Editorial:

By Jeff Cozens, Systematic Solutions Inc.

Campbell, Ca.

Wow, the new 5.5 version of Solomon has shipped. This seems to happen only once or twice a year. Each new version adds functionality and hopefully benefits to you. We are recommending any core financial users (i.e. Gl, AP, AR, and FRx) upgrade to either the version 5.0 or 5.5. If you are using the Order Management modules (OM, Inv, and PO) or Project Controller modules, we recommend you upgrade only to the 5.0 version with SP1 at this time. We expect to see a SP1 for version 5.5 in, or about, late July, and we will revisit our upgrade recommendations. Our philosophy is to help our clients understand when the benefits outweigh the risks of upgrading.

It is important as an end user that you keep your software at either the latest version or one release behind. This practice, in our opinion, gives you the operational benefits of the newest releases and keeps your total cost of ownership low. We monitor the quality of new releases before recommending upgrades, so that you can have confidence that the upgrade is likely to go smoothly.

Back to the new version 5.5 of Solomon, I have enclosed an article of the new features of this software. I am especially excited about the new feature called Smart Tags. Smart Tags have the ability to quickly look up Solomon data from Excel and Word when the Smart Tag popup occurs. Remember that this is the first implementation of this feature. As you begin to see other potential ways to use the Smart Tag system, give your VAR a call and ask them to develop custom Smart Tags. In last month’s ezine, I talked about how Fedex had cleverly implemented Smart Tags to help their customers easily track shipments . You, too, may be able to find a valuable customized Smart Tag application.

I struggled with the right title for the article on improving collections of your open AR. This article is focused towards using the new and old tools in the Accounts Receivable module to collect your money faster. Anything that improves cash flow is a good thing, given the current economic climate. I especially want to direct your attention to finding a fast way to write up or write down those small balances on open AR documents. The latest tools by Solomon are hidden pearls, which most end users are not utilizing.

I have been giving much thought lately as to how to make better use of the email system. I’ve addressed in one of our articles the options for making Solomon attachments for use with email. It is amazing all the options you have to accomplish getting data out of Solomon and sharing this data. We can all benefit from a little “re-engineering” of our information distribution. I believe each accounting department can save itself a great deal of time by shifting away from hard copy paper to electronic email attachments. Moving data electronically, with the power of Window’s Cut and Paste, can lead to improved communications. Let us all find ways to move the accounting departments from arcane historians, to the keepers and sharers of electronic data, which can help every company grow rapidly.

I look forward to sharing a new product regarding email. It is an electronic business card which is part of the email signature area. This electronic email card (i.e. e-card) has some exciting multi-media capabilities, which have great marketing potential for each of your company’s products or services. More on this topic in the next issue….

This year, Microsoft introduced version 1.0 of Customer Relations Manager software (CRM). Over the next few ezine issues we will be examining what this CRM software is all about. Hopefully, this background information will allow you to see another way to make your company more efficient and effective. Creating bridges between your CRM front office data and your Solomon back office product is an exciting prospect for many companies. As we proceed in this CRM education process, we will be moving towards understanding how we link together these two important aspects of your company’s data. Whether it is through internal networks, intranets, or internets, when we can bridge data resources together, we will go a long way to making out company’s stronger and better.