Support: Procedural Questions

What are the most common procedures I can utilize to help me as a reseller?

The Accounting Library can be used in a number of ways depending on where you are in the sales cycle.

If the prospect has not yet talked to other resellers, you can pitch the whole concept of Business Excellence. If the prospect buys into this concept and starts to utilize you in a consulting capacity, you would follow the procedures outlined in both the Sales and Marketing Manual as well as the first of the two user manuals. In this case you start with a high-level analysis, identifying the user's pain points and business imperatives. Depending on how you want to manage the consulting process, you can create a needs definition in the Accounting Library and prove the fit with the product you resell. Alternately you can follow your normal consulting methodology and create a needs definition as an integral part of pre-implementation planning. Since the client is working with you on an exclusive basis, there is no need to compare your product against other candidates.
If the prospect has already made contact with other resellers and it is not possible to sell Business Excellence in its entirety, you could use one or more of the product comparison reports to highlight your products strengths against your competition's weaknesses. Once the prospect has selected your product, you should at that point create a needs definition file as a pre-implementation task.
If the prospect has already talked to other resellers, you could use your knowledge of the prospect's functional requirements to create a pro-forma needs definition and compare that against both your product and the known competition. If your product finishes first in the analysis, you can show that information to your prospect to further strengthen your message. If your product does not finish first, you can use the information in the various needs analysis reports to identify your products strengths and weaknesses and sell your product more effectively.
Over time you could create pro-forma needs definitions for typical organizations in various industries and use them to either demonstrate your products strengths or you could actually use the needs definition to help your clients define their own requirements.

Other than Yes or No, what other responses are listed in the various reports supported by The Accounting Library?

The Accounting Library supports eight different responses.

Y: The feature is supported out-of-the-box.
N: The product cannot meet this requirement. Although virtually all products cam be modified to meet every user requirements, we have elected to force a "No" response if we feel the cost of such modifications would be too costly for the typical user organization.
T: This feature is available in a Third Party product.
R: This report can only be generated using a report writer (either internal or Third Party).
A: This information can be tracked only if a field is added to the program.
F: This feature will be added to the program in less than 12 months.
C: This feature can only be met via customization. Customization implies fairly easy product modification (Some product even support a Customization Manager).
M: This feature can only be met via modification. Modification implies heavy code work that can become quite complex and therefore expensive.

If The Accounting Library supports various vendor responses, how does the program take these into consideration when ranking products?

The Accounting Library recognizes that all products are not identical. In order to compare "apples to apples" the program uses the concept of discounts to differentiate various vendor responses. Once a needs definition has been created, but before the ranking process is launched, users can instruct the program how each vendor response should be interpreted. In this case a Yes response receives 100% credit for ranking purposes. A No response receives no credit (100% discount). All other responses can receive anything from 0% to 100% credit depending on how the user wants the information interpreted. Select Options | Discounts to access the Discounts screen. For each response type you would specify a discount value starting at 0% for for no discount and 100% for no credit at all.

If you are a reseller working with a prospect or client, you need to be aware of this discount mechanism and adjust it to suit your requirements. If your objective is to prove the fit with the product you represent, you may want to give full credit to all responses. If you are competing against other products and you know your product is more powerful out-of-the-box, you may want to either use the default discounts or create a discount structure of your own.

Compare several products side-by-side, listing all questions.

If you are in a competitive situation where your prospect has already talked to other resellers, you could generate a report that includes all questions in our database as well as selected products. This is basically a data dump that you can use for review purposes, either in support of an actual situation or to maintain your knowledge of how well your product compares against your competition.

Select Reports | Product Report | Questions Only. The program will display a list of all products in the database. In the Select column indicate which products should be included in the report by toggling the No to a Yes. This report is formatted in Portrait mode only and will place five products at a time in the report. If you select more than five products the next group of products will be placed below all of the data for the first five products. Our recommendation is to create one report at a time with five products. Once the reports have been created, you can copy and paste each report into Excel where you can display as many products as required.

Compare one product against another product, highlighting the strengths of one product against the weaknesses of a second product.

This report is limited to just two products: the product you represent and the product against which you want to make the comparison. In this case the report highlights the strengths of the first product (the Base Product) against the weaknesses of the second product (the Target Product). The program will extract only those features for the Base Product that are Yes and where the response for the Target Product is anything but Yes. While your primary objective may be to highlight your products strengths against a competing products weaknesses, you should also be aware of the opposite; your products weaknesses against your competition's strengths.

Select Report | Product Report | Comparative. Select the Base Product first. Then select the Target Product. Finally identify the weaknesses you want to highlight. As an example you may want to concentrate only on those features where your competition's response is either M (Modification) or C (customization). In this case you would check both the M and C boxes at the bottom of the selection screen.

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Typical procedure for creating a needs definition and ranking products.

Although I would certainly encourage you to read through the detailed program documentation, this section lists the most common menu options you would select as you are moving through a typical need definition and analysis.

