Resources
News, articles and resources for your business solutions needs
The ERP Cost Checklist
Acquiring Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is usually a major move for a business. Whether you’re upgrading from an older system or buying your first-ever ERP solution, it’s a big deal. ERP will affect how your business runs for the foreseeable future. As...
10 Powerful Manufacturing Features in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a compelling solution for manufacturers. It offers 10 powerful manufacturing features, as highlighted below. Dynamics 365 Business Central also integrates with accounting and finance, giving you a robust overall business...
Acumatica 2020 R1: A Significant New Product Release
Acumatica will soon release its latest semi-annual update, known as 2020 R1. This new edition of Acumatica Cloud ERP expands the solution’s business management capabilities. It’s a big deal. As Acumatica CEO, John Roskill explained in his keynote at the Acumatica 2020...
Understanding Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Sometimes, a product’s tag line sounds overly ambitious. This is not the case with message, “Run your entire business with a single solution,” the motto for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. In our experience, this is a true statement. The cloud-based...
Acumatica Cloud ERP and Its Potential for Your Business
We are an Acumatica partner. In this role, we have worked with many companies over the years on the implementation of Acumatica Cloud ERP. In conversations with prospective customers, we sometimes hear people refer to Acumatica as “an application.” This is not the...
Acumatica and the Power of Comprehensive Manufacturing Software
Even if you don’t consider yourself a precision manufacturer, managing a manufacturing operation is all about precision. Or, at least it should be. The more precisely you manage every aspect of your manufacturing business, from end to end, the more efficient and...
Acumatica Summit 2020 Recap
We told you. You should have been there! But, if you missed the Acumatica Summit 2020, here’s a recap of some of the amazing things that happened at the big conference, which was held at The Cosmopolitan resort on the Las Vegas strip. It was a two-day celebration of...
Lean Manufacturing: What It Is and 7 Ways ERP Can Support Its Success
Lean manufacturing comprises a collection if ideas and practices aimed at minimizing waste while simultaneously improving product quality. It’s often implemented as a complete, systematic approach to running a manufacturing operation. ERP software for manufacturing...
6 Reasons It’s Time for Manufacturers to Give Up Excel
Excel has been a mainstay of work environments for some time. While Excel is good for listing data, and to some extent calculating prices, it’s not ideal for a manufacturing business. Excel lacks many features of Acumatica Manufacturing Edition. Today’s manufacturers...
The Dangers of Data Silos, and How to Avoid Them
When you drive across the country, you’ll see silos used by farmers for storing grain and corn. They’re hard to miss, cylindrical towers reaching up a hundred feet or more over the flat landscape. The word “silo” has been adopted in the business world, but with...
How to Save Time and Improve Project Results with ERP Software
Project-based businesses are theoretically interesting places to work. There’s very little of the “same old, same old” routine you can get in a company that does the same thing very day. Each project is a little different. That’s fun, right? Whether project management...
The Top Five 2020 ERP Software Trends
It the end of the year, when experts prognosticate about next year’s Oscar favs and likely trends in all spheres of life. For us, it’s a good time to think about trends in business software. 2019 has been a year of growth and change in business software, with the...
How Configurators Help Manufacturers Expand Their Product Lines
A product configurator is software that enables you to configure a complex manufactured product. Manufacturing ERP solutions like Acumatica have product configurator modules that port configuration data directly into sales quotes, order management, supply chain...
How Project Managers Can Benefit from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a comprehensive, web-based business management solution. Yet, it even goes further than that. The solution also offers deep, multi-faceted project management capabilities. If you’re a project manager, you might be surprised...
Acumatica Summit 2020 – Are You Attending?
The Acumatica Summit 2020 is going to be a fun, informative experience. Held at The Cosmopolitan resort on the Las Vegas Strip from January 26-31, the event will be jam-packed with engaging sessions and networking opportunities. You’re coming, right? We’ll be there....
