Solutions360.com - Professional Services Automation Software for Integrators

Solutions360 Expands HQ

Tue, 11 May 2010 08:01:00 -0400

Newmarket, ON May 11, 2010—Solutions360 Inc. a leading provider of Business Process Management software to the Technology Integrator market is moving its headquarters in Newmarket, Ontario on May 29^th, 2010. A culmination of steady growth and increase in demand for the company’s solutions necessitated a move to a new facility, doubling the size of the company’s previous office.

The new corporate address is 1111 Stellar Drive, Suite 11, Newmarket, Ontario, L3Y 7B8. The main phone number remains the same 905-868-9901, and toll free 800-450-7748.

“Companies come to us because they are in growth mode. They want to properly manage the business processes within their business to support that growth and improve efficiency. As a result, our client base has grown and we require more resources to serve our customer base properly,” said John Graham, Executive Vice President of Solutions360. “Our new corporate office will enable us to support growth in all of our functional units, including product development, technical services, quality assurance, and global business strategy.”

Solutions360 is a software provider that creates One View of the Business for customers. Their software platform Q360 is an integrated system that handles all aspects of a technology integration company’s business from sales and quotations through to service and dispatch and invoicing and accounting. Integrated data means immediate access to reporting and relational information that can drive profitability into project management and business processes. Check out www.solutions360.com.

For more information contact:
Marie Wiese at Solutions360
mwiese@solutions360.com
416-436-7931

Announcing Tech Talk with Gord Gray

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:33:00 -0500

As a technical person, I don't often get the opportunity to exercise my skills at writing prose.

My intention is to have this blog be a way for me to both improve my writing skills by expressing my thoughts, as well as a collection of tidbits that interest me. If you find anything interesting, or wish to comment on anything, please feel free to do so. Click here to start reading and following.

CA Magazine - Annual ERP Software Survey 2009

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Annual ERP software survey

Using technology to improve the way you do business

By Michael Burns

As we present the 11th installment of our annual CAmagazine software survey, it’s interesting to look back and see just how far we have evolved. When we ran our first survey, many people were unfamiliar with enterprise resource planning and vendors were just beginning to target their ERP products to middle-market companies. Now midsized companies are well served, as are their smaller and larger counterparts. New vendors continue to appear and new functionality continues to be released. We also expand each year on what we include in the survey. This time, for example, you will find a section on human resources. We have also included professional services automation vendors. PSA is really just ERP for professional services organizations.

As always, we have segregated the ERP products into tiers based on product cost and customer revenue and employees. This is a convenient, albeit imperfect, means of differentiation. Be cautious if you’re trying to calculate the costs for a system, since these numbers are just averages.

This year we asked vendors about the main factors that led to successful or not-so-successful implementations. For SAP, success was largely a function of buy-in from senior management. “The most successful implementations include strong oversight and commitment from the customers’ senior executive team,” it said. “When senior executives understand the overall project plan and goals and participate in high-level steering committee meetings, they can better empower their teams and help overcome obstacles to the project’s success quickly and effectively, leading to projects that are implemented on time, on budget and on scope.”

The role of a steering committee can differ across organizations, but it’s vital that larger companies have one. At the very least, it should provide guidance and support.

Criteria	Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3
Customer revenue	> 200 M$	10 M$-200 M$	< 10 M$
Customer employees	> 500	50-500	< 50
Licence fees	> 300 K$	50 K$-300 K$	< 50 K$

Syspro called for “a clear strategy established upfront and firmly anchored in the business objectives the ERP project [was] to enable.” The point is that success is more than just being on time, on budget and on scope.

Strategy starts with an understanding of business objectives and critical success factors. A CSF is what an organization must do well in order to be successful and it should be aligned with business objectives. If a business process/system supports the CSF, it can be deemed effective. Key performance indicators measure the extent to which CSFs are achieved. The KPI is especially important when implementing a new system or improving business processes. The KPI goal will let you know whether you’ve been successful with the system implementation and will act as a motivator throughout the process. By linking achievement of CSFs to the implementation, the new system has the potential to significantly improve business processes and contribute to an organization’s success.

Important as it is, strategy must be accompanied by a good method for achieving the intended goals. As Sage put it, “Successful implementations apply formal project management methodology.” The larger companies typically have trained project managers on board. But small and midsized companies have a tendency to treat project management as a form of bureaucracy. A good project manager can have a significant positive impact on the success of an implementation project, helping to manage not only scope and timing but also budget.

The project plan is one of the key documents in the implementation of an ERP system. It should include time, resources and dependencies between tasks. Employees working on the project should have the opportunity to offer feedback on the plan before it is made official. At the beginning of an implementation, there are many unknowns. The plan should be fairly accurate in the design phase, but the subsequent phases will be rough guesses until the design is known.

Not surprisingly, implementations that were not so successful often lacked the very elements that made for a good implementation. Epicor cited “overambitious implementation plans that are underresourced,” as well as “poor communication, misaligned expectations and resistance to change (lack of change management processes).” According to Deltek, “In the vast majority of cases, implementations that bog down do so because the customer has not had the right number of committed, knowledgeable resources allocated to the implementation project.”

