Category: Blogs

Awards Management Software

If you are looking for the perfect software solutions for business for your company, we recommend you start by finding the perfect on site software to help consolidate your files and help your business run more smoothly. OnSite software was created with several industries in mind, and one of those industries is the award business. Here are a few features that make OnSite 7 the best software for award companies.

• Our software gives you the option of selling kitted items, such as trophies that have interchangeable items and plaques, or individual items that are completely finished and personalized beforehand in your factory. By diversifying your products and keeping all of your information on orders and products in one easy, consolidated location, you automatically diversify your audience and broaden your customer base.

• One of the main goals of the software is to allow you more flexibility in tracking and monitoring orders. This means you can see jobs that are being processed based on the individual machine that is completing the job, the department that is working on it or other factors. With more options, the control is completely in your hands, and you can focus on streamlining your business and better pinpoint problem areas.

• Instead of having to send documents that go with an order separately through emails, ShopWorks allows you to attach them directly to work orders and other transactions, helping you keep all of your information together and stream line your business. By cutting down on paperwork and keeping everything together, less information is lost and fewer mistakes are made.

Choosing T-Shirt Shop Software

When you’re looking for software solutions for business, you have many choices to make. Each type of software for business management offers benefits that may or may not help you. You need software for your t-shirt shop that is the right price and which will fulfill all your needs. Therefore, you need to be very selective as to what packages you consider. Keep these t-shirt business tips in mind as you go:

1. Always consider your budget first. Don’t consider software packages that would cause the company financial distress. There are many different types of management software options out there. It’s likely that, with some looking, you can find a package that meets your needs which also fits your budget.

2. Make sure the employees are trained in the new t-shirt printing software. If you do not give employees full access to the software, or fully train them to use it, they are wasting company time. You have to be able to take full advantage of the software to streamline the production, management, and customer service processes inside of your organization.

3. Look at the ROI of the software. When you implement a new software and the training that comes with it, you invest time and money into it. You ideally want to start seeing a return on that investment within a year of its implementation. If a software you review does not have a good ROI, it might not be the best type to use.

4. Always consider partnering with a vendor to implement the software changes. This ensures that it is installed correctly, employees get trained correctly, and your company implements the software correctly.

Click to view our Screen Printing Tips.

How to Grow Your Business

In our last blog, we gave you several tips for easily expanding your business. If you’ve already invested in apparel software, you currently reward customer referrals and you are able to delegate efficiently, here are a few more tips that you may be interested in.

• Look for ways that you can expand into new markets. If you currently only market to customers in the US, try to expand to another country, such as China or the UK. If you already have an international client base, look for ways to reach a new segment of the population.

• Develop new products. For instance, if you sell custom short-sleeved t-shirts, it would be relatively easy to add long-sleeved t-shirts or polo’s to your product list.

• Automate as much of the business process as possible. This helps free up your time to focus on more important tasks and also ensures that things run consistently and smoothly. Machines aren’t subject to making the same silly errors that humans are, so they are often a better option for conducting repetitive business tasks.

Learn about Three Easy Ways to Grow an Apparel Business.

How Software Improves Business Efficiency

Among the many different aspects of your company that business software can improve is the overall efficiency. How it does this is actually very simple.

By eliminating the number of steps involved in getting simple and complex tasks completed and by removing links in the chain of people that need to see and approve documents at different steps in the work process, things get done more quickly and with fewer errors. Business software not only consolidates documents and information so your archives are smaller and in one place, but it also consolidates the processes through which your employees complete their work. Through consolidation, there is less room for error, and time is saved.

Once time is saved, you and your employees can either move on to another similar task, quickly, or begin tackling more complex tasks that would otherwise have been pushed to the back burner. In the end, your business runs more smoothly and efficiency is improved.

One of the options for purchasing and using ShopWorks software solutions for business is to host your Apparel ERP or print estimating software onsite. To do this, you must be able to support a large operating system in-house, meaning you need the IT staff to maintain it and the physical hardware to allow it to run.

Here are some of the basic hardware requirements necessary to support ShopWorks’ OnSite software:

1. Workstation Operating System Requirements: Your computers must have an upgraded operating system that can support ShopWorks. Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) are no longer supported. Operating systems that are supported include Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 Pro, Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 7 Ultimate, Professional, and Home Premium, OS X Mavericks v10.9, OS X Mountain Lion v10.8 and OS X Lion v10.7. The system may also work with more current systems that are certified by FileMaker Inc.

2. Workstation Hardware Requirements: Windows machines must have CPU Intel Pentium 4 / AMD Athlon 64 or newer with at least one GB of RAM. Two GB is recommended. Mac machines must have CPU 64-bit Intel-based Mac with 2 GB of ram, while 4 GB are recommended.

3. Server Operating Systems: The requirements here are similar to the Workstation Operating System Requirements, and do not include OS X Lion. The software is supported on Windows 8 Pro, Windows Server 2012 Standard Edition, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, OS X Mavericks v10.9x, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS X Mountain Lion Server v10.8.5.
4. Server Hardware Requirements: The minimum requirements are a dual core, 4 GB and 80 GB or more on a hard drive, with a minimum of 10 GB free space; a 4-core, 8 GB system is recommended.

Dakota Collectible is the largest supplier of stock designs for the embroidery industry in the world and is one of the partner companies available for OnSite 7 Integration with ShopWorks. If you are in the embroidery industry, you can search and access the Dakota Collectibles Online Catalogue, straight from your OnSite 7 system, and buy designs and items directly from your own software. This takes the hassle of extra searching and purchasing out of finding stock designs and makes growing your company that much easier.

