Claiming Your Share of the 637 Billion Dollar B2B Market

By Computer Pundits Corp

Last year alone, one industrial B2B distributor claimed more than 3 billion in revenue. The way customers purchase online is one of the fastest changing factors of selling in today's B2B environment. Accounting for these changes in buyer preference and usage is critical to the success of your business in the long term. Learn what is required to claim your share of the 637 billion dollar B2B market by attending Computer Pundits webinar on July, 15th.

As the demands of customers change, so does the type of eCommerce solution and the features required to serve them properly. Computer Pundits will be discussing ways to target and engage users of your eCommerce web storefront to drive sales. In addition, a variety of tactics will be presented about how to offer each user of your web storefront a personalized display tailored to their interest and needs.

Simply having a web storefront is not enough; proper implementation and use of a web storefront is crucial to successfully satisfying the needs of customers. During its presentation, CPC will demonstrate how offering tailored content and a customized user interface improves customer experience and creates repeat business. Computer Pundits will also teach you how to most efficiently utilize an eCommerce solution to target niche markets and the most demanding of customers using a single database.

As a bonus, the presenter will highlight what some of the most successful companies in B2B eCommerce are doing to achieve their success and how your business can learn from and replicate this success. The training will round out when CPC teaches you how to induce purchasing decisions by reaching out for customers using mobile applications and integrated eCommerce marketing campaigns.

Finally, CPC will discuss how to reach out for customers using mobile applications and integrated eCommerce marketing campaigns to induce purchasing decisions. The money is there for the taking. Want to learn how to take back your share? Join Computer Pundits on July 15th, 2014 to learn how.

Epicor Eclipse Release 8.7.9 will be in beta testing the month of June and anticipating that it will be generally available for any customer the beginning of July after the holiday.

High level features include:

•  Three new forecasting methods (Solar)
  • Single Exponential Smoothing
  • Holt Model
  • Holt-Winters Model
• Best Fit Analysis (Solar) - Eclipse will determine the best forecast method compared to your sales history and display the information in the new advance demand forecasting analysis screen.
• User Defined Queue Builder (Solar) - Build any queue you want using the Eclipse files and dictionary's.  Fields can be updated based on file and dictionary permissions.
• Suggested Purchase Order Enhancements
• Added the ability to suggest a second target (Solar & Eterm)
• Updated Suggested Purchase Order Report to add the second target suggestion information (Solar & Eterm)
• Updated Suggested Purchase Order Queue to compare two targets (Solar)
• Added the Suggested Purchase Order Detail Queue (Solar)
• Displays same information as the report
• Edit unit cost, short and line buy quantities
• Queue has a vendor input to calculate vendor pricing for suggested items
• Convert to a purchase order from the queue
• Suggested Purchase Order Queue Return On Added Investment Calculation (Solar)
• Added industry standard ROAI calculation for quantity or volume and price increases
• Progress Billing (Solar)
• Invoice based on progress or phases of an order.  Billing is done on predetermined dates and not based on shipment of inventory.

Companion Products 

• Carton Packing Enhancements
• Added the ability to define a carton master, pallet, container, etc...
• Avalara Sales Tax - New product that calculates sales tax.  More features and functionality compared to other services.
• RF Pick and Pass -  New core RF flow related to wave picking that allows additional control over the flow between picking zones.

by Chris Bohn, Enhancement Committee Chair

By the time you read this, Eclipse release 8.7.9 will probably be in beta and soon to be released.  The exciting part of this release is it incorporates many of the purchasing ideas that came from the Eclipse / Enhancement Committee led Purchasing Deep Dive that was help in February of 2013.  You may recall that we had Dr. Barry Lawrence of Texas A&M College of Industrial Distribution present at that session to help guide the discussion on future trends and best practices in purchasing and inventory management.  We had 14 users from 12 companies guiding the future of purchasing in Eclipse.  Many enhancements were documented from that meeting and ultimately will make their way into the 8.7.9 release. 

In addition to the Face-2-Face deep dive enhancements, each and every idea that is in the Purchasing and Inventory Community of the Ideas site have been reviewed in detail by both Eclipse and members of the Enhancement Committee.  The goal was to review every idea and see if it can or will be incorporated in the purchasing enhancements.  I'm pleased to report that several of the ideas will be incorporated just as part of the 8.7.9 enhancements.  A big thank you goes out to Rick Black of ABR Wholesalers, Inc., our committee lead for the Purchasing and Inventory Community for the extra work he has put in during that review process.   Additional thanks goes to Bill Wright, one of Eclipse's Product Development managers for his efforts in reviewing the ideas with us and trying to squeeze more ideas into an already loaded development schedule.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that your ideas were the starting point of this review.  Thank you for those ideas.  Your votes are also important.  While we reviewed each and every idea, the number of votes did influence how much effort we spent on an idea. 

There is my plug for stating as always, remember to visit the communities of your expertise, review the ideas there and finally place your votes!

Here is a sample of some of the new ideas on the Ideas Site.  If these seem like a good idea, please vote!

Warning that Item being Quoted is on Other Quotes

Order Entry Community - Posted by JHEINZEL on 4/1/2014

We need a customer level option to "Warn User When Part Entered Is On Open Bid"  When entering a part on a quote or order, it would be nice to know that the item has been quoted to the customer already on another quote. Currently we have no idea that the customer was already quoted - perhaps for an entire BOM. If the customer doesn't reference the quote number, we will end up recreating the entire order as well as not using the previously quoted pricing.

Window closes after use

Solar Community - Posted by larry.mcmullin on 3/26/2014

As someone who runs a lot of reports for analysis, I find that closing a report window each and every time after a report is kicked off a waste of time.  For example: say a separate sales statistic report needs to be run for every sales person.  Currently, after the report is selected, the sale person is selected and the report kicked off, the window closes and the user has to start all over again. This is very time consuming and unproductive.