It’s important to focus on the right things during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we review 5 tools that can help you stay focused when your workforce is working remotely. Below you will find our top five recommendations for keeping your business working and your people productive.

First, we wanted to share a quick note about Macola Progression versus Macola 10. On Macola Progression, you have a shortcut on your desktop and it points to the serve, so you are running Progression on the server. With Macola 10 and ES, it is a different story – you are actually running the software on your your computer. What we have found is, if you just simply take your laptop home and try to run Macola ES or 10 from home, it is going to be very slow.

It is important to think about the way you are accessing Macola across the web. If you are running each transaction across the internet and the internet is getting pretty heavily used, that could slow you down. You should consider avoiding running posting programs during peak times of the day. If your laptop loses connection to the internet, then you will have a big mess on your hands to unravel.

Also, if you are not using a VPN, you are opening yourself up to some potential security damage. This is a very technical area, so if you are unsure about how you have things set up just give us a call and we can talk details.

5 Tips for Keeping Your Business Working and Your People Productive

1. Stay in Touch With Customers Using Synergy

Exact Synergy is a full-featured business process management and collaboration tool. Synergy makes information about employees, workflows, documents, projects and accounts available wherever you are, allowing your team to work remotely on the device of their choice. It provides tight integration with commonly used tools like Outlook, Word and Excel. This leads to increased productivity, better efficiency, collaboration and accountability wherever your team may be.

2. Cash Flow Forecasting

The second thing we want to talk about is cash flow. In these uncertain times, cash flow is going to become extremely important to track hour by hour, day by day. In our PULSE Dashboard software, we have what we call our Smart Cash Flow Forecast as part of the dashboard financial module.

Smart Cash Flow Forecast doesn’t calculate accounts receivable cash flow based on your terms code or your due date on the invoice because, as you know, customers don’t pay based on a due date they have their own way. So we calculate that customer by customer on average days to pay. You can have up to 16 weeks or months of forecast. Cash flow forecast is going to be an excellent tool for any small to medium-sized business that needs to predict cash flow.

3. Automate Manual Processes to Increase Productivity and Eliminate Errors

The third item that we want to talk about is automating manual processes to improve productivity and eliminate errors. Three of our products can help you accomplish this – PULSE eCommerce, Purchase Order Generator and PULSE Lockbox.

PULSE eCommerce automates customer order import in Macola. Customer orders may be from your eCommerce website, Amazon, Yahoo, Wayfair, eBay, etc. PULSE eCommerce eliminates the need for manually entering information into the system. Manual data entry is eliminated and PULSE eCommerce shows you if there are any errors that are coming in. The software is not just pushing data into Macola, it is validating as it goes along. So if something doesn’t match, you can dig deeper and correct the error immediately. This allows you to see orders and validate them before they are pushed to Macola.

Purchase Order Generator is another tool that helps automate manual processes in Macola. No more manual keying of purchase orders. Based on your unique company rules, it generates orders at just the right time based on your needs.

PULSE Lockbox is where we are automating payments coming into Macola. These payments may be coming from your bank lockbox, from customers, downloaded from Amazon, ACH payments, credit card payments or wire transfers. We handle all of that.

4. Fix Your Slow and Error Prone Database

If you have a lot of data but don’t want to purge any of it, you should use a tool that allows you to archive old data. This gives you the ability to still access that data in the future if you need and decide what data you want to keep on your database.

The two tools we use to accomplish this in Macola® are PULSE Archive and SystemPRO.

PULSE Archive speeds up Macola® processing by archiving older data and optimizing indexing. It is completely data safe and no files are deleted.

SystemPRO is our comprehensive service to speed up your database, optimize SQL settings and clean up data. This revolutionary service searches out problems in your Macola® to make your system run like new.

5. Connect your team with analytics and reports

PULSE Dashboard really connects everybody. A lot of people call it the one source of truth for your business. Everyone at your company has access to the same information so everyone is connected. Everything is real-time, reports are pre-built and the tools can get set up and running in one day. PULSE Dashboard minimizes custom reports and pinpoints shortages that prevent on-time shipping and manufacturing.

You can start using PULSE Dashboard for as little as $400/month. Contact us today to learn more!

Watch a 30 minute webinar to learn more about solutions that help you stay focused when your workforce is working remotely.