Here’re some extracts from a very favourable review of QuickBooks by Barbara Laporte, one more time confirming the program’s value. Intuit’s accounting software can be even better than maintaining at accountant

The software, which ever version the merchant selects, allows him to automatically reconcile banking statements, download transactions and match them to accounts the merchant has set up. He can also transfer funds between eligible accounts as well as pay bills through it.
QuickBooks is also advantageous in that the merchant has complete control over his accounts and he can catch up on the position of his business whenever he wishes to. It helps him organize his work better and keep it current.

Your entire accounting department won’t be able to get customer reportw ready for you as quick as QuickBooks will on its own.

QuickBooks guarantees secrecy about the merchant’s work as only authorized persons, decided by him, can access business accounts. Depending on which version he has decided to use, there are different access levels and a number of users (decided by the merchant, again) can be assigned to access different accounting levels.

So, all you need to do is:

1) enroll for online banking through Quickbooks
2) set up online ebanking with the help of his Quickbooks software
3) wait to receive a PIN number a few days after signing up
4) Use the PIN number to get information about your account whenever you need it.

Philip Howard of Bloor Research is speaking about ETL (extract, transform and load) technologies market in his latest podcast on how to evaluate ETL software tools. Listen to it to learn how to navigate the ETL tools market, evaluate ETL software tools and justify the cost of an ETL tool to management.

There’s no shortage of extract, transform and load (ETL) technology available today — from large data integration platforms to specialized software to free, open-source tools. In fact, there are over 40 tools on the market, according to Philip Howard, research director with U.K.-based Bloor Research. But while all these tools may bear the ETL moniker, they each have different features, functions and sweet spots. So, which one is right for your organization’s needs?

You are sure to get a clearer idea of what ETL technologies can do for your organization after listening to this 10-minute podcast.

Salesforce.com announced that its “CRM applications and partner solutions from the AppExchange are being used by IDeaS Revenue Optimization to run an entire business.”

The power and benefits of SaaS are widely used by employees across sales, marketing, service and support, client services, product management, company officials say.

IDeaS is an enterprise revenue management and optimization solutions provider that helps hotels, airlines, car parks, and transportation management companies understand, anticipate, and react to consumer behavior. IDeaS is one amongst the 43,600 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the Salesforce.com customer base, according to the companies.

IDeaS has used Salesforce.com’s platform and applications to run their entire business and customize those applications with Force.com platform, according to the company. Among various applications, tracking integration development with their many hospitality solution partners, is one, company officials say.

The Force.com platform is also used for integrating Salesforce CRM with a number of internal business applications, including WebEx and IDeaS’ client and partner portals. IDeaS’ 24/7 call center in India leverages on Salesforce Call Center – using case assignment, escalation, Web-to-case, and auto-response email functionality. Importantly, IDeaS also uses Salesforce Partners for a partner portal to manage relationships with their distributors.

Oracle’s latest release says the company has extended support for its key database feature, Real Application Testing. The company says the enhancement should help companies switch to the latest version of its database, Oracle 11g, although, the feature is available in the earlier versions of Oracle database (10g and 9i Release 2) as well.

“The challenge every IT organization has — be it upgrading an operating system, a database, moving from single server to clustered or from non-partitioned to partitioned — is how do you rigorously test those changes you made,” said Willie Hardie, vice president of database product marketing for Oracle.

Oracle with its 230,000 database customers seems to be making an effort to please all of them by providing them with this feature. What’s more, Oracle is addressing some major issues by releasing 45 security fixes as part of its coming Critical Patch pdate.

Ponemon Institute surveyed 870 IT professionals and found 23 per cent of respondents admit that their data is often left unsecured and inadequately protected.

The problem usually lies in the way unstructured data is spread across the organization’s knowledge management systems, corporate applications (CRM/ERP systems), databases, files etc. and the lack of a clear vision of how it should be consolidated. Recent Gartner Group research supports this with the figures of as much as 80 percent of actual or potentially mission-critical enterprise information taking the form of unstructured or semi-structured data.

