Month: October 2017

To remain competitive in the Australian marketplace, business owners must not only implement current technology, they must innovate. Systems for streamlining operations, such as Customer Relationship (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) have grown exponentially in response to this need, but in many businesses they don’t fulfil their potential to drive business growth because they operate independently.

Today the key to growth is integration. If communication and data can flow seamlessly across the business from sales to service, finance to HR and marketing, it opens a wealth of opportunities for business owners. Both new growth opportunities and current roadblocks to efficiency are more quickly identified, whilst physical and human resources can be channeled towards innovation and exploration rather than execution and management.

Many businesses already have great products in place – they’re just not working together. Individual products such as Infusionsoft, Netsuite and Oracle are widely used for a single business process such as financial analysis, marketing communications or contact management but the data and intelligence they contain is largely isolated from the rest of the business, creating a catch-22 for business owners: invest significant staff resources to collate and combine multiple data sources, or take a silo approach which limits operational efficiency.

Microsoft Dynamics presents an opportunity for business owners to bridge this gap and begin leveraging the data already available to make faster, more substantial advances in efficiency and competitive agility. Part of the Microsoft 365 stack, this intuitive platform allows you to integrate your most important business functions in a way that’s meaningful to your business – whether that be to link your CRM and accounting to quantify customer value, or marketing and IT to measure advertising effectiveness.

As a Microsoft product, it’s readily integrated with your existing desktop Microsoft software such as Outlook and Excel, as well as cloud-based tools available in Microsoft 365 such as PowerBI, Skype and SharePoint. This familiarity helps speed up the process of integration as your staff doesn’t need to learn a completely new system, and your IT team can avoid extensive coding.

Of course, implementing any significant change to your business processes and systems is not something that happens overnight. It’s essential to obtain the advice and guidance of an expert who understands your business and can design an approach to meet your specific needs. But if you want to take your business to the next level, there are significant advantages to adopting a system like Microsoft Dynamics. These include:

1. Cost effectiveness – Many individual systems for managing ERP or CRM, such as SAP and Salesforce, provide a sophisticated level of functionality in one area of business but can be quite expensive if run independently as individual vendors must support and maintain them. Microsoft Dynamics centralises this function, so you save money on IT resources.
2. Powerful insights – Today more than ever, business owners must act swiftly and with certainty to gain a competitive edge. By integrating data across key areas of operation such as HR, marketing and finance, business owners can more easily analyse and respond to opportunities whilst also mitigating risk. Whether it’s determining the business cost of your new hire, or the impact of purchasing new office equipment on your productivity, greater insights mean better decision-making.
3. Security – Today more than ever, no business owner can afford to risk data security. Implementing a robust system with high level support and monitoring means you don’t need to spend valuable time and staff resources applying the latest patch or update, or worrying about how to protect sensitive data.
4. Flexibility – Cloud technology’s ability to give us access to information anywhere at anytime is a cornerstone of modern business. Many business owners have embraced this to some extent with products such as Xero and Google Docs, but Microsoft Dynamics takes this flexibility to a new level by not only making data available to the right people at the right time, but also making that data more meaningful. This enables key business functions like sales and marketing to work together and make smarter on the fly decisions.

Every business owner makes a multitude of decisions based on internal data. Imagine how much more powerful those decisions could be if every business area could benefit from the insights of other business functions? Platforms like Microsoft Dynamics help you to create a business environment that is fluid, responsive and productive: by integrating data across integral systems such as ERP and CRM, business owners can save time, money and staff resources and focus their attention on innovation and growth.

If change and meeting your customers’ needs is a constant, doing nothing isn’t an option. Be sure you are partnering with a company with the depth and breadth of expertise you require. Particularly one who can help you navigate end-to-end managed services, cloud, mobile and paperless office technology. GPK consultant, Ben Holian, is available for a no obligation discussion on how GPK can help you reduce operational costs, manage your IT footprint more effectively and create an exceptional experience for your customers. Contact: Phone 1300 000 475 or email info@gpkgroup.com.au for more information.

When it comes to business performance, time is money. Yet there are tasks every retailer must do to keep the wheels turning that aren’t directly income producing. So how can you spend more time and resources working on your business, rather than in it?

Today the solution is increasingly found in the cloud. And two of the most impactful areas this technology can help are your point of sale (POS) system and accounting. Imagine the possibilities if these two systems could be integrated!

Independently, your accounting and POS systems are goldmines of information about your business. But whilst you can extract these insights separately and pool the information, the process is a strain on human and financial resources. It also makes you reliant on retrospective data, hindering business agility and responsiveness to real time opportunities and challenges.

In contrast, integrating these two functions greatly improves overall financial management by creating an intuitive environment where day to day vendor and customer activities are not only tracked and measured, but optimised.

