track to improving its overall product delivery processes and to effectively, and reliably, manage its inventory investment.

To my knowledge, there is no professional service organization in the industry that has developed the concepts and processes that ISOC represents. In fact, a few of our clients are already realizing the benefits of E&A’s unique solution.  We are confident that our common sense approach will reduce the organizational stress from upgrades and new implementations and provide a manageable approach with real payback.

I encourage you to take advantage of ISOC and E&AROI Factor. E&A wants you to recover your investment and more from your information technology!

Spring has finally arrived! For many businesspeople this year, the changing of the seasons holds more symbolic meaning than usual; more temperate weather seems to have rained down lots of new business opportunities that, until now, had remained in a frozen state. 

For those of you who did not have a chance to attend a recent E&A user group to hear Anirban Basu, a very knowledgeable and entertaining economist,  you should know that the numbers clearly support our intuitions.  Anirban presented convincing evidence that the economy is, in fact, significantly improving.  As business people, the time for hibernation has passed. It’s time for us to make our move.

Of course, the economy always returns in some sectors much faster than others. It might return slow and steady or in some cases, fast and furious due to pent up demand that has been suddenly unleashed. This presents the challenge of intelligently assessing your customer base, business trends and opportunities quickly and accurately.  Your company needs to act decisively and capture its fair share of new business before your competitors take it all away.

E&A has responded to customer requests for improved decision support tools by developing Pro Decisions, a breakthrough yet affordable solution for ERP data analysis.  We have been pleased by the response from our customers. With each demonstration of Pro Decisions at our local user conferences, the excitement continues to grow! 

Pro Decisions leverages the power of Microsoft Excel, an affordable software that most end users already know how to use. Pro Decisions is an easy to use data analysis tool that will help your business gain insight into all of the key performance indicators needed to drive profitability and growth.  Pro Decisions extracts business data from your ERP into a database that provides preformatted views with the ability to easily filter and fine tune the information to your specific requirements.

Truly, decision support has never been this affordable and easy to use!  In fact, several E&A customers who liked our Pro BI solution but never purchased due to its higher price point have told us that Pro Decisions might be just the solution they’ve been waiting for.

Remember: the purpose of business technology is to remove a business constraint or bottleneck so that your business will grow in market share, efficiency, and profits.  Let’s make sure you can get the information from your ERP system to make better decisions. We want to help you make this Spring a time when even greater things begin to happen for you and your company.