Now We Support Labels

No Mystery we support Avery Labels

The key to any successful organization is to do the most amount of work in the least amount of time with the maximum level of profit.  It is one of the first principles they teach you in business school and it says with you throughout your entire career.  This week at Dirty fingers we want to discuss one of our newest features for Sully 2.0 which makes this possible; label printing.

I have discovered that many businesses which do shipping and receiving spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to print shipping labels for their products.  This usually requires a mail merge using Microsoft office and trial and error with Avery forms.  We were speaking with a business group and one of the topics which came up was how difficult it was to print Avery shipping labels. 

It took us over a year to come up with a good approach but we finally figured out a way to do it and now we support the printing of Avery 8160, 8164 and 22805 forms directly from the web.  You do not need Microsoft Office or know how to do a mail merge.  Now you just print your labels directly off the web and on to your forms. 

This is a huge time savings because now you just point and click.  This way you can place Microsoft Tags on products and shipping labels on packages with no effort. 

We are pretty proud of this innovation so give us a call and we will be happy to show you. 

Until next time.

This is What We Do

We make business intelligence look pretty.

I have spent over a year promoting and blogging about my company E₃ logistics systems.  What amazes me is as people get to know about my company they always ask me the same questions about what we do.  This week, I want to explain what E₃ systems does.

We help you stay on top of paperwork.  If you have any inventory we help you track the number of items coming and going from your stock with no need to keep track of paperwork.  Our Sully 2.0 system helps you keep track of all your items in our web based system.  You will never have to go searching around the office for a piece of paperwork again because you can pull up the Sully 2.0 system type in a search and find all the information you are looking for.  Not only does this apply to inventory, but to bills of lading, packing slips, invoices and purchase orders.  So in one place you have all the information you need to run your business.

Next, we make it easy to gather business intelligence about the progress of your business.  Fortune 500 companies have entire teams of people who sift through pies of data to gather information about what products are hot and which ones are not.  They can track shipping costs to the penny and find out if they are making a profit with each sale.  At E₃ systems we give you that ability to make you competitive with big boys.  We have a full set of reporting tools so you can track inventory, sales, and other pieces of regulatory compliance documentation.  We included this because many software packages make easy to gather data but difficult to make decisions based on that data.  Now, at a glance you know what you have in stock and if you are making money selling it.

Additionally, we make it possible to track your information via any type of computing device connected to the web.  This means if you have a tablet computer, smart phone or laptop as long as you have a connection to the web you can use our systems in a secure fashion.  No more dialing into company virtual private networks or portals.  No more messing with synching your data with company systems.  All you need is an account and mobile device and you can see your inventory, purchase orders, and invoices 24 hours a day seven days a week.  This gives you more time to interact with your customers and less time tracking down paperwork. 

Next, we bridge the gap between the world of paper and web with Microsoft Tag technology.  Thanks to Microsoft Tag technology, you can scan documents and products.  This gives you the ability to instantly communicate with the Sully 2.0 system.  Now expensive bar code scanning equipment is obsolete.  If you have a smart phone you have what is necessary to track your inventory and systems just like a major corporation.  We offer this service free of charge and make it possible to print up these Microsoft Tags with Avery 22805 labels.  No more mystery about what is on the shelf now you print out a tag stick it on a product and you have an electronic record. 

Finally, we offer this system at about the cost of digital cable television.  If you can afford $120 a month subscription fee we can make it possible to manage your inventory, purchase orders, paperwork, business intelligence and make it available 24 hours a day seven days a week on any device with a web connection.  There is no software to install.  All you need is a web browser or smart phone to access our systems.  The data is secure in our server farm located in the Pacific Northwest and you can reach us via e-mail or phone 24 hours a day. 

If you are interested in how we can help you manage your business and give you a competitive advantage over your rivals then contact us today.  You will not be disappointed.

Until next time.

Caress the Cloud

Cloud computing is not something from Star Trek.  It is
real and useful. 

It is always nice to be leading a trend. Last week, I discussed cloud computing and how E₃ systems are part of this technology trend. This week Forbes magazine is featuring Joe Weinman's book Cloudonomics and they discuss the good uses and possible misuses of cloud technology. What struck me was Weinman's uses of the cloud and how E₃ makes that happen.