7 Signs You’ve Outgrown Your Old Manufacturing ERP System
How can you tell you’ve outgrown your old manufacturing ERP system? Chances are, if you’ve implemented ERP for your manufacturing business, you have a system that works relatively well. It gets the job done, more or less. The “or less” part can become increasingly...
Top New Features – Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is being updated between October 2019 and March 2020. The already feature-rich, all-in-one business management solution is becoming more versatile so businesses can take advantage of application enhancements, customer lifecycle...
The Top 5 Accounting Challenges and How ERP Software Can Help
A recent news story out of New York reveals how challenging accounting can be in a fast-moving business. A retailer had extended factory rebates to customers and charged them sales tax on the discounted price. That was a no-no, according to New York State tax...
Tips for Making Your Business More Productive
Improving productivity, or having people do more in less time, is greatly boosted by a business application such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Microsoft’s business solutions are geared toward productivity enhancement. From automating manual tasks to...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Power BI
An all-in-one business management solution, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central helps manage financials, project budgeting/scheduling, supply chain automation and customer service. Microsoft Power BI complements Dynamics 365 with the ability to visualize data...
ERP Software Selection Factors
Selecting the right ERP software for your business takes time and effort. It requires research into the latest products and technologies and determining what type of platform can provide the best return on investment (ROI). While the right system can help save money,...
What Is the Best Software for SMB Manufacturers?
When we think of manufacturing, we may imagine big factories, assembly lines or fast-moving, automated processes. This is the world of big company manufacturing, however. Not all manufacturers are like that. Small-to-midsized (SMB) firms are often engaged in more...
Comparing QuickBooks to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
QuickBooks and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central are both popular and affordable business software solutions for smaller companies. However, they differ greatly in terms of available features, scalability and pricing. Their core functionality enables small...
New Features in Acumatica 2019 R2
The release of Acumatica 2019 R2 means even more opportunities to increase productivity and accelerate growth. Improvements to the software (of which there are over 100), aim to make the cloud ERP system more user-friendly. Its latest upgrades are based on feedback...
5 Things Manufacturers Need in ERP
Process management, inventory management and accounting are just a few important features of manufacturing ERP software. By implementing a manufacturing-specific Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, you can streamline business processes while more accurately...
Better Productivity with Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a web-based business management and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. It is the successor to the ERP app Microsoft Dynamics NAV and shares its codebase. The system supports many business functions, including...
The Advantage of True Cloud Manufacturing
If you manage manufacturing operations, you know the kind of pressure you can be under to produce product on time and at the right cost. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software has helped guide the manufacturing process as well as related areas of work like supply...
Dynamics 365 Business Central for Manufacturing
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers a full set of business management capabilities. These include a wide range of features for manufacturing management. Manufacturers are increasingly finding the Dynamics cloud ERP solution to be an effective way to operate...
Want to Replace Your Accounting Software?
Microsoft just published a very useful paper called The business owner’s guide for replacing accounting software. It starts with a sobering statistic: “More than 90 percent of consumers said they would consider taking their business elsewhere rather than work with a...
Four Tech Trends That Help Businesses Thrive in the Digital World
Microsoft recently published a truly outstanding white paper titled Four Technology Trends Helping Businesses Thrive in a Digital World. We highly recommend it if you’re contemplating how IT can make an impact on your business success. The paper takes on topics like...
Moving from QuickBooks to Acumatica
Acumatica offers a number of advantages over QuickBooks. If you do want to migrate, you won’t be alone. A lot of companies have done it. And, best practices have emerged for the process of moving from QuickBooks to Acumatica. Why Make the Move from QuickBooks to...
Improving Your Business with Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a multi-faceted, cloud-based business management suite. It offers features that can improve the way your business operates. These include advance financial management capabilities, supply chain management and project...
Better Financial Reporting with Acumatica
There’s a question you frequently (and unfortunately) hear from managers when they are presented with financial reports: “Thanks. Now, what do these really mean?” An income statement and a balance sheet will reveal some basic facts about a company’s financial...