There have been some big improvements in software since last year. With SAP, you can pick and deploy the functions you need without upgrading your solution. Exact Software’s Globe product now includes North American sales tax compliance. Syspro has caught up with some other vendors by offering interface customization and built-in KPIs, which are “ready to use out-of-the-box.” Sage now includes customer relationship management in its core ERP offering at no additional charge. But Epicor seems to have made the biggest leap with what it calls the “convergence of nine ERP products into one global configurable ERP platform.” Both Oracle and Microsoft had announced plans to do the same thing but Epicor beat them to the punch. Deltek’s enhancements in Vision 6.0 include support for multiple languages (such as French) and adoption of Microsoft SQL Reporting Services.

When asked about planned enhancements over the next couple of years, vendors had plenty to say: more workflow, web applications, business intelligence and cloud-based services (the vendors provide the infrastructure and services over the Internet). With all the improvements we have witnessed over the past 11 years, you would think it would also be easier to implement ERP systems. Unfortunately we still hear about failures. Usually, technology is not the culprit; it’s the processes used to select and implement the systems.

The analysis in the charts on camagazine.com is based on the vendors’ responses. Although we tried to correct any obvious errors, we cannot validate every line item.

Michael Burns, MBA, CA, is president of 180 Systems (www.180systems.com/), which provides independent consulting services, including business process review, system selection and IT audit. Contact: 416-485-2200 or mburns@180systems.com.

Solutions360 partners with Level Platforms

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Solutions360 partners with Level Platforms to provide customers with a complete platform to drive profitability into their project management

August 5, 2009

Solutions360 Inc., a leading provider of business process management software for technology integration companies today announced it is partnering with Level Platforms, a leading provider of remote monitoring and management software, to provide customers with a fully integrated software platform that will significantly improve the profitability of project management and provide customers with a complete view of their business from sales through to managed services through to accounting.

“As growth in the technology integration market continues to explode, companies are looking for software solutions that not only extend services for their clients but can also manage the growth of their business in a way that is profitable to the overall business”, said John Graham, VP Business Development for Solutions360. “Partnering with Level Platforms is a logical choice for Solutions360 as our combined solution helps to extend a customer’s business towards managed services and enables us to provide a platform for growth that ensures a complete end-to-end process viewed in one system.”

Solutions360’s single software platform Q360, allows companies to consolidate their business onto a single platform from prospecting and quotations, right through to service, dispatch and invoicing. Q360 helps to eliminate steps in the process that are caused by having to manually enter data into multiple systems. Many times these systems are not connected ‘bi-directionally’ and it means having to run multiple reports in multiple places to attempt to get a clean snap shot of the business.

“This will be a big win for customers looking to gain a single view into every department of their company,” says Graham. “Instant access to information that is integrated and drives profitable projects is an excellent addition to managed services.”

The outcome for customers of both Level Platforms and Solutions360 is an integrated platform that can tightly manage the efficiency of the managed services side of their business while also being able to offer new solutions into the managed service space.

“Level Platforms is committed to growing an ecosystem of industry leading vendor partners” said Ryck Marciniak, Director of Vendor Alliances for Level Platforms
“Welcoming an exceptional organization such as Solutions 360 is testament to that commitment.”

Level Platforms is the leading provider of managed services software for IT
solution providers servicing small and mid-sized customers. Through its award-winning product Managed Workplace, Level Platforms provides everything a Managed Services Provider needs to remotely monitor and manage their customers’ IT environments through a single web-based central dashboard. More than 2500 solution providers in 30 countries have chosen Managed Workplace based on its advanced agentless technology, ease of use and extensive service collaboration features. For more information, visit Level Platforms as www.levelplatforms.com.

For more information contact:
Marie Wiese at Solutions360
mwiese@solutions360.com
416-436-7931

CFMA's 2009 Annual Conference & Exhibition

Sat, 16 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Solutions360 will be exhibiting in the 2009 CFMA Annual Conference from May 16-20. Booth #320 at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV Read More

Appointment of Douglas Babcock as VP Development

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Solutions360 Inc. Announces the Appointment of Douglas Babcock as Vice President Development

Newmarket, ON. March 2, 2009: Solutions360, Inc., a provider of complete Business Process Management solutions for the past 20 years, announced today the appointment of Douglas Babcock to the position of Vice President Development.

Before joining Solutions360, Mr. Babcock was an Oracle Database Administrator and Web Developer for the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he founded and operated a full-service business Internet Service Provider company in Upstate New York.

“Since we first started working with Doug almost two years ago he has accomplished many things, including several monumental projects for our customers that were paramount to the continued growth of the Company. I am very pleased he has accepted the Vice President Development role with us, he's a perfect fit” said Brad Dempsey, President and CEO of Solutions360. Mr. Babcock said that he was “very excited about the new role with the company “. He added that he was “looking forward to leading the development team at this very exciting time of growth at Solutions360”

For more information contact:
Marie Wiese at Solutions360
mwiese@solutions360.com
416-436-7931