Integration, migration, synchronization, data cleansing… it’s all already out there, why not make use of it?

If you ever get that feeling that you know the feature is there but you can’t find it, while working with your GoldMine, this book is definitely for you - The Complete Idiot’s Guide to GoldMine. This will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about GoldMine and more.

The book’s format allows you to read what you need as you need it. Topics covered include: Advanced Record Location, Working in List View, Creating Scripts, Group Scheduling, Customizing User Fields, Forecasting Sales, Network Tricks and Traps, Connecting to Hand Held Devices, and Synchronizing with Remote Users.

Apatar has recently launched Apatar On-Demand for Salesforce.com CRM and QuickBooks accounting software. Apatar On-Demand Edition is a hosted service that synchronizes order data between Salesforce.com CRM and desktop QuickBooks accounting software. It was designed for business users, so the process of setting up the integration link does not require technical skills. Apatar On-Demand Edition for Salesforce.com and QuickBooks allows running one- or two-way, recurring or one-time synchronization of account, contact, order, and opportunity data, while preserving links between tables in both Salesforce.com and QuickBooks.Designed specifically to avoid double entry, subscription to Apatar software also includes embedded data quality service. To free its users from manual data upkeep, Apatar software searches and removes duplicate accounts every time it synchronizes order data.

Apatar On-Demand is available on AppExchange

Why Salesforce.com and QuickBooks users should care?

According to Forrester Research, 66% of North American and European enterprises are afraid to adopt SaaS applications due to integration issues. Apatar On-Demand solves this problem by providing easy-to-use integration and synchronization of data between Web-based and desktop applications. A recent survey by Kelton Research confirms the enterprise’s increasing interest in on-demand services, with nearly 73 percent of large companies saying they had adopted or plan to adopt SaaS in the next 18 months.

Features and benefits: * Accelerate billing
* Shorten collection cycles
* Eliminate duplicate order data
* Avoid double entry and manual coding
* Quickly process new and existing customer sales orders
* Arm your sales and customer service representatives with key information, including customer sales history and up-to-date product data
* As easy as synchronizing your BlackBerry!

Supported QuickBooks editions include QuickBooks Pro, Premier, Enterprise 2003, and, later, QuickBooks 2007.

More details here.

Jill Dyché is answering questions about the recent data management trends for SearchDataManagement.com’s Ask the Expert section.

The three master data management trends she singles out are:

MDM trend No. 1: The use of data quality tools.

That is, establishing data quality standards and following through with them.

MDM trend No. 2: Using a common platform for multiple data subject areas.

Yep, the switch to a single platform that would unify your multiple applications and be convenient is taking place. To go further, this is the switch to on-demant applications from your desktop software.

MDM trend No. 3: Building solid business cases for MDM that transcend the “feeds and speeds” conversation and pitch bona-fide business value of MDM. Take case management in state government–whereby the state can track an individual despite multiple identities and addresses–thereby more quickly targeting food stamp fraud and saving millions in taxpayer dollars.

ebizQ is organizing a roundtable discussion webinar that will focus on MDM’s Role as a Critical Enabler for SOA

The event will be held next week, July 16, 2008 at 12:00 pm US Eastern.

What you will learn:
- The types of practices and tools required to provide a unified and consistent view of business entities common to the organization
- Best practices for implementing processes and tools
- How MDM can benefit other enterprise initiatives

DM Review, BI Review and The MDM Institute, the leading analyst authority for research and consulting in the areas of MDM, CDI, announced the MDM Summit – Fall 2008, which will take be held on October 19 - 21 at the Hilton New York.

MDM Summit – Fall 2008 is for IT professionals at any level. Newly formatted to better suit your business needs, this event will host both thought-leading speakers and attendees you want to hear from. Learn the best practice evaluation and implementation strategies from early adopters of customer data integration (CDI) and master data management (MDM) solutions. You’ll also network with fellow CDI and MDM technologists project leads that will share their success secrets.

Too bad there’s no agenda yet, but I’m sure it’ll be there soon. Keep in mind, early registration is available until august. =)