Manufacturing Challenges—How Acumatica Can Help
Manufacturing has never been easy, but it’s getting harder to do profitably with every passing year. Competition never lets us. Supply chains get more complex. Deadlines and customer demands grow more urgent. How can you stay ahead? A manufacturing-centric Enterprise...
Dynamics GP to Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft continues to innovate and iterate with its popular Dynamics product line. This is good, though it can be a little confusing when it comes time to decide to stay with what you’ve got or move on to a new option. Today, our clients are asking if they should...
Improving Field Service Operations with Dynamics 365 Business Central
The complaint, “The repair man said he would be here between 2 and 4, and now it’s 6 and I’m still waiting...” is a staple of consumer exasperation. But what if the customer complaint was, “The service said they would send someone to fix our $500 million oil refinery...
Understanding Acumatica Pricing
Acumatica offers web-based applications for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). However, the Acumatica approach to pricing is somewhat different from that of other companies in the ERP space. For this reason, we thought it would be useful to go through Acumatica...
Top Dynamics 365 Features
In 2016, Microsoft launched Dynamics 365, a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service version of its respected Dynamics product line. Dynamics 365 comprises multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications. Two versions are...
Solving Nonprofit Accounting Challenges with Acumatica
There’s a myth in the corporate world that running a nonprofit is somehow an easier, lighter lift than managing a “real” business. If anything, the financial management challenges that arise in nonprofits are more intense than what you see in the for-profit sector....
Making Informed Decisions with the Right ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions like Acumatica offer a wide range of Business Intelligence (BI) features. BI is a collection of technologies and practices that enable sophisticated analysis of business data. Used right, BI can help managers make informed...
Signs You Are Outgrowing Your ERP Solution
Growing businesses sometimes find they are outgrowing their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions. It can be a hard thing to notice. After all, for some companies, even just making the decision to implement ERP in the first place was a big deal. Getting it...
When You Know It’s Time to Move to the Cloud
If your business is like most, you’ve already started using cloud computing in your operations. This could be something as simple as swapping out your email server for Office 365 or entrusting CRM to Salesforce.com. More sophisticated and valuable cloud options await...
The Importance of Dashboards and Data
Most of us don’t even realize we’re doing it, but when we drive, we glance down at our dashboards every minute or so. We want to make sure we haven’t started speeding. We want to know if the engine’s overheating or if we’re running out of gas. It’s a reflexive...
How to Get a Full View of Your Business with the Right ERP Solution
Running a business may sometimes feel like building a house of cards inside a hall of mirrors. It’s hard to know what’s going on and how various areas of the business are performing. Yet, though you lack the right information, you must still plan your next steps....
What You Should Know Before Choosing an ERP Solution
Choosing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution is one of the most significant decisions you’ll ever make for your business. It’s akin to getting married. You’ll be together a long time. Compatibility and adaptability count. There may be difficulties, but with...
How to Streamline Your Multi-Entity Financials
The question, “How’s business?” isn’t quite right. Most of the time, it really should be, “How are your businesses?” Many, if not all sizable business concerns, are actually running multiple, separate business entities. Even if the corporation looks like one company...
Dynamics 365 Business Central: Premium Vs. Essentials
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a cloud-based business management solution that’s designed to give you an “end-to-end” control of and visibility into your business. It comes in two versions: Premium and Essentials. This article compares the two options....
Push and Pull: Two Paths to ERP Innovation
During the first forty or so years of ERP, innovation was rarely one of the words used by analysts and pundits to describe such a platform. ERP was designed to simplify tasks and provide stability to businesses, doing enough to satisfy the needs of a company for the...
Microsoft Dynamics GP: 8 of our Favorite Tips and Tricks
Your Microsoft Dynamics GP software solution is very robust. It's probably saving you time and helping you create efficiencies in your organization. But what if it could save you even more time? Keep reading for 8 of our favorite Dynamics GP software tips &...
