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.
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.
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 bookCloudonomics 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.
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.
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.
Smart and Good looking systems are what we
are all about.
This week was a milestone of sorts at E3 systems. We had our second board meeting and it was a serious sober affair where over a few bottles of water and some store bought cookies we plotted out our path for the next year. I do not know where I would be without the guidance and support of my board and it was nice to talk about our accomplishments and challenges over the last year.
As always we talked about marketing and sales. Any small business person will tell you that this could always be better. After some back and forth among the board members it dawned on us that our Sully 2.0 is more than a logistics platform it is a business Intelligence Platform. This makes it possible for a small business to manage themselves just like a Fortune 500 company for a minimal cost.
One of the biggest headaches of a business is keeping track of how much you have on hand. Our Sully 2.0 system does this by saving all your information on the cloud and then pulling it down for reporting purposes. This means no matter where you are; at the office, meeting with a client, or on vacation if you have a connection to the web then you can see your inventory at the drop of a hat. Not only do you know how much you have on hand but how much you paid for it and what type of department of transportation regulations cover that material.
We make it possible to print up packing slips, bills of lading and invoices based on this information. We are also proud to announce that it is now possible to print shipping labels with Avery® label technology. No more typing up peal and stick labels for your products Sully 2.0 can print out 5160 and 5164 Avery® labels right off the web without having to use Microsoft Word or a third party program. This speeds up the business and makes it easier to manage shipping and receiving.
Furthermore you get more full frontal business intelligence when you leverage our Microsoft Tag technology which makes it possible to do bar coding without expensive equipment. Now every piece of paper you have can communicate with your mobile phone. This is a free of charge service and we include it so that you can view information about your products anywhere in the world on any smart phone.
Finally, we make it possible to put together purchase orders and incorporate them into your business with our purchase order piece. You order an item and you can e-mail it or fax it out to your vendor and when you receive it they can add it inventory with a click. No more lost faxes. No more playing phone tag with vendors and no more double counting when you get it into the office.
In spite of our board meeting being a very sober affair most of us were pretty excited when it was over. We have a great product. We have a marketing plan. We also have an easy to use and economical business intelligence package which can be used everywhere. We have full frontal business intelligence and we are not afraid to show it off. Contact us to learn more.
Software Bloat is not pretty so why do we have it?
I have been working as a software developer for over
fourteen years.What surprises me the
most is how complicated we make software for the public.I blame two major constituencies for this
trend.First, software developers need
to stop being too clever for their own good.We need to concentrate on doing the same features better and faster
rather than cramming more features into a software program.This desire to have software do more is affectionately known as feature bloat.More features are crammed into the same piece of software until it gets
more confusing to use.
The other guilty party is the business people who commission
these bloated software projects.Talk to
any developer and you will hear stories of reports written for only one user of
a system.You will also hear stories of
features added to systems to deal with one client or situation.Additionally, features will be added to
satisfy the political needs of an organization while not making software any
easier to use.Needless to say, these
situations tend to drive software developers and customers batty because these
additional features represent nothing but wasted time and money from the
developer.It also represents
frustration for the customer as they attempt to use the software which has
grown more complicated.
This is why when we founded E3 systems we have made a point
of trying to make the software as easy to use as possible.Life is too short to spend time in training
manuals and struggling to figure out how something works.Many businesses do not have time to train
their people so it is important that software is intuitive and easy to
operate.Most people just want to write
out a packing slip or print an invoice.You shouldn’t need a degree in computer science to make that
happen.
Technology has grown by leaps and bounds over the last twenty years. In 1992, you couldn't follow the Olympics online. Tim Berners Lee who invented the HTML was still pioneering ideas which today we take for granted. If you even knew what on-line was back then you had to settle for Prodigy service on a 1300 baud modem or if you were lucky on 2600. Gosh how times have changed with live feeds from NBC, the BBC and countless tweets and updates over the web it was difficult to escape the Olympics.
These changes took place because of the hard work of countless engineers, scientists and shulbs like me who spend their lives creating and taming the digital wilderness. The change is moving faster all the time and the next great frontier is going to be mobile devices. What hammered that point home for me was an article my friend posted on Google plus. He mentions that over 5% of web traffic comes from iPhones and another 3% comes from Android phones. This is doubling the web traffic of this same time last year. I anticipate as this trend continues that by the Olympics in Rio in 2016 those figures will be about 25% for the iPhone and 15% for the Android system. I also think that Microsoft is going to be a huge player with Windows 8 but I just don't know where they are going to fit into this growth.
