Benefits of BI for Small & Medium Businesses

Business intelligence and analytics have long been pivotal tools for large corporations and financial firms, but these strategies are equally effective for small and Business Intelligencemedium-sized businesses. In the modern marketplace, business intelligence and analytics can give your retail enterprise a crucial edge up on your competitors.

iVend Analytics offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface that allows business owners to track customer trends and turn data into meaningful, actionable intelligence. With this software, you will be able to accelerate purchasing, more accurately manage pricing and promotion, and ultimately increase sales volume. Business intelligence tools provide an accurate, easy-to-read view of the costs, liabilities, and risks involved with your business. They make it easy to decipher customer purchase patterns. They simplify back-end procedures such as inventory and stocking. And, they help you decide when to kick off a promotional campaign, and with what products, based on your customer patterns.

iVend Analytics provides business intelligence in a user-friendly format. Dashboards cover various sectors of your retail enterprise, and these dashboards present vital information in an instantly readable, visual format so you don’t have to go searching for trends in haphazard data fields. An associative search function allows you to quickly and easily find the insight you need to make vital business decisions. The dashboard templates are customizable for category management, meaning you can put the data that matters most at your fingertips. Thus iVend Retail software is highly flexible, and can grow with your business.

A further benefit of the iVend analytics is that it functions seamlessly with other business tools in iVend Retail. Point of sale, customer Loyalty, eCommerce and Mobile solutions from iVend Retail all work in tandem with iVend Analytics. The business intelligence end of iVend Retail, iVend Analytics works to seamlessly integrate the other tools in iVend Retail, and indeed all aspects of your retail business enterprise, so that you can make better-informed business decisions.

The iVend retail suite covers all ends of the business, from customer relations at the register, to back-of-the-store functions, to head office procedures. The software is fast, secure, is SAP and PCI certified, can integrate with almost any ERP, and is powerful enough to handle large retailers with hundreds of stores. Whether you are a single store or a retail chain with an online component, iVend Retail can help you simplify the many complexities of running a retail business. Our software can help you optimize pricing, promotion, purchasing, and all facets of retail, in order to increase your bottom line.

As an example of the type of scenario iVend can help you with, consider a promotion designed to increase sales volume during the holiday season. How do you ensure that excess stock after the holiday season rush is not sold under the same clearance as during the holiday promotion? Business intelligence from iVend can help you plan ahead to not only decide how best to reach your market with efficient, targeted sales, but also how to manage those sales through the duration.

Business intelligence software can help you simplify and streamline all aspects of your business. The improved efficiency delivered by sound business intelligence can help your enterprise save money and increase net profit. iVend Analytics and the iVend Retail Suite are the superior choice in business intelligence, because the software boasts a harmonious blend of speed, security, and power, with a user-friendly interface. In order to be competitive in the modern marketplace, business intelligence software from iVend is an obvious choice for your business.

Payment Processors integrated with iVend Retail

We get a lots of mails from iVend partners, customers and prospects about recommendations on payment processors. This blog post is about all integrated payment processors that work with iVend Retail currently as on August 2011. We will keep increasing this list and keep adding new payment processors in future. If you want your payment processor to be integrated with iVend Retail, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post or send me an email.

iVend’s Shop and Swipe feature allows cashier’s to complete transactions without the need of clicking any button at the POS. The feature makes the POS operation ‘click-free’ as the cashier just swipes the card after scanning all the items. The feature also removes the need of swiping the card once at EFT machine and then again at the POS for recording the payment details. In constant endurance to provide the hassle free billing at the POS, iVend Retail is integrated with many popular payment processors for different countries. That’s not all; all this comes with the highest standards of security practices recommended by the PCI council.

The following diagram depicts the scenario at the POS

iVend Retail credit card feature

 

Following are payment processors that are integrated with iVend:

S No. Processor Region
1 Authorize.Net (Both card present and card not present scenario US
2 Commidea UK
3 CyberBit UK
4 DataCash UK
5 EWay Australia
6 Ogone Europe
7 Protox UK
8 SecurePay UK
9 Verisign / Paypal/ Pay Flow Pro(Both card present and card not present scenario) US
10 Moneris US/Canada
11 DPS Australia
12 PC-EFTPOS Australia
13 Caledon Canada
14 Heartland (Certification Pending) US
15 Plutus India

 

 

 

The skinny on PCI Compliance

Here is what you need to know about the new PCI compliance standard when choosing a solution partner:
First, see below definitions to know what we’re talking about (like we need more acronyms in this business right?)
PCI = Payment Card Industry
PA = Payment Application
DSS = Data Security Standard

