January 2010 Newsline

You asked...we delivered! In response to your feedback from our December survey, we are launching our new educational series in 2010.

Focusing on topics you wanted to explore, we are recruiting subject matter experts and guest speakers for sessions on solutions, industry trends and general business practices. We'll schedule plenty of Q&A time in each session. We already have a long list of topics from backup solutions and completing a data driller to financial analysis, landed cost, POS software, multi-currency and more, but we'll gladly take on more. Send us your wish list and we'll schedule your topic.

Stay on the lookout for this logo on our website, emails and postcards to get updates on our schedule. All infoXpress sessions are free but more importantly, they are geared towards topics that are of interest to you.

How is Your UPS?

By Margaret M. O'Neill, Hardware and Software Consultant, WAC Consulting Group

Sudden power loss can be especially dangerous to hard drives. If power fails during a read/write operation, the read/write heads can drop precipitously onto the disc. This power loss can damage the delicate magnetic medium and create bad sectors. If this damage occurs in the wrong place, disk boot failures may be the end result.

Many computer users have experienced the horror of turning on their computers and finding out it’s suffering from amnesia. It no longer remembers how many drives it has, what kind of monitor it’s supporting, or how much memory is on its motherboard. Again, bad power may be the culprit. Use a quality UPS system to provide enough backup power to allow you to do an orderly shutdown of the system.

It's Tax Time Again! Are you Ready?

Hopefully, you have been reconciling the information in your General Ledger throughout the year. If you have, then the financial information you currently have in your GL is correct and ready to hand to your accounting firm for the preparation of the year-end taxes.

Reconciling the GL to the controls will assure that the sales, cost of sales, expenses and profit in your system is correct. Read more

Which comes first, Sales, Marketing or Customer Care?

Borrowing from the chicken and the egg conundrum, we're pretty convinced that we have the same type of situation with the sales, marketing and customer care departments at most companies:

Sales wants timely, anywhere access to accurate information on prospects and customers alike in order to make quota;
Marketing wants access to the same information in order to plan more and better lead generation campaigns;
Customer care wants to respond quickly to customer inquiries on product shipments, invoices or any other time-sensitive queries.

Chances are, each of these groups are running their own system, with the sales and marketing department more likely to simply keep track of their critical data in spreadsheets.

How do you prioritize giving these departments the tools they need to do their job as efficiently as possible? More.

Sage Pro Lunch-Bytes Training Schedule
January and February 2009

Register at 866-400-0922 or email us at inquiry@wacconsultinggroup.com to be added to our mailing list. Please note that seating for our Go to Meeting sessions is limited.

Special Interest Article: Social Media Marketing

Content-Search Deals Make Twitter Profitable

Everyday our inboxes are being bombarded with more information on social media marketing. It appears that the social media craze is here to stay. Did you hear about Twitter cutting a deal with Google as their content becomes searchable on Google and Bing search engines?

We wanted to share this Social Media Marketing article with you from BusinessWeek titled: 30 Tips for Using Social Media In Your Business These are some basic steps that will help you start thinking about Social Media and whether it is right for your business.

Our thoughts: It's so easy to get overwhelmed with Social Media and all the buzz that is out there! Start with setting 2 -3 goals you want to accomplish by your social media marketing efforts and then build your social media marketing plan from there!

Are you considering joining the Social Media Marketing bandwagon at your organization? If you have not already done so, please give us a call and find out how you existing ERP and CRM systems can support your social media efforts this New Year. Call 508-393-7731 and get started today!

WAC Consulting Group Trivia - January 2010

Trivia: January 18th was Martin Luther King's Day - What year did Dr. King give his "I have a dream" speech?

The winning companies for the December 2009 trivia are:
Connie Riley and Carl Little

The winning companies will receive a box of Coffaro Baking Company's baked goods this month. Enter our trivia game today to win a prize!

Rules: Only emailed responses to mhowell@2sci.com will be accepted.
The last day to submit responses is noon on February 15' 10 at 12pm ET.
Winners will be selected via a random drawing at the end of the month.
Two winners will be selected every month.
Winning companies can only be selected once every quarter.

Launching our New Educational Series: InfoXpress