We are moving!

I have moved the Elms Blog to the the Elms Website.  All Future posts will be there.

New Release -Version 3.0

A release notification was sent out notifying customers and user of a new release of Elms Advantage Online. The release is scheduled for 2/1/2015.  

Included in this release was links to our new website and support center as well as the functionality included in this release.

New Look & Feel

We are happy to announce that the next release of Elms Advantage Online will be available in February.   This is a major release for Elms and includes the much awaited Customer Portal.

We have updated and deployed a new website in preparation for the new release of Elms.  This is an upgrade to the website as well as the Pricing structure that will accommodate the new version of Elms.

We are currently working on online demos and User's Guide.  Feel free to contact me if you would like your own personal demonstration and walk through.

Elms A Business Management Soluiton - Part 2

This is the 2nd part of a  series of blogs discussing the Elms Advantage Online Business Management System.   This blog discusses how Elms can be a key tool in your company's sales and marketing efforts. Click here to find the previous blog,  "Elms, A Business Management Solution - Part 1".

There is most definitely and art behind Salesmanship.  I have met a few who can sell the proverbial "ice cubes to Eskimos".  But,  it is the good systems and processes that control what you sell, the customers you attract and the process from initial contact to production.   The goal of Elms Advantage Online is to help you attract the leads that fit your market and sell jobs that are profitable.

Your marketing plan is a source for lead generation and is used to help define your target market.  Elms can help you analyze your marketing efforts and fine tune your plan.  Elms tracks the source of each lead.  Lead sources are custom to your company allowing you to filter your lead generation down to the finest levels.  Elms Enterprise reporting has a series of marketing and sales reports that will help you analyze where your leads are being generated and what what your customers are looking for.

Imagine running a report in Elms and realizing that 75% of your leads are looking for kitchen remodels or 90% of leads purchased from a third party that is expensive and  is only resulting in 2% of sales.  This information can help with decisions as to how to divide your marketing budget and attract the leads that result in new customers.

Marketing is also about branding.  Your colors, your logos and tag lines should recognizable and everywhere.  Elms will propagate your company's branding information on all customer facing output from the Elms System.  This includes reports, contracts, agreements, and especially our Customer Portal.

Much of the sales process is about persistence and follow up.  The Elms CRM tools help you qualify leads allowing you to prioritize your sales efforts.  Elms tracking dates, sales and appointment reminders (integrated with Google), sales aging reports, and stock customer documents and letters will help ensure that potential customers are not left wondering where you are.

The beauty lies in the fact that Elms is an integrated online system.  You have access from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.  The hand-off to design and estimating and even production is already built in and part of your Elms Advantage Online Business Management System.


Read part 1 of this article

Why a 2-Week Iteration?

If you know what a 2-Week iteration is ---- then you know why it is important to you.  Our development team working on Elms products and working against a 2-Week iteration schedule.  This means that we plan and endeavor to build and deploy updates to our software every two weeks.  These changes include small functional enhancements, bug fixes, and incremental work to larger initiatives.   You can view updates and receive updates automatically via our forums.

Larger initiative are likely to take longer than 2 weeks, and we usually plan for release these changes during our quarterly releases.  We maintain a product road-map that identifies our current plan for release updates.   The road-map is constantly review and will change pending customer feedback.   The following is our road-map for 2014:

2014-Q1:  Customer Portal  Manager with integration into Elms Advantage Online.
2014-Q3:  QuickBooks Online Integration and full Financial Analytic
2014-Q4:  Elms Advantage Mobile

This is important for you to know and understand that you have the opportunity to work with Elms and work to get those updates that are most important to you.  We invite you to contact us or express your needs on our forums.

Why use Elms Advantage Online?

Web-based Software:  Elms Advantage Online is a web-based software service.  There is no need to invest in costing IT hardware or constant software upgrades as new version are released.  You pay as you go and Elms will grow as you grow.  Elms is accessible anywhere there is an internet connection via any browser based device.  All your data and project information is at your fingertips no matter where your are.  This makes it easier to work with other people or customers and you always have access to the latest information.

Time Saver:  You spend all day working the sales pipeline or working the most important job and then you return home to find that you need to write up a new estimate, respond to emails, generate a change orders, or create a new contract.  Elms Advantage Online will help you significantly reduce the time for generating construction estimates and remodeing estimates.  Elms automatically creates profession customer specifications and contract agreements at the touch of a button allowing your more time with your family and friends.  Use Elms integration with QuickBooks to reduce the amount of data entry time required.

Ease of use:  Elms Advantage Online was built from the vision of a professional Design/Build Remodeing company and we have worked with hundreds of contractors over the years.  Our main emphasis is ease of use and configurability.  Configure Elms specific to your company as opposed to having to tailor your business to some software.  Online help, customer forum and content specific and give you access to to the information specific to your current task,

Configurability:  Each company does business a little differently than the one down the street.  Elms realizes the importance of making the software work for your business as opposed to you changing your business for the software you use.  All documents and agreements are configurable and can be extended to fully support your business.  Include verbiage and images specific to your company.  Elms Administration contains sections dedicated to configuring Elms for your company.

Affordable:  Elms Advantage Online is available in a single source pricing plan.  This plan states that all features and functions are available as a single cost affordable for the small independent contractor or the larger Design/Build remodeler.  Your company can use whatever features best fit your business at this time and slowly incorporate additional features as you grow  at no additional costs. You can immediately realize your return on investment from the time and cost savings achieved by using Elms Advantage Online.

Data Integrity:  You own your data and Elms Advantage Online will protect and ensure your data security.  Elms has tools that allow you to easily import and export  your company data.  This includes customers, vendors, jobs, and costbooks.  Elms supports importing of cost book data which can support the use of any 3rd party cost book vendor.

Grow your business:  Elms Advantage Online can help you grow your business.  The construction estimating module will help you understand your "true" costs of doing business.  "If you don't know your costs... you are going out of business... You just don't know it yet!"  You will increase profit by understanding the real costs of doing business.  Understand the effectiveness of your marketing, lead generation, and sales pipeline.  Increase the the amount of leads generated and convert more leads to customers using Elms Advantage Online.

Elms Advantage Price Guarantee:  Existing customer prices are locked in.    Price increases are part of  doing business when accounting for inflation and the increased cost of services.   Elms users do not have to worry about the increase in price as their current price per user is locked as long as they maintain an active service.  Elms software will continue to enhance and add functionality, but you can count on and budget for a fixed cost,  year in and year out.   Elms also provides multiple user rates in addition to the option of hosting the software yourself.  Please contact Elms directly for the latter options.

Elms, A Business Management Solution - Part 1

Elms Advantage Online is designed to help you develop and implement strong business systems for your company. You can clearly divide a remodeling business into the following categories:   Sales & Marketing, Estimating, Communications, Production and Finance.    Additional blog posts will follow showing how Elms participates in each of the previous defined categories.
Implementing strong business systems will help you standardize and assure you that all tasks are handled in a consistent and planned process. 

Elms Advantage Online provides you the framework to build and manage these business systems.  Elms customization features makes sure that you can implement your own custom business systems as opposed to dictating your processes.   One size does not fit all and you always have the functionality available if needed.  Our pricing strategy and product offering makes it easy to grow with your company

Read Part 2 - Sales & Marketing