So what does integration mean for your retail business in everyday terms? Here are some of the practical benefits:

1. Time saved – Integration greatly reduces duplication of data entry, as anything entered in one system is automatically updated in the other, giving your staff more time to focus on important projects
2. Better customer service – As the technology is in the cloud, staff can access information from anywhere in the store using a mobile or tablet, enabling them to deliver more efficient, responsive service by being where the customer is. Common tasks like checking stock levels, placing orders and even credit card sales can all be done on the spot.
3. Data accuracy – Apart from the demand it places on staff resources, maintaining two separate systems often results in a higher risk of error. Integrating your POS and accounting systems can greatly reduce this problem at a transactional level since both platforms update simultaneously, but it also ensures you have an accurate record of your overall financial position.
4. Real time financial data – Optimal store performance depends on real time data. Integrating accounting and POS generates insights about day-to-day operation that allow you to respond agilely to shifts in the competitive environment, customer and supplier behaviour, economic and industry trends and achieve maximum efficiencies across every area of your business from marketing to staffing levels, pricing to store opening hours.
5. Simplified reconciliations – As sales data and invoices are automatically transferred to your accounting system when they happen, daily bank reconciliations and end of month processes become much simpler. Less time and money spent on bookkeeping means you have more time to focus on driving new business.
6. Easier tax and BAS – Integration saves you time during tax season as all sales transactions, expenses and stock movements have been recorded as they happen – so you and your accountant can leverage the data your integrated system provides to strategise, rather than wrangle with receipts and bank statements.

For any retail business to not only succeed, but flourish in today’s highly competitive retail environment, they must have access to accurate, real time data. Integrating your accounting and POS systems is one of most cost effective, efficient ways to achieve this. If you’ve already embraced cloud accounting with products such as Xero, Myob, Attaché or Quickbooks, linking this powerfully simple technology with all the rich data and insights currently available in your point of sale system can take your business to the next level.

If change and meeting your customers’ needs is a constant, doing nothing isn’t an option. Be sure you are partnering with a company with the depth and breadth of expertise you require. Particularly one who can help you navigate end-to-end managed services, cloud, mobile and paperless retail technology. GPK Retail consultant, Cordell Quaine, is available for a no obligation discussion on how GPK can help you reduce operational costs, manage your IT footprint more effectively and create an exceptional experience for your customers. Contact: Phone 1300 000 475 or email info@gpkretail.com.au for more information.

Have you ever wondered where we’d be today without internet connectivity? It’s become so pervasive to how we do business, it’s hard to imagine life without it. But as our reliance on this powerful tool grows, so too does the security risk.

One of the most insidious yet least understood risks to your business security is malware. A malicious software designed to hack and damage your computer system, malware has a tenacity to rival Mike Tyson, and is growing at a phenomenal pace: in Q3 of 2016 alone, the attacks blocked by just one cyber security company topped 18 million – that’s an average of 200,000 attacks per day!

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Malware cannot only stifle productivity and compromise the integrity of your company’s internal data, it can also threaten your customers and suppliers’ confidential information, damaging relationships and ultimately, the livelihood of your business.

It continues to infiltrate many business IT systems simply because it’s increasingly clever at masking its true identity. Despite our growing awareness and ability to identify an unsafe link, email or app, curiosity often gets the better of us.

So what can you do to protect your business from innocent yet potentially dangerous actions like downloading an app or file?

AppLocker might be the solution. Developed by Microsoft as part of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 and now included with Windows Enterprise 10, it offers sophisticated control features that enable you to design specific rules to suit your business, effectively controlling what applications can be downloaded and run, and by whom.

These rules allow you to create unique identities with different levels of access according to the roles and responsibilities of the team or individual staff member.

AppLocker’s ability to protect your digital assets by managing and stopping the installation of unknown or unidentified apps or files by unauthorised staff is a powerful advantage, but the tool has several additional benefits for business owners:

1. Lower overheads – Implementing AppLocker saves administrative costs, as it reduces the amount of time your IT or helpdesk staff spend addressing security issues, freeing them to focus on growth and development focused projects.
2. Greater consistency – AppLocker also prevents old or outdated apps continuing to be used, saving your IT staff time spent managing incompatibilities between old and new versions, and ensuring your documents stay consistent across the business.
3. Fewer license breaches – By ensuring that only authorised apps and files are downloaded and run by approved members of staff, your business stays protected from license breach that could result in financial penalty.
4. Greater confidentiality – AppLocker also provides better management of sensitive information as only authorised staff has access – which protects both internal interests and personal data entrusted to the business by customers and suppliers.

The ability to effectively manage the flow of information across your business is vital to ensure uptime is maximized and sensitive data protected. Challenges to this equilibrium are many, but they aren’t always malicious or originating from outside the business. Tools such as AppLocker, which are readily available under volume licensing or a Microsoft 365 license, provide a practical way to mitigate these issues by preventing unintentional download or running of unauthorised apps and files – keeping your staff focus where it needs to be and saving your business valuable resources.

If change and meeting your customers’ needs is a constant, doing nothing isn’t an option. Be sure you are partnering with a company with the depth and breadth of expertise you require. Particularly one who can help you navigate end-to-end managed services, cloud, mobile and paperless office technology. GPK consultant, Ben Holian, is available for a no obligation discussion on how GPK can help you reduce operational costs, manage your IT footprint more effectively and create an exceptional experience for your customers. Contact: Phone 1300 000 475 or email info@gpkgroup.com.au for more information.