April 13, 2006

Integrating Your Information Silos is Not Impossible Nor Painful Completely Maddening

As your business grows you will find that you have one or more databases of information to keep track of and update. Your customer database, your products, maybe another database for your PDA users and etc. When these information silos are not linked together major problems can happen. You have sales saying one thing, but marketing giving another message and support doing something even more different.

In order to solve these problems your data MUST be linked in some way. Small Business Computing writes how one company was using Gold Mine Software (great software by the way) and also using Research In Motion BlackBerry's but Gold Mine could not interact with them.

The solution was to move to software that could bring all its data under one roof.

Small Business Computing writes BizAutomation is an all-in-one solution with CRM and big business-style Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) at its core. It has modules covering virtually every business management function, including financials, projects, inventory, price books, e-commerce, documents and business portals. The product also includes pre-built integration with QuickBooks and other small business accounting systems. It installs on the same server as Microsoft Exchange and uses Outlook Web Access (OWA) or regular Outlook for its user interface.

BasicCom signed on early, purchasing a package of 50 licenses, enough for its own employees. It will buy additional licenses as it rolls the product out to independent dealers. Total cost with early adopter discount: about $19,000.

BizAutomation also handled the installation, although that may have been a service only available for early adopters, Klap says. It went very smoothly. BasicCom even opened up its servers to remote access so that the software company's technicians could help transfer customer records from the Microsoft CRM and GoldMine systems to BizAutomation. "The remote service was excellent," Klap says. "They were willing to make adjustments after business hours when system use was lower, which helped us a lot."

There were a couple of annoying software glitches during the beta period, but they were all cleared up with the final release of the product, he says.

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