Murphy's Law

Ever sit down to present to a group of people and have your presentation material mysteriously disappear? A lot of people can relate to this stressful and embarrassing moment. Fifteen minutes prior to our recent webinar on iApprove™, our VP of Solutions Development contacted our CEO with news that the demo server was down! Panic! Besides one glitch, many of you would not have known the chaos behind the scenes. Ah, the excitement of live presentations.

iApprove™ is our most recent offering as an add on solution for QAD EA™. Although the software has been in use since 2004 as the heart of the ISS Group iPurchase™ and iQuote™ solutions, it is now available as a stand-alone product for exclusive and hybrid QAD EA™ environments.

We love the name, iApprove™. The name says it all, if you can think of something in your organization that needs documented approval, iApprove™ can do it for you. It is a rules based solution that is easily configured to dynamically route the request based on the data in the request. How do we define a rule? A rule can be as easy as; if a purchase order is over x amount, John needs to approve. Or if Sally wants to take off New Years Eve, her supervisor and HR needs to approve! Or a rule can be as complex as you need it to be, ie; a purchase requisition between x amount and y amount, which include the following departments (a,b,c,d) for the Ohio or Cleveland plant , being shipped by UPS or Fedex, OR the Project Code begins with an ‘M’, OR the Account Code is greater than or equal to 8000 and less than or equal to 8999, OR the Supplier is ISS Group, then Sam, Jane, John and someone from the Accounting Group needs to approve the requisition. That seems to be a mouthful, but easy to do with iApprove™. Try having employees remember and follow this rule as a standard operating procedure!

Thank you to the attendees of yesterday’s webinar. For more information regarding iApprove™ and/or all of the ISS Group solutions, please visit our website, www.issgroup.net. Please watch for our upcoming January webinar on iPurchase™.

iApprove an Approval Workflow Solution

Does your organization have procedures for creating, reviewing, and approving/rejecting requests such as Purchase Order Requisitions, reviewing Sales Quotes, Vacation requests, Expense requests, IT Change Orders, …..and the list goes on!

The answer is, of course! All organizations have these types of procedures and requests. Some organizations have more formal procedures than others. Some may have paper forms associated with these procedures. Some may even have these procedures outlined in a company operations manual.

Now that we have agreed that all organizations have these requests and procedures, the next set of questions would be, how well does your organization process these requests? Are the requests processed timely? Is it possible for the person who created the request to track the status of a request? Do requests sometimes get lost in a ‘black hole’ because one of the people who need to review and approve the request is out of the office? Can a request be easily retracted by the originator of a request, changed, and then re-submitted for review and approval? Do the request review attempts get documented for auditability and analytical purposes?

These are just some of the questions an organization should be asking as part of a Business Process Improvement program.

ISS Group® has worked with many organizations in the QAD EA® community over the past fifteen years to assist in streamlining these types of business processes. As a result of many years of experience, ISS Group® developed a web-based, shrink-wrapped solution named iApprove™ to electronically facilitate the creation, workflow, review and approval of organizational Requests.

The result?

Significantly reduced request turnaround time. For requests such as reviewing Sales Quotes, this results in shortened Quote to Order cycles, and subsequently Quote to Cash cycles! For Purchase Order Requisitions, these result in shortened procurement cycles which ultimately result in more efficient office and plant operations.

Improved Financial Control. For any type of request which requires multiple people to review and approve the request before money can be spent, having a tool which forces the request to be routed to the appropriate people, reviewed and approved, has resulted in the elimination of ‘maverick spend’.

Increased resource productivity. For requests such as reviewing and accepting new Supplier Catalogs, Buyers spend less time on the administration of collecting and reviewing a catalog, which allows them more time to invest in negotiating with Suppliers ultimately resulting in lower material costs.

Improved process auditability. For all types of requests, the ability to analyze who is making the requests, the time it takes for different types of requests to complete from inception, who is holding up the requests, and being able to identify who may have approved/rejected a request, has proven to be extremely valuable information to upper management and the folks responsible for improving business processes throughout an organization.

Fall 2011 QAD Mid-West User Conference

The MWUG Board of Directors, headed by Ms. Anne Holmes, once again did a terrific job in organizing the Fall 2011 QAD user event. The agenda was filled with many helpful topics provided by both QAD and the Vendor community, and the keynote presentation provided by Mr. Tony Winter (CIO QAD) on ‘The Effective Enterprise’ was interesting and educational. Thank you MWUG Board!

This fall ISS Group introduced our latest solution, iApprove. iApprove is a Workflow and Approval Routing engine integrated with QAD EA. It has received tremendous praise within the QAD community from our webinar in August. We are very excited to add this solution into our portfolio of products currently used within the QAD community, including iPurchase, iQuote, and iBridge. Please be on the lookout for details on our next iApprove webinar which will be in November.

This has been ISS Group’s 15th year as a Sponsor and Exhibitor at the QAD Fall mid-west user conference, and we look forward to seeing many familiar faces at these events. Not only is it an opportunity to catch-up with the latest QAD announcements, but it is also a terrific venue for all of us Vendors to show our latest wares.

Thank you to all who visited with us at our booth. We hope you were one of the lucky ones who got one of our cool orange stress balls before they ran out, and congratulations to the winners of the two $50 Facebook gift cards we gave away.

Aside from getting stuck at the Detroit airport on Tuesday night due to bad weather in Philadelphia, the trip to Ft. Wayne to attend the Fall 2011 QAD mid-west user conference was productive and worthwhile.

And last but not least, a big thanks to Marriott in Ft. Wayne for the wonderful accommodations. We look forward to seeing you all again in the spring.

Andrew Weinstein

CEO ISS Group

Procurement Practices for QAD EA Users - Take the First Step to Smarter Spending

Procurement is not something that you "set-and-forget". Technology evolves. Suppliers come and go. Organizations restructure. New rules and regulations are enacted. To be successful, organizations must continuously fine-tune their procurement practices to address this constant change.

5 Reasons to Utilize an eProcurement Solution:

• Provide leverage, compliance and visibility to indirect and MRO purchases
• Limit maverick purchasing
• Ensure contract compliance with key suppliers
• Substantially reduce requisition turnaround time from days to hours
• Reduce processing and transaction costs

Join us this Thursday, October 21st to learn more!