First, Weinman talks about coordination, currency, consistency and control. E₃ offers its software as a service. This means that software upgrades only need to be applied once and they are to the cloud. You the customer do not have to worry about upgrading your system because we do that for you using the power of the web. We also do this at no additional cost. This gives you a consistent and coordinated platform to run your business.
 
Next, Weinman talks about cross-device access and synchronization. This means that no matter how you use a service it will show the same information independent of how you view the information. This is a central feature of E₃ Systems Sully 2.0. You can use our system on a PC, laptop, tablet, or smart phone with no worries about compatibility. Our company wanted to make sure that you could get your information anytime and anywhere.

Finally, Weinman talks about checkpoints. This means that the cloud, "…can effectively filter out everything from viruses and spam to distributed deninal of service attacks." In other words, since the service is on the web, it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. This makes it harder for a hacker or thief to steal or corrupt your data. Furthermore we encrypt our applications with 128 SSL certificates and password protection.

Taken together E₃ systems and its Sully 2.0 Business Intelligence Solution provides the many benefits of cloud computing particularly coordination of service, cross device access, and checkpoints for security. If you want to find out more about cloud computing and how E3 can help you use the cloud to improve your business contact us today.  We think you will like what we have to say.

Until next time.

Embrace the Cloud

Embrace the Cloud, you can thank us later.

Technology can be confusing and scary.  I spend much of my time explaining new technology to people and trying to ease their concerns.  Nothing causes more confusion than “cloud computing.”  This week, I want to explain what cloud computing is and how E₃ systems can help you use it to improve your business. 

Slate.com economics writer, Matt Yglesias unveiled a survey from Wakefield Research last week about public perceptions about cloud computing.  Some of the more interesting tidbits of information were, a majority of Millennials believe that stormyweather can interfere with cloud computing and 22% surveyed  confessed to admitting they have pretended toknow what the cloud is or how it works even if they didn’t.  After a good chuckle, I wondered if people had similar feelings regarding microwave ovens or color television. 

Here is the dirty little secret about cloud computing.  Most of us are using it and we don’t even realize it.  If you are using Facebook you are using cloud computing.  If you are using an iPod you are probably using cloud computing.  In fact, any time you are saving documents or files someplace other than your computer at home or work you are using the cloud.

The cloud is nothing more than a metaphor dreamed up by networking professionals and marketing folks.  It represents computing with storage outside your local computer or network.  The data resides in the “internet cloud” on a remote server or database.  This is a positive development because this is a direct result of the explosion of personal computing and the web during the 1990’s.

Today on Gmail, a typical user can have up to Ten Gigabytes of data, which is a large amount of data.  So big that if a single e-mail was two kilobytes in size that would mean that you could hold over 5-million e-mails in your mailbox without having to worry about it filling up.    What makes this figure more fantastic is that the amount of space Google is providing each user is increasing by about 128 Megabytes a year.  In addition to those 5-Million e-mails a user can archive an additional 64,000 e-mails a year. 

Thanks to cloud computing we are dealing with big piles of data and they are stored on remote servers throughout the internet.  The raw power is staggering. 

So what does this mean to you the small business person?  It means that you can have the power and capacity of a large business with an IT budget of millions of dollars for a fraction of the price.  You do not need to spend thousands of dollars for servers and software.  All you need is a connection to the web and the power of the cloud is in the palm of your hand. 

At E₃ systems we take a lot of pride in how we have used cloud computing and the internet to make it easy for a small business to manage their inventory.  With our Sully 2.0 system, you can keep track of Bills of Lading, Invoices, Packing Slips, Shipping Labels, and Purchase orders.  Contact us today and we will show you how easy it is to use. 

The “cloud” is nothing more than a fancy way of saying the “internet.”  Many of us are using it each day and do not realize it.  What makes it so fantastic is that as prices fall, storage increases and raw computing power improves it is going to make our lives easier and more connected.  As a business person you should not be afraid of the cloud but embrace it. 

Until next time.