Essent^® Software Enhancements for 2021

Microsoft Power BI Data Visualization

In addition to hundreds of reports and thousands of datapoints provided by the Essent Commerce Engine, EssentOne also offers integration with the Microsoft Power Business Intelligence (Power BI) business analytics service. Power BI provides self-service analytics, including data visualization, tight integration with Excel, and diligent encryption and security, making it one of the fastest growing business intelligence clouds worldwide. And it’s available from Essent, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner since 1994, through the EssentOne business management system. New Power BI views recently added to EssentOne show information on sales commission, services, and charges.

OrderTrax, PromoStandards, and Trading Partner Integration

Using the EssentOne OrderTrax Connector, suppliers can make Inventory Availability information available to buyers at the moment the buyers are purchasing and even as the buyers are adding products to their orders. Recent releases from Essent have enhanced the integration between EssentOne and OrderTrax to make more information available inside the business management system. The enhancements also lay the groundwork to make more integration endpoints available within EssentOne. The Essent OrderTrax Network represents the most efficient path to trading partner integration, using the PromoStandards protocol or other public and proprietary protocols. Infomration can be communicated automatically and in real-time among suppliers, distributors and decorators. The result is significantly more efficient transactions as the manual phone calls and emails that were historically used to communicate business information now are automated. EssentOne takes the integration a step further, making integrated information available within the business management system.

Commerce Connector

Essent provides native integration between various facets of business management including Ecommerce, Catalogs, Sales, Purchasing, Inventory Control, Fulfillment, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger, Accounts Payable, and more. The result is friction-free information that flows freely through the transaction lifecycle, eliminating the need for data re-entry, reducing mistakes, and creating more efficient business. For these reasons, Essent is often the only platform that a company needs to manage almost all facets of its business. However, for situations when companies are required to use systems other than Essent, such as legacy platforms, Essent offers the Essent Commerce Connector. The Commerce Connector is an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows other platforms to become integrated with Essent so that data from Essent platforms can flow to the other platforms, and vice versa. Several enhancements to the Commerce Connector are included in recent Essent releases, enabling Essent platforms to integrate even more information with other platforms.

Employment Demographics for Enhanced CRM

The EssentOne business management system provides integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which supports a robust accounting of Customer details and the ability for Customer information to automatically populate sales orders, other areas of the system, and even other systems. Some EssentOne users, especially users who provide company stores, have a very large number of Contacts within their Customers and asked for even more ways to track those Contacts. For example, a user who provides job uniforms through a company store may have a Customer who is a large employer. And within that large employer Customer, there could be thousands of Contacts, all of whom are buyers with information that needs to be tracked. EssentOne now makes it easier to manage Contacts in these situations and in general. The new Contact Demographic Panel allows you to assign new attributes to contacts. These include business unit, employment status, job classification and gender. The attributes can be found and defined in the Employment Demographics Panel in the Contact record.

CRM Connector

The Essent CRM Connector is an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows companies to leverage the robust Customer Relationship Management and Sales data within EssentOne. Customer information, opportunities, quotes, presentations, sales orders, returns, and almost any information available in the EssentOne Sales area can be leveraged through the API to integrate with other systems, such as marketing systems and other sales components. Several enhancements to the CRM Connector are included in recent Essent releases, enabling Essent platforms to integrate even more information with other platforms.

Cost Center and Advanced Corporate Program Management

The EssentOne business management system provides Advanced Corporate Program Management that enables users to serve enterprise customers with advanced functionality. This includes company stores, where a corporate customer can have its employees buy uniforms, supplies, or other work items specifically from an Essent SiteBuilder website; PunchOut eprocurement integration where a buyer’s spend management system like Ariba or Oracle is integrated directly with an Essent SiteBuilder website; and Fulfillment and Inventory modules for enterprise management of stock, picking, packing, and shipping for corporate clients. When a company is asked to meet the requirements of a corporate RFP, it can usually check most of the boxes by using Essent technology. Advanced Corporate Program Management also includes integrated Accounting with Cost Centers, where a corporate customer can allocate a budget to its employees for purchases from the company store. It’s like an accounting system within an accounting system to track spend by the corporate customer, and it’s fully integrated with Customer Relationship Management to provide a comprehensive view of the customer account. The latest Essent releases enhance the Cost Centers with a new budget status report that’s available in EssentOne and the Essent Customer Portal.

Enhanced Accounts Payable

EssentOne includes a fully integrated Accounting engine that automatically performs many accounting operations, including job costing, commission calculation, invoicing, and more, simply as a result of processing orders. Include is the Accounts Payable engine, which handles Payment Vouchers, Linked Vouchers, Consigned Payments, Scheduled Liabilities, Rebate Processing, Commission Processing, and more. The latest releases of the Essent platform include enhancements for Accounts Payable, including the option to print multiple checks at once instead of one by one.