Select File | New to create a Question Set (a term used to describe your Needs Definition). You cannot specify your needs until a Question Set has been created from scratch or imported (from a client most likely).
When you select File | New you must specify the name of the Questions Set. In addition you can add an optional description for this Question Set. The description can keep track of various versions of a Question Set.
If you are a reseller or consultant working with a client, you can install the program on your client's desktop and let them create the Question Set themselves. This will save you a lot of time because you will not have to sit with them as they define their requirements. We have also provided you with a demo of the program if you do not want to install a program on your client's desktop that contains any product data.
If you are installing a demo, please remember that there are two different versions of the program: Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition, as well as two different demos that correspond to each live database.
To export a Questions Set (say from a client's desktop) complete the Question Set, save it, and then select File | Close to close it. Then select Master | Create DB for Consulting User | Export. Select the Question Set you wish to export, specify the path, and if required change the file name. Please do not change the file type (.mdb). A consultant does not have to be present for this process. The file can be exported and then sent as an e-mail attachment.
There is a small error in the program that requires that all import and export processes operate through a diskette drive. When exporting a file, specify the diskette drive. If you want to e-mail the file, copy the resulting file to your hard drive where is can be attached to an e-mail document.
If you receive an e-mail with a Needs Definition file as an attachment, copy that file to a diskette and then import the file from the diskette.
To import a Question Set make sure no other Question Sets are open and then select Master | Create DB for Consulting User | Import. Point to the file you wish to import and then either double-click on the file or select the file and then select Open. The program will import the file automatically.
If you have already defined and saved a Question Set, select File | Open to retrieve it.
Highlight the first module you would like to include in your Needs Definition and click the left mouse button or press the ENTER key. If you want to close a module or subsection, double-click the mouse or place the cursor on it and press ENTER.
Open the appropriate subsection using the same technique. As an example you would click on General Ledger to open that module. General Ledger is divided into five subsections (Chart of Accounts, Transaction Processing, Month and Year-End Closing, Control Reports, and Financial Statements. Once you click on General Ledger to open it, you can use the cursor key to move the cursor to Chart of Accounts. When the cursor is on Chart of Accounts (or any subsection), the questions that need to be answered are displayed on the right hand side of the screen.
Move the cursor to the detailed work area on the upper right of the screen by pressing the TAB key. Alternately you can click on the first question or any question on the right.
You need to be a little careful when navigating on the left hand side of the screen. The cursor must be on a subsection to gain access to the questions on the right. If you click on a subsection name, the detailed questions on the right will be displayed and they will also be displayed immediately below the subsection name on the left. If you click on one of the detailed questions on the left or more the cursor to one of these questions on the left, the form on the right hand side of the screen will disappear. Just make sure the cursor is always on a subsection name on the left.
Actually you can move back and forth from left to right and back by using the Tab to move left and right, the cursor to move up and down, and the Enter key to open or close each module.
For every feature, function, and report you would like to include in your Needs Definition, input a value from 1 to 9 with 9 representing critical requirements. If you have no interest in a feature or report, leave the question blank.
Utilize the value of 9 sparingly, as you might eliminate all products from your analysis. In order to prevent this from happening input a value of 8 to represent your critical needs. These missing requirements can be identified and reviewed later with the vendor and/or reseller by printing Reports | Rank Products | Questions | Features Absent. In order to view only values of 8 or above that are missing, you will have to set the filter for this report to that value (See Options | Filter below).
Select File | Save to save your Question Set before running the analysis. Actually I would suggest that you save your work after the questions in each subsection have been answered.
Select File | Save As to save the Question Set under a different name.
The last group of questions is Numerical. These are not functional questions but rather are used to specify minimum values for certain key fields in the system. As an example you can specify that your Chart of Accounts must contain at least 25 characters. Please be extremely careful when specifying Numerical requirements. These questions are Pass/Fail and operate exactly like a value of 9. It is possible that you could eliminate a product in the analysis simply because it failed one of these questions, but in all other respects was an extremely good fit.
Rather than including Numerical requirements in your functional needs definition, we suggest that you create a separate Question Set that contains only your Numerical requirements. Once the basic analysis has been completed and you have identified several products of interest from a functional perspective, you can examine how well these products fit your Numerical requirements. There are two ways to approach this analysis. You could run the Ranking Report to see if any products in which you have an interest have been eliminated, or you can open the Question Set containing your Numerical requirements and select Reports | List Questions. Normally this report is designed to help you verify your needs definition, but you do have the option of comparing your needs against selected products. Since this is a comparative report, no products will be eliminated, but you will be able to see if any of the products in which you have an interest may have a problem with respect to your Numerical requirements.
Print Reports | List Questions to verify your Needs Definition. As indicated above, this report can also be used to compare your requirements against selected products without having to go through the ranking process. There are several ways this report can be formatted and all of those variations can be specified by selecting the Options button in the lower right hand side of the selection screen. Although the default is to display all questions (even the ones you have not answered), you can display only the questions you have answered, only the questions you have answered from particular modules, all questions from particular modules, or only the questions with a critical value of 9.
