If you've worked in the information technology field for any length of time, you've likely read through countless licensing agreements for the software you install on your organization's computers. All of these agreements focus on a single goal, to institute an agreement between your organization and the owner of the software to ensure the legal use of said software. And while the software industry is quickly moving to the SaaS (Software as a Service) model and improving its ability to self-manage software management, there still exists the need for organizations to implement an organized process to account for the proper licensure of the software it uses. As such, a successful software asset management (SAM) program should be in place which includes taking an initial inventory of the software being used, organizing your documentation for the inventory, performing a policy review, and implementing an ongoing management system.

The first step is to take an inventory of the software installed in your organization. This includes servers, desktops, company-owned laptops and other devices. There are free tools that can be found for this purpose, but in general it's recommended to purchase a solution that will allow you to manage your software assets on an ongoing basis. Googling the term "software asset management" yields many results from reputable sources. Some are more expensive than others but it's not necessary to spend a fortune to find a good solution. For example, the ManageEngine  solution starts at under $1000 (depending on the number of devices) and covers the entire lifecycle of your software purchases from purchasing to an on-going asset discovery process. Another great resource to utilize is your technology vendor (i.e. CDW). Once you have a tool to take the inventory, you are now ready to scan your organization's devices to compile an inventory listing of the software in your organization.

by Thrive Technologies 

Many companies today struggle to balance properly stocking their inventory during high seasonal demand. Most depend on ERP systems and other inventory replenishment systems that use formulas from the 1950's that were intentionally designed to be simple and could run quickly on computing equipment of that timeframe. Yet these systems cannot respond to the demands of today's market.

Now more than ever, companies need agility and responsiveness in their stocking needs. Through major advances in forecasting science over the last 10 years, it is now possible to employ hundreds of different forecast model variations and pick the best fitting forecast for each item at each stocking location, optimally push order quantities up to get prepaid freight, or to hit vendor minimums, or to cube out a full container, if desired, all while honoring pack sizes.

To address these challenges, Matco-Norca began the search for an advanced inventory forecasting system in January 2008. "We looked at several vendors but in the end we chose Thrive not only because their solution addressed our specific challenges but because they understood our business and had experience in our space. We also wanted a company that would partner with us to help us continually improve our supply chain processes," states Grasso.

One of the first processes in the implementation was setting up automated interfaces from the ERP system to Thrive's system so that Thrive is constantly updated with appropriate inventory data like inventory balances, open orders, etc. "The current version of our ERP system does not have a database or a good export utility so we really relied on Thrive's technical staff to make it happen. Thrive did a tremendous job developing custom interfaces for us," says Grasso. "Every day I get an updated overview of inventory position so that I can manage trends and drill down into any issues. Thrive's system crunches all the numbers overnight and in the morning the buyers have an organized, efficient workflow of vendor POs they need to place, as well as alerts for items thatare stocked out or that might stock out soon."

Through the implementation of Thrive's cloud based model, today Matco-Norca has realized significant benefits including improved line fill rate by 8%, allowing more accurate stocking of products customers want to buy, reduced freight costs because inventory is in stock at the warehouse closest to the actual demand and increased agility to adjust inventory to respond quickly to changes in demand. In all, over the past two years Matco-Norca has reduced inventory by 30% by utilizing Thrive's patent pending forecast engine.

Tour de Force CRM is a software solution that provides customer relationship management, sales force automation, in-depth business intelligence, mobile CRM, integration with your Eclipse ERP system, and full integration to Microsoft Outlook. The system was created specifically for distributors by the former owner of an electrical automation distributor. Over the past 11 years, our distributor clients have contributed to the continued development, growing feature set, and overall direction of the system, resulting in a CRM solution that has truly been created by distributors for distributors.  

We commonly hear from our Eclipse clients that, although Eclipse contains a huge amount of data, it's not in a format that many people can easily access. This poses a challenge, especially for your sales team; if they can't easily access and analyze the valuable business intelligence that exists in your systems, how can they use that data to drive sales? Lisa Jaswinski, Marketing Promotions & Communications Manager at US Supply, recalls that "from the first demonstration we saw of Tour de Force CRM we were able to see how easily we would be able to narrow in to see products, individual sales of products, and branch performance. All this great information that we would have never even known was available in Eclipse could be available to us in this easily accessible format."

When you choose Tour de Force CRM, you can do so with the confidence that you are choosing a provider with a long history of integrating to Eclipse, a proven implementation process and experienced implementation team that has led to a 98% customer retention rate, and a wide range of features designed to drive your sales team to be more efficient and more effective. To make your decision even easier, in Aug. 2012, Tour de Force CRM and Epicor announced a strategic alliance, and Tour de Force CRM is now the recommended solution for Eclipse clients with advanced CRM requirements.

Want to learn more?

•  Contact us at 877-285-4800
•  Read the Case Study about US Supply  
• Read the Epicor Press Release announcing the partnership with Tour de Force CRM