These standards were actually created by the various payment card providers like Visa, MasterCard and American Express. PCI casts a very broad net; it includes the card providers, gateways, merchants, banks and applications. PA is any software or hardware solution that passes or reads/stores sensitive data. DSS is the standard the hardware and software solution providers must write their code and encryption levels to.
For us selling and purchasing solutions that store or transmit sensitive data, when a customer asks if your solution have PCI Compliance, they mean is your solution PADSS Certified? Only a Payment Application (PA) that is Data Security Standard (DSS) certified can be compliant. This certification can only be earned after engaging a qualified firm and passing a stringent audit process. Many end users are not even considering a solution that is not certified.
The reason is that for a business to be PCI compliant – using PADSS certified solutions is only a piece of the compliance pie – but a very necessary piece. Network firewalls, database encryption, updated antivirus software and passing security scans (for eCommerce) are some other qualifications.
CitiXsys solutions; iCharge and iVend are PADSS certified and become a valuable part of the PCI compliant path for end users. So next time a customer asks if your solution is PCI compliant you can confidently say “yes we are a certified application”.
Happy Selling-

Upgrade to iCharge 10.0 – An SAP Certified and PCI Validated Solution

iCharge 10.0 is an enhanced, upgraded version of CitiXsys Credit Card solution.

iCharge – Credit Card Application is the complete credit card processing SAP certified application. iCharge processes credit card information between sales transaction in SAP Business One and payment processor service that obtains authorization information needed to approve the transaction. For all sales transactions generated in SAP, iChargeauthorizes and settles payment in real time and integrates them back into SAP.

iCharge 10.0 is an SAP Certified and a PCI Validated Solution which is currently available as a Beta release and will be available as GA (General Availability) from 16th Dec 2010

Please get in touch with your local reseller or directly with CitiXsys to schedule an upgrade

Why Upgrade

  • Synchronized processing between Credit Card Gateway and Document Posting in SAP Business One
    Do you face situations where the document that was posted successfully in SAP and the credit card authorization/settlement failed? Or let’s or say, the authorization/settlement of credit card was done successfully and the document did not post in SAP? With iCharge 10.0 you can now keep your payment gateway and the SAP completely synchronized.
  • Draw multiple base documents while Authorization / Settlement of Credit Cards
    Do you want to create one invoice for multiple deliveries for a customer? Do you want to create one delivery for multiple sales orders?With iCharge 10.0 you can now draw multiple base documents for creating a single target document.
  • Void Authorized transactions
    With iCharge 10.0 now you need not to go to Payment gateway and void the payment manually. Voiding the authorized transaction is just a click away with iCharge 10.0
  • Support for SAP Business One Approval Procedures
    Does your business process require the document to pass through many approval stages?With iCharge 10.0 you can now have sales orders, deliveries and invoices go through SAP Business One configured approval processes.

What’s New?
To read more about What’s New, please click here for a detailed comparison between the two versions of iCharge.

iVend Retail gets Commidea payment processor certification in United Kingdom

London, October 18, 2010: iVend Retail, a complete Retail Management Solution from CitiXsys Technologies gets Commidea payment processor certification in UK for Ocius for PC.

CitiXsys Technologies got iVend certified for Commidea’s Ocius for PC solution – the leading credit card processing solution in the market today.
iVend is seamlessly integrated with the latest version of SAP Business One 8.8. With this certification, CitiXsys reiterates its commitment to the UK market and its partners in UK & EMEA to reap business benefits from robust and intuitive applications.

“The certification process was done on-site which involved executing a set of test scripts. We were able to execute the test scripts flawlessly. iVend now has certified integration with Commidea payment processor in UK for Ocius for PC. We congratulate the iVend team and CitiXsys Technologies to have achieved this certification.” says Michael Dunkling – Implementations Consultant, Commidea Ltd.

“Commidea certification has been eagerly awaited by our Customers and Partners in UK & EMEA. I feel happy and proud that this certification will help our customers carry out credit card transactions with ease. This certification will also benefit our partners to confidently position iVend Retail in UK&EMEA” says Abinesh Agarwal – Product Manager iVend, CitiXsys Technologies

[Read more…]

iCharge 10.0 Why Should You Upgrade?

CitiXsys iCharge 10.0 is an enhanced, upgraded version of CitiXsys Credit Card solution. iCharge has a lot of new features which have been incorporated keeping the various business scenarios in mind. Some of the features which make for a compelling reason to upgrade to iCharge 10 are mentioned below

Why Upgrade

  • Synchronized processing between Credit Card Gateway and Document Posting in SAP Business One

Do you face situations where the document that was posted successfully in SAP Business One and the credit card authorization/settlement failed? Or let’s or say, the authorization/settlement of credit card was done successfully and the document did not post in SAP Business One?

With iCharge you can now keep your payment gateway and the SAP Business One completely synchronized.

  • Draw multiple base documents while Authorization / Settlement of Credit Cards

Do you want to create one invoice for multiple deliveries for a customer? Do you want to create one delivery for multiple sales orders? With iCharge you can now draw multiple base documents for creating a single target document.

  • Void Authorized transactions

With iCharge now you need not to go to Payment gateway and void the payment manually. Voiding the authorized transaction is just a click away with iCharge.

Does your business process require the document topassthrough many approval stages? With iCharge you can now have sales orders, deliveries and invoices go through SAP Business One configured approval processes.

What’s New?

Mentioned below is a detailed comparison between the two versions of iCharge.

[Read more…]