Select Options | Discounts to assign discounts for those product features which cannot be met by the core accounting applications. The Accounting Library gives vendors the ability to respond not just Yes/No but also to indicate how a specific requirement can be met. Vendors can respond
- Yes: the feature in is the core applications,
- No: there is no practical way the requirement can be met,
- T: the feature is contained in a Third Party Product,
- R: the information can be displayed using a Report Writer,
- A: the information can be tracked but only if a field is added to the database,
- F: the feature will be added within 12 months,
- M: the requirement can be met only if the product is heavily modified, or
- C: the requirement can be met with minor product changes.
Since these responses are not as good as if the product already contained the feature, users can discount a vendor's response by anything up to 100%.
Select Options | Vendors to create and select Vendor Groups for analysis (optional). Rather than analyzing every product in the database, you can define and select specific product groups that will be defined. Select Options | Vendors | Vendor Groups | Create Group to define a group of products. The system will display every product in the database and you can select the products you want to include in your group and then give this group a name. Select Options | Vendors | Vendor Groups | Select Group to select a group of products you want to analyze. Select Options | Vendors | Vendor Groups | Delete Group to delete an existing group. Once you have selected a Vendor Group, that group will become the default group unless you exist the program or select Options | Vendors | Temporary Group. The default Temporary Group is all products so you can select this option to reset the program so that it analyzes all products. If you exit the program, but still wish to analyze only a specified group of products, you will have to either define and select this group, or select an existing group.
Select Options | Filter to define the weights for including features in the Features Absent and Features Present reports. These reports are used to focus your attention only on your most important requirements. In this case you will specify as an example that you want to display only those questions with a value of 6 or higher.
Select Options | Ranking to define a price ceiling to eliminate those products that cost more than you have budgeted. Most vendors are reluctant to provide pricing information so this feature may not function as intended.
Print Reports | Rank Products | Ranking to initiate the analysis and determine the basic product rankings. If any products have been eliminated because they did not meet one or more critical requirements, they will be displayed at the bottom of the ranking report with the designation "Eliminated".
Products are ranked according to the total weighted score that is calculated for each product. The Ranking, Module, and Subsection reports also display a percentage of needs met and this value may be easier to interpret.
If the Ranking Report indicates that one or more products have been eliminated, you can determine why these products were eliminated by selecting Reports | Rank Products | Eliminated. The screen will display the names of the products that have been eliminated. Select the products that you want to include in this report.
Return to Step 9 to adjust your Needs Definition if you feel some requirements should not have been assigned critical status (9).
Since the program supports an unlimited number of Needs Definition files, you can also change your responses and practice sensitivity analysis without losing your original needs definition values.
Print Reports | Rank Products | Module to examine how well each product met your needs for each module. This report helps you to learn more about specified products and their relative strengths and weaknesses at a module level. If a product did well in the overall analysis, but one or more modules seem to be weaker than other products or weaker than your comfort level, you can use this report to identify these modules, and then use the Questions report (Full Report, Features Present, or Features Absent) to examine these modules in more detail. The system will display a list of products in the same order as the Ranking Report (top to bottom). Select the products you want to include in this report and then select OK. If you select more than five products, the information will be displayed in groups of five products with subsequent groups displayed below. This is due of course to the restrictions of presenting information in landscape mode.
Print Reports | Rank Products | Subsection to examine a products relative strengths and weaknesses at a Subsection level. This is essentially the same report as the Module report, but here the analysis has been carried one level deeper. The objective is the same and that is to identify products that may have a problem meeting your needs or those of a client and to point you in the right direction as to what detailed information you need to examine. If you select more than five products, the information will be displayed in groups of five products with subsequent groups displayed below.
Print Reports | Rank Products | Questions | Full Report for those products in which you have an initial interest to examine strengths and weaknesses on a feature by feature basis. If you select more than five products, the information will be displayed in groups of five products with subsequent groups displayed below. At this point you may want to review this information with a vendor or reseller to make sure that they cannot in fact meet these requirements. Since the overall objective is to reduce the number of products that move forward into the demo phase of the selection project, you can eliminate any products in which you or your client no longer have an active interest.
Print Reports | Rank Product | Questions | Features Absent for each product in which you continue to have an interest. Rather than presenting every requirement that you have defined, this report will concentrate only on those features for which you have assigned a specific value (and above). As an example if you assigned a value of 7 or above to specific requirements, and the vendor's response to the question was "No", that requirement will be displayed in this report. If you select more than five products, the information will be displayed in groups of five products with subsequent groups displayed below. Discuss these missing features with vendors and/or resellers. Eliminate any products in which you or your client no longer have an active interest.
Return to Step 9, adjust your Needs Definition, and run the analysis again until you are satisfied that you have identified the products you want to investigate further.

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