Online Video shows functionality
Spruce has posted a video demonstration of Spruce AnyWare. It is available here or directly through YouTube by searching for “Spruce AnyWare.”
 
Spruce AnyWare Capabilities
The new release of Spruce AnyWare offers a set of key features that allow owners, managers, inside and outside salespeople, and delivery personnel to easily and seamlessly interact with their SpruceWare.NET system. Key features of the App include:
• Physical Inventory / cycle count entry
• Proof of Delivery through remote signature capture with the ability to automatically update the delivery status at the same time
• Customer orders, complete with company, item and other lookups as well as full delivery, authorized buyer, adjustment, alert, signature and email functionality
• Delivery Status, allowing the user to view truck and delivery status with deep search functionality
• Document viewing, complete with print / email functionality, a variety of search options, and all graphical elements, signatures, and links to related documents.
• Item Inquiry, with pricing, stock, cost, sales and usage history.
• Voice and Text messaging to others on the network
• Totals inquiry, allowing managers to keep track of current and past sales, profit and margin summaries
• Tags and Labels, allowing bin labels and price tags to be produced from anywhere anytime they are needed

Real-World Productivity
Spruce AnyWare’s effectiveness in the field is hard to overstate. “Using a pad device or laptop in the field is invaluable, and we have lots of customers taking advantage of that,” said John LaFave, Spruce’s Director of Marketing. “But some situations are really made for a phone-sized device, and it’s huge that the app is written specifically for Android, since everything works just as you’ve come to expect on an Android device, with no compromises. With all the added functionality, productivity is even greater – and, as is normal with SpruceWare.NET, once you own a license, upgrades are included in support so you aren’t penalized for getting all the new features.”

The closer relations between the two companies will help mutual customers and any Emery customers looking for more modern software for their businesses in the future.

The Emery Marketplace will take place in Providence, Rhode Island on March 16-17, 2012.

New Features take Center Stage

 “We had a busy conference this year, with record attendance and a great deal of interest in newly-added features and functionality in Release 7 of the SpruceWare.NET software,” said John LaFave, Spruce’s Marketing Director.  “There was particular interest in enhanced rental and item returns features, our new Data Dictionary, and in SpruceAnyWhere, our new smartphone app.”

“We have had customers using iPads and other tablet devices with SpruceWare.NET for quite a while now,” LaFave continued. “SpruceAnyWhere builds on that functionality by adding a phone-sized interface for people who would prefer not to have to take a tablet on customer visits.  And you could sense the excitement among SpruceWare.NET users as they asked questions and made plans.”

Consultant Sessions, Training Sessions, and Feature overviews Popular

Spruce welcomed two industry-leading speakers to the conference.  Lisbeth Calandrino, author and consultant, started the week with her thought-provoking double Keynote session, “Are Your Customers Putting You Out of Business?”  Sandy Sawyer, owner of SAWCO LLC and roundtable facilitation expert, spoke on the most important gauges dealers can use to keep their businesses tuned up.

A wide range of software demonstrations and training sessions were aimed at keeping users informed and helping them take advantage of all of the functionality in SpruceWare.NET.  Topics included Delivery, Item Returns, Rental, Crystal Reports, Installed Sales, SpruceMobile, Release 7 Features, the SpruceWare.NET Dashboard, Drill Down and Data Mining, Physical Inventory and GL Reconciliation.

Partner Demonstrations  Round Out Full Slate

A number of Spruce partners also demonstrated specialized software with excellent SpruceWare.NET integration functionality.  Included were demonstrations of MiTek’s SAPPHIRE^TM suite, RetailerSoft’s Margin Master software, BuilderWire’s IBOS 3.0 system, Saberis’s XpressPOS software, and Symun Systems’ Construction Maestro software.

“We’re very excited to be working with OGC to expand the reach of SpruceWare.NET,” said Spruce President Rob Fitzpatrick. “The benefits of the new partnership to our current customers will be significant, as they will have a stronger software provider with more customers to share the company’s fixed costs,” he continued. “They will also benefit from the added functionality the software will gain over time as ideas from the Canadian market add to the already feature-rich SpruceWare.NET package.”

“The big immediate benefit to Canadian dealers is they will have a modern and feature-rich business management software alternative,” added John LaFave, Spruce’s Marketing Director. “Like Spruce, OGC has built a great reputation by bringing true productivity to its customers at a reasonable price and by supporting its software well, and this is a continuation of that philosophy for both companies.”

The partnership between the two well-respected software companies is a deep and comprehensive one. While Spruce retains primary development responsibilities for SpruceWare.NET, OGC will be responsible for marketing the software to the entire Canadian market and for working with prospective users throughout the sales process. They will train new users and guide them through the process of going live on their new software, and they will provide front-line software support for their customers.

About the Communicator Awards  

The Communicator Awards is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for communication professionals. An annual competition honoring the best in advertising, corporate communications, public relations and identity work for print, video, interactive and audio, the awards are sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals. This year’s Communicator Awards received thousands of entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world. Visit www.communicatorawards.com for more information.

