President's
Corner
Since this is the first newsletter of
2007, let me wish all of you a very happy and prosperous new year. I'd like to
thank you for your past and present business and want to assure you that we
stand ready to support your business needs everyday going forward.
The beginning of the year is a time of
reflection of things past (good and bad) and planning for the business year
ahead. We do it and, I'm sure, so do all of you. Whether its new product
planning, new marketing programs, new cost cutting procedures, the goal is to
have a better 2007 than 2006.
Since Digital Movers has added several new
products to it lineup, I think it's appropriate that I spend a few minutes and
cover a few of them. Perhaps, through the use of one or more of these, you can
increase your revenue stream and/or reduce your costs. Here's four new ones
that may interest you:
E*Buy
- How would you like to get less paper & fax orders and more electronic
orders. With E*Buy, it's a snap!
E*Buy hosts your product catalog and lets your
customers place their own orders on a secure website, with just a browser. You
can setup your catalog with categories and administer what customer can order
which products. There's a shopping cart with a convenient re-order function,
plus we apply ship notices so your customer always knows the status of his
order. Think of the reduction in customer service time & expense to handle
paper& fax orders. If you're a
Host*EDI Outsource customer, we pass these orders to you
just like an inbound EDI order. A very slick product!
Fax
to EDI - Again, on the theme of reducing paper documents
and their associated handling costs, we can now turn paper into electronic form
(EDI or flat files). Digital Movers, a solution partner of Easylink Services
Corporation, has a solution that helps you reduce or eliminate this inbound
paper document issue while leveraging your existing investment in EDI. Our Fax
Reception to EDI/XML Solution automatically converts information from trading
partner's faxes into electronic data and then delivers this data into ERP or
other enterprise applications in EDI, XML or proprietary flat files. The
result? Your faxed documents are processed just like your electronic ones.
Product*Insight
- If your a Host*EDI customer, you know that all of the EDI data that we
process for you is stored in a SQL database that's web-enabled via our Insight
webtool. Well Product*Insight takes this one step further. In essence, it's a
'Dashboard' for your business. We provide online tools to query your documents
(Forecasts, Point-of-sale, Orders, ASN's, Invoices, etc) so you can get a
handle on the health of your business.
While most ERP applications capably
provide information on the volume of product you have sold to your customers,
many are not able to effectively integrate historical data that is provided
electronically (usually via EDI).
Product*Insight is a "Software as a Service" (SaaS)
solution provided by Digital Movers. That means it's accessabile from anywhere
with just a web browser. The Service offers you better, more accurate, more
timely information to help you make better business decisions, such as:
· Are your customer's ordering patterns meeting their forecasts?
· Do you have an easy way to manage sales (retailers sell-thru) and really
"see' how your products are performing?
· How are your inventory levels, and do you need to allocate product
differently?
· What's my shipment service levels by customer?
· Are my VMI programs working as planned?
· Can I get the data needed to do accurate retail planning?
· Do my sales reps have accurate and timely data to support their sales
efforts?
With
Product*Insight, all this data is available, and more:
? Product Catalog Hosting - At the core of
Product*Insight is a hosted, secure on-line item catalog
which can be maintained via files and on-line. This catalog can be
segregated by categories, lines of merchandise, promotions, buyers, locations,
etc. To this we add your inventory data and apply supply chain data from
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) transactions such as Product Activity,
Forecasts, Orders, Ship Notices, etc. to provide a near real-time picture of
the health of your supply chain. Brand management and product performance
can then be managed accurately and efficiently.
? Immediate Financial Benefit -
Product*Insight is a "Software as a Service" (SaaS)
Application. The SaaS model is one of the newer developments in how solutions
are delivered and supported. Rather than invest in hardware and software,
our customers utilize the Internet to access the application and support.
In addition to providing immediate access to the solution, the SaaS model
requires very little up front expense with no hardware or software to
purchase. Digital Movers hosts the application and the database.
? Secure Administration -With our on-line administrative tool, you dictate
which employees can look at which pieces of the database.
? Numerous Inquiries and Reports - Slice and dice your information by
item, product group, category, customer, etc. We simplify sales data into
meaningful decision-making analyses with stock and custom reports. Data
can also be exported for use by other applications.
? Transaction History - Thirteen months of transaction history is
maintained enabling in-depth analysis by customer and by item.
.
Customs Connection - For those of
you who need to send Transportation EDI documents to U.S. or Canadian Customs,
we've got your connection! Send your data seamlessly through one of our Tier 1
Vans. And our costs are lower than the competition. Start the New Year off
right!
Customer Survey - We recently contracted
with Open Ratings, a Dun & Bradstreet company to independently (and
confidentially) survey our customers regarding Digital Movers performance.
While we thought we've been doing a good job, the dramatic results were
certainly gratifying. On a scale of 1 to 100, our customers ranked us at 94%!
Needless to say, we want to extend a very
large 'Thank you' to our loyal customers, many of whom have been with us for
many years. We'll continue to work hard to earn your business every day and
provide you with the best in E-Commerce services and support.
As always, please fee free to email me
your comments or thoughts at
kkonikowski@dmovers.com.