Highly Anticipated Improvements Coming to Dynamics 365 Business Central
Whether you are a current Dynamics 365 Business Central user or looking to see what’s new in the platform on your journey to familiar and functional small business ERP, we are excited to share with you some of the enhancements introduced in the April 2019 release of...
New Features in Acumatica 2019 R1: Exciting Changes Ahead
For more than a decade, Acumatica has become one of the fastest-growing ERP solutions in the world by delivering innovation to customers and continually committing to product improvements. These improvements are delivered in twice-annual product updates, R1 and R2....
ERP Decision Series: Tax Management
Many different things go into the ERP decision and selection process. Often a necessary change for business, the path from decision to implementation is often a complicated journey for businesses, filled with risk. However, with the right planning and help, you can...
ERP Modernization and Evergreen ERP
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a powerful yet familiar ERP solution for small and medium businesses. Leveraging the cloud to provide increased accessibility, innovation, and ease of use, the platform is transforming the way companies like yours do...
Acumatica Takes Home PCMag Award for Best ERP Software
With 2018 an outstanding year for Acumatica, which celebrated its 10th year in existence, and a swath of awards from journalists and accolades from analysts, the company has continued its momentum into 2019 with its latest award: an “Excellent” rating of 4.5 and...
ERP Decision Series: Currency Management
So many decisions go into the process of selecting ERP software for your business. A high-risk, high reward proposition, companies that make the right decision position themselves for comfortable growth, ease of life, and smarter decisions. However, a poorly planned...
Before You Decide on ERP: Getting Your House in Order
Making an ERP decision isn’t easy. In fact, the path from realization to committal is often as stressful as the implementation process itself. From knowing when it’s time to make a move to evaluating functionality, reading reviews, and selecting your ideal solution,...
Acumatica Vetted Reviews: Asking the Right Questions
G2 Crowd, a leader in the world of reviews maintains a running total of user experience and functionality reviews from real, vetted, verified users who have had hands-on experience with the software. While much of the hype is focused on market size and satisfaction, a...
Integrated ERP: Creating a Shared Service Center and Improving Cash Flow
“The ability to manage the flow of money is one of the oldest and most fundamental requirements for any business.” These words, used by leading analyst firm IDC to introduce the challenges that businesses face and the potential that ERP has for organizations, lead...
ERP Decision Series: Improving Supplier Relationships with AP Functionality
ERP is often considered the heart of your technology stack—data flows in and out of the platform and supplies the rest of the business with viable, decision-influencing information. As with a heart transplant, an ERP replacement is complicated; in fact, ERP...
Common Signs Your Business Management System Can’t Handle Your Needs
As we enter 2019, the competitive landscape will continue to heat up, consumer expectations will continue to rise, and your business will need to adapt to the evolving challenges that present themselves to you. However, if you haven’t taken steps to prepare yourself...
ERP Decision Making: Managing What Goes In with Powerful AR
There are few things that could be considered to be “easy” about the ERP decision-making process. However, one of the first steps to a successful decision is to find out what features are most important to your business, choose a solution with that can handle your...
Year-End Close: Updates and Resources for Closing Out the Year in Dynamics GP
The end of the year is upon us, and that means that alongside all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, another busy season is due to follow—Year-end closing. If you are using Microsoft Dynamics GP, there are a lot of resources, steps, and procedures to close the...
How to See the Big Picture with Reporting and Business Intelligence in ERP
Business Intelligence. Often one of the ‘buzziest’ terms that businesses have to look at in their ERP decision process, when leveraged properly it can prove immensely valuable for organizations who can’t afford to spend a lot of time drafting manual reports or...
New Gartner Report Explores Current State of ERP for Product-Centric Companies
By 2021, 70% of all new midmarket cloud ERP application projects for product-centric enterprises will be public cloud implementations. This information from Gartner, while shocking to some, is a long time coming—cloud ERP is the present and future, and based on the...