 Growing list allows users to take advantage of multiple vendor tie-ins  

SpruceWare.NET now has direct interfaces with Do it Best, Orgill, Emery Waterhouse, True Value, Handy Hardware, LMC, Ace, and Freeway as well as with ABS.  In addition, SpruceWare.NET supports X.12 communications through Kleinschmidt, a value-added network (VAN) that ties with many other building material industry vendors like Black & Decker, ENAP, Midwest Fasteners, Merillat, National Hardware, Pure Fishing, Reeb Millwork, 3 G’s Cleveland, and Wooster Brush.  This wide range of communication partners allows SpruceWare.NET users to securely and reliably place orders and often also to receive remittance advice, invoices, price updates, catalog updates, item photos, etc. from their vendors.  Dealers find that using EDI increases productivity and results in fewer expensive and time-consuming errors.

Direct and Seamless Order Imports

“We are happy to bring our SpruceWare.NET users the ability to tie directly with a large number of door, window and kitchen manufacturers in one fell swoop through these XML Import functions,” said Spruce President Rob Fitzpatrick.  “Any time we can make it simple for customers to increase productivity and reduce errors, it becomes a priority for us to make the necessary additions.  XpressPOS and Base Camp are excellent packages that allow customers to make a productivity leap with very little cost or difficulty.”

WTS Paradigm Base Camp

With over 80 customers and an estimated 15,000+ end-users, WTS Paradigm partners with many of the largest window and door manufacturers and resellers in the industry.  WTS Paradigm Base Camp works with the wide variety of manufacturers who use WTS Paradigm fenestration software. It automatically updates a dealer’s local copy of the software in use for each manufacturer whenever there is an update available for that manufacturer, and it ties with SpruceWare.NET to allow easy importation of window and door orders from these manufacturer systems.  WTS Paradigm offers this software free to all users of compatible manufacturer systems.

Saberis XpressPOS

Saberis’ XpressPOS software also works with a number of window, door, and kitchen manufacturer packages, and it allows for easy import of data into the SpruceWare.NET system. Instantly create Customer Orders and, if desired, Purchase Orders within the Spruce system from a wide range of systems including 2020 Kitchen Design, Andersen iQ, Silverline iQ, JELD-WEN, Marvin MOE, Professional Estimating, EntryNet (Brosco and BWI), Lincoln, Ponderosa, Milgard and Comsense.  XpressPOS allows the user to manipulate the data by setting options for each Vendor. This includes sorting, adding tags, eliminating data, controlling composites, applying cost factors, and the new “Global Option String” for 2020 Kitchens.

The Value of the Dashboard
The SpruceWare.NET dashboard was released in 2008. Since then, new charts and dashboards have been continuously added, making it more and more useful as a management tool even for SpruceWare.NET users who don’t think of themselves as tech-savvy. In addition, all SpruceWare.NET contracts now come with an included dashboard license. The software is especially useful for showing ways companies can improve their sales and their customer retention through process and workflow improvements. It also excels at highlighting discrepancies that merit follow-up. It can remain on user computer screens all day, alerting them to potential issues and showing the business’s activities well ahead of traditional reporting methods.

The roundtable should prove a valuable one for any Do it Best member who is a SpruceWare.NET dashboard user or anyone considering becoming one. Current users will discuss how they are finding important information that might otherwise remain hidden in the details, and new ideas will no doubt come to light during the meeting as well.

Mark Your Calendars
The roundtable is to be held on Do it Best’s traditional market education day. This will be held on Friday, May 20, 2011 from 10:30 AM to Noon. It is planned to complement the market’s Technology learning track, and will take place in the convention center’s conference room 231. Though the roundtable is centered on the SpruceWare.NET dashboard, all Spruce customers and prospective customers are welcome to attend and to share their insight and questions.

A new Installed Sales module is automatically included in Spruce’s flagship Windows-based software, SpruceWare.NET, both for existing customers and new customers.  It will simplify the task of tracking costs for an astonishing variety of Installed Sales needs.  Included is the ability to track costs for any combination of employee and subcontractor labor as well as third party costs, special order items, standard and incidental inventory and change orders.  Progress Billing is available as well.  An analysis tab provides a clear summary of estimated prices and costs as compared to actuals, with net margin and profit numbers to quantify the success of the transaction.

The new Delivery application is also included for all customers.  It allows a visual approach to delivering that works with any number of trucks, loads, routes and drivers.  Simple drag and drop controls allow scheduling to be done in an instant, with weight factors and truck limits refreshed on the fly.  Multiple orders, invoices and tickets can be scheduled for delivery just as a dispatcher visualizes the process, and the simplicity of the interface for status updates allows real time tracking with minimal effort.

Spruce partnerships will also be highlighted at this February’s shows. For example, Spruce is a Microsoft Independent Software Vendor in the Microsoft Partner Network and its strong collaboration will continue to allow Spruce customers to enjoy the latest technologies with software that was built from the ground up with Microsoft technologies including Visual Studio.NET and SQL Server.  

 Five February Shows make for a Busy Schedule

Spruce will be attending the following February trade shows:

We invite all dealers to stop by and have a look at the newest additions to the uncompromising SpruceWare.NET software.