Happenings March 8, 2024

    In this issue:

• National Day Spotlight
• Customer Spotlight
• ASWi Office Addresses
• ISV Spotlight
• Sales 101
• Events, Blogs, Movies
• Webinars, Community
• Point to Ponder

The purpose of a newsletter is an opportunity for the ASWi team to provide you and the rest of our clients with information on all the new ASWi and Acumatica related things (or “happenings”) that you may not otherwise be aware of.

Please feel free to share this newsletter with any/all of your team. Pease let me know if anyone on your team who would like to be added to the mailing list for the next issue and removed.

“Get mad, then get over it.” Colin Powell

“It” may be a variety of things. Sometimes we need to get over the small things like spilled milk or traffic.

Even news such as being passed over for a promotion, poor grades, or an argument with a family member shouldn’t cause us to live our lives in a state of misery forever.

Ways we can observe National Get Over It Day:
• Remember what’s important in our lives and realize that “it” usually doesn’t rank very high on that list.
• For the “its” that are high on that list, we can make a renewed effort to address it and, if that’s not possible, get over it.
• Make an effort to forgive ourself/ for holding onto “it” for as long as we have and let it go.

Q: How do you cure a fear of speed bumps?
A: You focus, move forward and slowly get over it.

Q: What do you do when you feel like exercising?
A: I lie down until I get over it.

Q: Did you hear the joke about the high wall?
A: It’s so funny, I’m still trying to get over it.

For the mathematicians:

ASWi is very humbled, privileged, and proud to be able to serve some of the most innovative organizations in the country as their ERP and/or IT Services provider and trusted business advisor. Today, I would like to spotlight and introduce GT Distributors to the rest of the ASWi community.

Headquartered in Pflugerville, GT Distributors, Inc. was founded by Bill Orr on April 1, 1972 in Rossville, Georgia. At the time, Smith & Wesson offered a range of products from firearms, body armor, tear gas, night vision, radar, ammunition, lightbars and sirens. Today GT carries over 500 name brands.

The name ‘GT’ originally came from the fact that the first location is one block from the Georgia and Tennessee state line. The north portion of GT Distributors’ building now crosses the Georgia- Tennessee state line.

Today, GT Distributors, Inc. has 5 locations serving customers in Austin/Pflugerville, Dallas, Kansas City/Overland Park, Jacksonville/Orange Park, and Rossville/Chattanooga. They also have an online store at https://www.gtdist.com/.

Acumatica Cloud ERP version 2022 R2 will be retired on May 30, 2024. Subscribers on this version will receive be sent an email announcing the retirement.

If your Acumatica Cloud ERP instance is on version 2022 R2, please feel free to reach out to our Customer Success Manager Keith Wood (keithw@aswius.com or 717-581-1226) to schedule an upgrade of your Acumatica Cloud ERP instance to a supported version.

As an FYI, our billing address has recently Changed.

Here are our two office locations addresses:

• Houston Metro Office | Billing Address
  25506 McDonald Road
  The Woodlands, Texas 77380

• Austin Office
  8701 Shoal Creek Road
  Suite 101

Acumatica would like to get input from Acumatica Cloud ERP subscribers in the North Texas region on planning the next Acumatica North Texas User Group session for Q2 2024.

To complete their 2024 Q2 NTX Aug Planning Survey, you can go here.

The survey is open until Thursday, March 14th.

In addition, we and Acumatica encourage you to check-in with your teams and customers in North Texas and extend the invite to the North Texas Acumatica User Group forum on the Acumatica Community site, which is located here.

If you are not located in North Texas, you are still invited to participate in an Acumatica User Group near you. A list of these groups, as well as online discussion boards for each of the User Groups can be found on the Acumatica Community site here.

Two years ago, Altec, Inc., publisher of the AP Automation solution DocLink, joined forces with Beyond Limits and continued operating under the name Altec.

They are now embarking on a new chapter by retiring the Altec company name and officially rebranding as Beyond Limits. Despite the change in they company name, Beyond Limits states that everything else remains unchanged, particularly their commitment to excellence and the continued enhancement of DocLink.

If you would like to learn more about Beyond Limits DocLink, please feel free to reach out to our Customer Success Manager Keith Wood (keithw@aswius.com or 717-581-1226)

TMS Integration for Acumatica

Over the past 8 year, FreightPOP has developed more than 300 carrier integrations that can be utilized by Acumatica Cloud ERP subscribers.
Challenges of Modern Logistics
– High shipping costs.
– Lack of visibility into shipping options and tracking.
– Complexity in managing multiple carriers and modes of transport.
– Ensuring timely deliveries with minimal errors.

What FreightPOP Is
FreightPOP is a multi-mode transportation management system (TMS) built around Acumatica Cloud ERP and your existing workflows.

