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 astute is designed and tailored to support the operational needs of your business. This is achieved by performing the business processes within astute, and readily providing the daily and strategic management information that is required for each process.
The business functions flow through astute, from marketing to the sales process, and onto purchasing and stock control. These functions are all intricately linked in every business, and astute is designed to reflect these links, making the system intuitive to work with, and always providing access to the information that users need to do their jobs as effectively as possible.
Information is key to business decision making at all levels and functions, so astute is designed to ensure that information is easily and simply available all the time.
This really is the time to be working smarter not harder, and astute is designed to help drive that process.
The following provides a brief overview of what astute offers and how it can be used within a business:
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Marketing
Every business spends time and effort on marketing its goods and services.
Tasks
- What tasks have been done
- Record who has talked to which customers
- Note what has been said, and to who
- Remember what needs to be followed up, and by who using follow up tasks
- Maintain records on a simple notes form
Customers
- Quickly add contacts when speaking to someone new
- Spend time concentrating on defined top targets
- Maintain notes in general and within sales orders
Marketing Materials
- What has been sent to which customers, and when was it sent
Lead Sources
- Maintain marketing sources
- Record marketing sources on enquiries, quotes and orders
Reporting
- What has been done, by who
- What needs doing, when, and by who
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Sales
The sales process is crucial to every business, and astute enables all of the sales stages to be managed together.
Sales Orders
- Record enquiries, quotes and orders
- Process to deliveries and invoices
- Request parts specifically for a sales order
- Link to Sage Accounts
- Copy a previous sales order
- Keep track of revisions within sales orders
- Project information management
- Multiple quote options
- Multi currency
- Use conversions on stock units
- Maintain communication notes for each sales activity
- Set follow up tasks
Customers
- Maintain address and contact details
- Maintain price lists, status, and market type analysis
- Data management tools
Reporting
- Sales and margins, results by period, trends, comparisons
- With so many different factors affecting sales performance, astute provides truly flexible reporting to find out what factors are behind the results - people, customers, markets, stock categories, lead sources, projects
- Daily activities, what needs doing, what can be done, who is tasked to do it
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Purchasing
Purchasing enables the business to order items from suppliers, and to maintain the suppliers' details.
Purchase Orders
- Raise orders for suppliers
- Use supplier part references or own part references on orders
- See how many are in stock, and on order, by item
- Copy a previous purchase order
- Create order from stock required report
- Update price changes back to stock records
- Specify delivery dates / addresses
- Easily select items
- Multi currency
- Use conversions on stock units
- Link to sales order if buying specifically for a customer
Suppliers
- Maintain address and contact details
- Data management tools
Reporting
- What is needed, when
- Who can supply those parts
- What are the current orders, quotes, deliveries for that part
- What parts are outstanding
- What has been purchased or delivered, by supplier, by part, by date
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Stock
There are many facets to stock, and it links to every process within a product based business.
Stock Details
- Record the information that is needed about each part
- Maintain stock categories
- Maintain stock units of measure
- Set minimum stock levels required
- Record size and weight information
- Link to suppliers and customers
- Data management tools
Suppliers
- Multiple suppliers for a part
- Suppliers part names
- Record the cost from each supplier, with price breaks
- Record prices in different currencies
- Separate carriage from the supplier's item price
Sales and Customers
- Multiple selling prices for a part
- Customer specific sales prices
Reporting
- Value stock including or excluding carriage
- View quantities in stock, allocated to sales order, and on order from suppliers
- Analyse by stock category, by part, by supplier
- What stock is selling
- Helping cash management
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Overall
How does all this information and process management benefit the business?
Administration
- Automating the processes saves time
- No duplication of information
- Less errors due to less duplication
Information
- Always available
- Detailed and summary information
- What works best?
- What can work better?
Internal Communications
- Everyone can see the same information
- Set tasks for specific people
- See stock levels whenever required
External Communications
- Easily find information during a phone call
- Send standardised information to customers and suppliers
- What has been sent to who
- See communications notes
Time
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