The company was established in 1988 and focuses on developing and offering superior quality stock designs and the best customer service in the industry. Dakota Collectible stock embroidery designs are unique and wide-ranging and include rhinestone transfers and collections of similar designs. Once you integrate the Dakota Embroidery Collection into your OnSite system, you can order and receive your designs quickly, and expand your inventory, without having to put added strain on your designers.

The designs are organized by type and category, including Garden, Holiday, Horse and Western, Nautical, Children’s, Christmas, Appliqué, Religious, Scenic, Occupational, Southwest, Sports, Wildlife, World Cultures, and more. You can integrate this feature into your system without any additional cost or service fees, meaning expanding your business and inventory has never been so easy.

We here at ShopWorks focus on offering greater efficiency and control over your business and your business processes, by using the fewest number of systems possible, which is why we have chosen to partner with other reputable companies with similar goals to ours. Contact us today.

Business Growth Tips

If your business is run efficiently and you are happy with how things are going so far, you may want to consider making a few minor adjustments to grow your business. Here are some of our top tips for easily expanding your business.

• If you don’t already have a reliable, industry-specific apparel software to help with the management of your business, you may want to invest in one. Software helps consolidate your business and can help facilitate a more efficient flow of information.

• Turn your customers into salespersons by rewarding customer referrals. You don’t have to give huge rewards; a discount on new products or company credit will suffice, and you will more than make it up in the new sales.

• Don’t try to do everything yourself. By learning how to delegate tasks, you free your time up to devote to more important tasks, and you use your workforce to its fullest potential. Everyone is more efficient when delegating is used properly.

Now that you know our business growth tips, learn How to Spark Innovation Within Your Company.

How to Open a Screen Printing Business

Commercial screen printing businesses, like most other companies, have a lot of moving parts. There is the screen printing equipment, the many employees working various machines, processing jobs, shipping, answering phones and other tasks, your managers, and least but perhaps most importantly, your software solutions for business. Here are some simple steps about how to start a screen printing business or expanding your promotional product or apparel company into the screen printing industry:

1. Research the industry and receive screen-printing training. You must be proficient on all of the machines that your new company will require if you are to be successful. You also need to be able to help employees when they run into issues or to troubleshoot machines when they break or stop working.
2. Look for used or new screen printing equipment. There are many vendors available online, and friends in the industry may also have extra equipment or machines that they are willing to sell at a discounted price.
3. Make sure you have the space to house the equipment and run your business on a long term basis.
4. Finally, find business software that is capable of supporting your business and can meet its needs specifically. Screen printing software will differ slightly from store-owner software and software solutions for other industries, so make sure that you investigate its capabilities and functions before making your selection. Your software should allow you to enter and save matrixes; track progress for individual jobs, machines, employees and more; and run accounting information and other tasks.

When you consider software system for business, the term ERP software usually comes to mind. ERP stands for enterprise resource planning. This software includes a suite of integrated applications that help you to manage your business. Each program within an ERP suite works together, often seamlessly, to complete things such as billing, payroll, and customer support.

Every business should have an integrated ERP software system. Without it, you will likely spend a good part of your day completing data entry, and adding sales and other information into each of your management programs. Doing so is costly, as it takes a lot of time — time that you could be using for something more important.

Time is not the only issue, as cost is an important factor. The initial cost of the ERP software is nothing to sneeze at, but it beats the amount of money your company likely wastes in tech support, vendor contracts, and downtime from multiple software updates. Using ERP software eliminates many of these costs.

Since everything is integrated, tech support no longer has to deal with multiple vendors. They only have one vendor to call upon for updates and with which to contract. This saves a lot of time and money, as each hour tech support spends dealing with the vendors is money out of your pocket. However, the labor costs are where you save the most.

When your business makes the switch from separate software systems to an integrated system, you’ll start reaping the benefits right away. Your departments will be able to work together, labor costs will go down, and software downtimes will happen less often.

For more information on making the switch to an ERP, contact us at ShopWorks.

Screen Printing Tips and Tricks

Many small screen printing companies are embracing apparel ERP software to help manage their business. The software keeps track of things such as purchases and inventory, as well as billing and designing the proofs. Having this type of software can lead to happier customers and better print quality, but it is not the only way to achieve these goals. Here are 5 screen printing tips and tricks to help you figure out how to make high quality prints:

1. The print quality highly depends on the quality of the proofs. With ERP software, you can design proofs in the program and submit to the customer for real-time feedback. The proofs created with the software are high quality and ready for the staff to transform into apparel.

2. Staff must know the ins and outs of the machines, and know how to set the screens up correctly. Each screen has to be lined up straight. In fact, all of the equipment you use must be lined up correctly for it to work.

3. Offer a color matching service, and do it the right way. Many smaller businesses color match by eye. This is not the right way to do it. Instead, use a high quality, stainless steel scale to measure Pantones.

4. Use a high quality screen and squeegee. You should only have to put enough pressure on the screen that the ink just comes through it to the shirt. If this process is difficult, you likely need a better screen. In addition, the squeegee needs to be on the harder side to avoid dot gain.

5. The print hand is one of the most important aspects of the printing process. Water-based ink leaves the end product soft after curing. However, ink-heavy images will need many applications, which could change the feel of the clothing. Using a higher mesh count on the screen can help in this process.

For more information about screen printing and management software, contact us at ShopWorks.