ERP Decision Making: The Importance of a Powerful Cash Management Solution
The path to selecting an ERP platform is not an easy one. A high risk, high reward decision featuring long implementation windows and high customization costs, ERP software can position a business for sustainable and strategic growth—but only if it’s done right. Every...
Six Trends Set to Change the Way Finance will Operate in 2019
What’s on the horizon for businesses in 2019? More change. From finding and supporting new customers to dealing with new technology and data challenges, the coming year will require businesses to take a different look at the way that they operate, leveraging...
Show Me the Money: When and Why You Need to Prove ERP ROI
While you go through the process of selecting ERP software, you face a wide variety of decisions. From deciding on important functionality to making your decision on vendor and partner, the path to purchase is rife with politics, detractors, promoters, and...
Usability: What it Is and Why It Matters in ERP
Selecting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is a major decision, with choices driven by numerous smaller decisions ranging from “what are our must-have features” to “who can we trust to implement the software?” The path to selection is stressful,...
Seven New Features in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 R2 (Part 3)
A Brief Look Back: Part 1 and 2 In part one of this series, we explored seven improvements made in GP 2018 R2, discussing the following: Monthly Recurring Batches: Use Last Day of the Month Sales Transaction Workflow New Visual Added to Display Vendor Hold Status...
Looking for FRx Replacements? New Webinar Explores Powerful Budgeting and Reporting Alternatives
FRx had a good run. Released as an MS-DOS application in 1991 and a Windows product in 1993, the product changed the way that companies completed reporting, offering powerful functionality at the time and much-needed intelligence. Acquired by Great Plains Software,...
New Features to Look out for in Acumatica 2018 R2
For more than a decade, Acumatica Cloud ERP has been the true cloud ERP for growing and established businesses. Feature rich and user-friendly, Acumatica has continued to add new features and functionality in twice-annual releases based on user requests, industry...
Seven More New Features in Dynamics GP 2018 R2
On October 1, Microsoft released Dynamics GP 2018 R2, an update designed to solidify the already-innovative and powerful Dynamics GP 2018 platform. Not only does the R2 update make necessary fixes to the software, it adds a wide variety of new features as requested by...
Seven Exciting New Features in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 R2
At Innovative Cloud Solutions, we’ve been in business for over 30 years, many of which we have spent helping clients understand the value of, choose, implement, and operate Microsoft Dynamics GP. We understand the power of Dynamics GP for business and are happy to...
Product Spotlight: Microsoft Dynamics GP
As we continue to introduce ourselves in our blog series, we are today turning our attention to the product that we’ve worked with the longest—Microsoft Dynamics GP. With the Dynamics GP 2018 R2 set for an October 1, 2018 release, we would like to take a short look...
ICS Presents: Benefits of Archiving Your GP Data (9/20)
When companies implement Dynamics GP, they immediately see the benefits it can provide for them. Fast, smart, and able to grow with them , this solution has been used for decades by mid-sized companies in need of a powerful and familiar solution. However, time passes,...
Product Spotlight: Acumatica Cloud ERP
At Innovative Cloud Solutions, we only work with the software we feel is best for our unique clients, designed to make their operations smarter, help their processes work better, and empower their people to work more strategically. Whether it’s Dynamics GP, Dynamics...
Facts About Microsoft Dynamics Business Central
Since Satya Nadella took the reins at Microsoft in 2014, he has led the company as a whole through a variety of important changes. From the important acquisitions to the new-found focus on collaboration with competitors to the concept of One Microsoft, he has also...
Welcome to ICS Insights!
The objective of ICS Insights is to provide education, training, resources, and information abut the dynamic subject of Business Software. Brought to you by Innovative Cloud Solutions (ICS), a leading software consulting and implementation partner, we will strive to...
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