During the Annual Partner Summit on May 16th in Minneapolis, MN, Exerve was recognized with the Partner Achievement Award – Top Partner 2017-2018 for the 3rd year in a row. We pride ourselves with the service we provide and we would not be able to achieve our goals without our fantastic clients.

​Thanks for another great year!

Route 2018 – Where are you headed?

There’s nothing quite like a road trip. I’m not talking about piling in your car at the last minute and hoping for a happy accident. I mean the road trips you plan: reviewing maps, looking for routes you’ve never taken, looking forward to experiencing local flavors.

People who don’t plan miss out on so much untapped potential.

Success in a road trip requires a good plan. A good plan examines the readiness of the vehicle:

Has the oil been changed? Is the air pressure in your tires good? Is the windshield clean?

Or how about this: Does your ignition work? Does that spark exist to ignite the engine?

Does your engine roar to life or does it clank and sputter as it listlessly idles?

At Exerve our mission is to equip you with the tools and solutions you need to ignite the engine of your business and keep it purring mile after mile. As we each set out on route 2018, we want to offer four things to help IGNITE your business for the road ahead:

Take Advantage of Cloud Technology

Speed. Your competitors are focused on it. You’re obsessed with it. Your customers rely on it.

Are you as fast as you can be? Speed is good, but only as good as your ability to be nimble.

Can you cut and change direction when the terrain changes?

Do you lag behind because you are reactionary or are you proactive?

​Are you able to anticipate your customer’s ever-changing needs?

Cloud technology isn’t an easy answer, but it is a useful tool to help establish and meet your goals. If you take advantage of it you’ll be able to adapt to technology that is cost efficient, has expanded storage, offers nimble backup and recovery potential, and allows you to respond to customer needs in real time.

Consider the transitive properties of SouthWare’s cloud technology and how it’s abilities can affect your business: universal remote access to deliver excellence to your clients, enhanced infrastructure security and reliability, and scalability to meet the needs of your business as you continue to grow.

Switch to Handheld Functionality for Inventory

You can only work faster if you’re working smarter. Fast work cuts corners. Smart work reduces them. By switching to handheld functionality as a solution to your inventory process, you take advantage of the old adage that “time is money.”

When we understand that time is a limited resource, we serve ourselves well and our clients better by adapting our business to new available processes rather than stubbornly sticking to processes designed back when Ford’s assembly line was a breathtaking innovation.

And if there’s difficulty in understanding time as a resource, you can at least understand that square footage is a limited resource. Handheld inventory functionality gives you more power to make wise decisions about dedicating space to products your customers depend on versus which ones they in the warehouse. Inventory information that’s mobile and at your fingertips on the floor speeds up your inventory lifecycle, provides you with up-to-date status on all pending items, and reduces error. SouthWare’s functionality can save you the aggravation.

Extend Your Business with E-Commerce

The future is online mobility. I do all my Christmas shopping on line. I deposit my checks with my phone. Last week I tried out a new app that delivered my groceries to me. I may never go to the grocery store again unless I want to kill time browsing the aisles. I relish the choices technology has made available.

As of 2017 e-commerce recognized $1.97T in revenue (yes, trillion with a capital T) and is forecasted to double that amount within the next three years. And that’s just domestic. As our customers get busier they’re going to demand e-commerce solutions to meet their needs and expectations.

Think of it this way: my teenage daughter’s favorite store is Amazon. When I ask if she wants to go to the mall, she rolls her eyes and asks, “Why bother?” We have an entire generation raised on the convenience and immediacy of e-commerce. If faced with your brick & mortar compared to competitor’s e-commerce solution, they may ask, “why bother?” Don’t deserve their shrug; deserve their loyalty.

Simplify Through Automation

There are repeatable tasks that you do each week, month, and year. Repeating these tasks can lead to mistakes. Because these tasks are repeatable and you depend on their accurate completion, seek automated solutions where possible. You can simplify your cloud management through process automation. Error-prone repeatable tasks can become a thing of the past when you seek the efficiency and reliability of automated solutions.

Connect and Improve Internal Communications

​You’re only as strong as your weakest link. If you are focusing on external communication but not addressing internal communication, you are not serving your customers well. Simplify your goals and announce them in plain language. Offer a vertical approach to achieve buy-in. Ask questions of your staff; you never know when they’ve observed a growth opportunity that you might miss.

As the story goes, George W. Jenkins was working for a small grocery chain when it was purchased by Piggly Wiggly. With ideas of how to run the stores efficiently, George drove from Florida to Atlanta to meet with the new owner. When George arrived the owner was too busy to meet with him because he was playing golf. George returned to Florida, quit his job, and opened up his own grocery store. That grocery store turned into Publix. Today they have 1,167 stores and are expanding. In 2016 they reportedly earned $34B in revenue. When was the last time you heard of Piggly Wiggly?

In 2018 an open-door policy is no longer relegated to the hinges. It’s an all-access policy. SouthWare offers real time solutions to build critical mass within your organization to effect positive change and deliver results that can be realized in 2018 and not just a promise to be realized in an ambiguous future.

The road ahead can get bumpy but as you move forward, you’re always getting closer to your destination. Exerve wants to help you get there. We are the experts in SouthWare which provides solutions in each of these areas. Contact us today to find a solution that fits your needs to see multiple facets of your business and to better navigate the needs of your clients. We want to help you achieve great heights in 2018 and look forward to partnering with you through out this year.

​Not knowing is no longer an excuse.

You have the option to track the GPS locations of mobile service techs.You must have activated the “Store GPS Tracking Data” option in the Tech Tracking configuration in order to use this feature.

You may access the tracking info for a tech via the GPS Tracking Tab of the Technician Manager portal.  The GPS Tracking Tab shows a map of all GPS positions recorded for a technician during a day.
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When you access the tab the map will show positions for the current date.  The route is sequenced by the time stamp for each GPS position record.  You may view history for other dates by changing the date field and pressing the Update button.  You may also enter select a Starting Time to include only positions from that time forward. You may click on any icon point on the route to see the time and address for that point.

This system allows your service technicians to record time events throughout the work day to account for time spent on service work, travel, meals, etc. The Time Tracking feature also provides:

• The ability to specify that multiple techs are working on the same service order so that time is recorded for all the related techs from a single portal
• The option to automatically generate service order line items to account for technician labor cost on each service order (see related feature description)
• The ability for management to review current and past time tracking data for each tech

The Service Order Close Portal creates a central point to see open service orders, review status, edit and close service order for billing.

​This is a great tool to stay on top of billable services and minimize time to cash for service billings.

The PO Planner Portal allows you to make PO buying decisions with integrated access to all the related info available in the system. You may review inventory items that need to be purchased and interactively edit the suggested quantities in the PO work file. As you work you see the estimated total cost amount for items purchased and you may zoom to the details of past purchases, sales trends, and other info to help you make good buying decisions. ​