Rate Shopping

Upon detection of a hands-on-keyboard attack, our solution will automatically activates extra defenses on the endpoint with a “shields up” approach to stop the attack from proceeding. Adaptive Attack Protection blocks suspicious activities like downloads of remote admin tools, giving your team valuable time to respond

Centralized Real-Time Tracking
– Shipment tracking available for all shipments, regardless of mode.
– 100% accurate reporting direct from carrier.
– Customizable proactive notifications of delays or issues.

Maintaining Visibility of Your Supply Chain
– 3PL shipment visibility.
– Multi-leg shipment tracking.
– Outbound AND inbound tracking.

Auto Dispatch
– Automatic conversions of POs and SOs to shipments.
– Includes business rules and special customer instructions.
– Reduction in processing time by 95%.

Customizations & API Integrations
– 1,500 carrier, WMS, ERP and marketplace integrations.
– Home-grown APIs

Want to Know More?
If you would like to learn more about FreightPOP, please feel free to reach out to our Customer Success Manager Keith Wood (keithw@aswius.com; 717-581-1226) for more information.

By Kendra Lee

If you want to catch your prospects’ attention, you must go beyond even the business discussion. You have to have something important to talk with them about, something that feels almost life changing for them.

Here’s how it works:

Know Your Purpose
In your first call or email, your purpose isn’t to close for an appointment. I know you’re shocked, but it isn’t. Rather, it’s simply to have a conversation to get to know each other, begin building a relationship, and see if you should have a meeting.

While you’re feeling the pressure to fill your pipeline this moment, many of the people you’ll speak with won’t be ready to make any immediate changes. But if you leave a positive impression as a thoughtful, intelligent person who may be able to help their business in the future, they’ll want to stay in touch. That gives you a lead for 3, 6 or 9 months from now. Better still, they’ll probably call you because they’ll remember your discussion.

Offer to Share Your Expertise Freely
Research is important but it’s how you apply it that is truly distinguishes you. Determine the business issue you could assist with, then offer your expertise on what they should be thinking about to address that point. Don’t hold back because you think a prospect should pay for your advice.

Few companies you speak with will be able to implement your suggestions without your company’s help. Let go of that concern and open up. Share the great knowledge you have.

If you have ideas about how a company could better control their IT costs, tell them. Some will be recommendations that directly connect to your offerings, but others should not. If, for example, during your discussion you believe that some basic training would help their office manager to administer better system back-ups, tell them. You can sell them a full-scale business recovery solution later.

Guide them with ideas they can implement right now while positioning what you can assist with in the future.

Make them think about the possibilities.
As you share, discuss what you’ve seen other companies do to address a similar problem. Think about your clients, the challenges they’re facing and what they’re doing about those problems.

Show prospects the possibilities of what they could be doing to improve productivity, cut costs, or address that need you uncovered in your research.

Share one or two simple-to-implement ideas, as well as one or two more complex, suggestions. Base your ideas on how you’ve observed your clients address those matters in their organizations, or how they have implemented your solutions to change their businesses.

The executives you’re calling are so busy they haven’t had time to consider other possibilities. They’re surviving with the issues when they may not have to.

Help Them Examine Their Status Quo
By not pushing prospects into a change with your first call, you’re freeing them up to rethink their status quo. Your conversation of suggestions and possibilities allows them to take time out and think for a moment about what could be. Suddenly training the office manager may not be enough. They may want your recommendation on how they can protect their business during hurricane season, or secure their data, or better manage their whole IT infrastructure.

They won’t want to wait 3 or 6 months to talk again. They’ll want to pick your brain some more and consider ways to eliminate the issues they’ve been living with now that they know they don’t have to.

I know, you’re thinking that this sounds like a deeper conversation than you usually conduct in a cold call. And, you’re concerned that you interrupted the person. They’d never stay on the phone for this type of discussion.

It Works And Busy Prospects Will Talk To You
It works because you’ve grabbed your prospect’s attention and made them want to talk with you. After a conversation like this, they either want to schedule time for a deeper conversation, or they want to hear from you again sometime soon.

Elevate the quality of your conversations and before you know it, you’ll be getting busy prospects to talk to you on cold calls. Not only will your pipeline increase, but your relationship database of potential new prospects will be overflowing, too.

Nearly every weekday, a motivational quote is posted on X/Twitter by @ASWiDelivered and on LinkedIn by @ASWi.

• Platinum Rule: Do unto others as THEY would like done unto them.

• “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” Warren Buffett

• Don’t reinvent the flat tire; you’re not going to go anywhere.

• Making tough choices without real-time accurate info is like navigating a minefield blindfolded.

• “Knowledge transfer? False. Only words can be transferred, not knowledge.” Dwight Schrute (please do NOT believe Dwight, lol)