ACCPAC releases Sales Optimizer

In a bid to increase competitive advantage for small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) by improving their sales planning, analysis and strategy development, ACCPAC has announced the release of a new business intelligence tool - ACCPAC Sales Optimizer.

"ACCPAC Sales Optimizer mines a company's transactional and customer data and creates visual snapshots of sales performance metrics that are the foundation for planning and ultimately seizing new business opportunities," says Jeremy Waterman, managing director of ACCPAC Africa.

"Using graphical 'dashboards' and other easy to manage graphical elements, Sales Optimizer clearly identifies sales successes and opportunities, provides trend analysis and critical sales analysis."

The tool identifies typically overlooked customer opportunities, such as cross-selling, order frequency, as well as growth potential for products and margins with existing customers. Sales Optimizer fully integrates with all editions of ACCPAC's Advantage Series and allows data to be exported to spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel.

"The ACCPAC Sales Optimizer 'dashboard' provides a two-year snapshot of sales performance," says Waterman. "It monitors total business activity, including customer, product and sales staff performance. In addition, the best customers, products and salespeople can be identified at a glance, measurable by revenue, units or margin."

ACCPAC Sales Optimizer uses graphs to visually identify trend information on all salespeople, products and customers. The software allows graphical analysis on any two categories of detail-for example, product mix within customer region.

ACCPAC Sales Optimizer also uses "traffic lighting", a visual analysis technique that automatically highlights good versus poor performance through a familiar traffic light colouring metaphor.

With ACCPAC Sales Optimizer, companies can sort disparate data side-by-side to quickly compare key sales figures. Data can be set to show customer purchase histories from best to worst, or vice versa. Future sales opportunities are highlighted instantly.

"For example, a ranked list of a company's top customers and top-selling products may show that the sixth top selling product has no sales to the top two customers, revealing an instant cross-selling opportunity," says Waterman.