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Product Description

Big Business is the award-winning business management solution that seamlessly integrates four critical business functions; sales, marketing, inventory, and finance. Big Business eliminates the need for separate company database, contact management, inventory, and accounting programs. It automates workflow and increases productivity by centralizing important company data in a single system that can grow as companies expand. Using high-performance relational database technology, Big Business relates sales and marketing activities with their bottom line impact on inventory and company finances.

With its Internet technology, Big Business gets small businesses on the Worldwide Web by making online catalogs of products and services in inventory. Users don't need to learn HTML or format pages; Big Business does that automatically.

Big Business also supports the Big Business Web Server, which lets local and remote users access important data via the most popular Web browsers. Big Business Web Server opens small businesses to the outside world, significantly expanding their capabilities and putting them at the forefront of web technology.

Big Business is available in single-user and multi-user, client/server versions. Business owners can start with the single-user version and then move to the multi-user version and add users as their companies grow. They can add the Web Server to either version.


Target Market

There are more than six million small businesses in the United States, over half of which could use Big Business to manage inventory and deliver products to the market. Big Business is specifically targeted at growing companies with 1-99 employees in retail, wholesale, distribution, or manufacturing that need to manage large numbers of customers, transactions, and inventory items.


Product Positioning

Big Business is the first easy-to-use, fully integrated business management and accounting solution for growing companies. It offers a true workgroup solution that supports sales and marketing activities and produces real-time reports and analysis of company inventory and financial information. Big Business gets small companies on the Web by making on-line catalogs of products and services.


Key Benefits

-Seamlessly Integrates Sales, Marketing, Inventory, and Accounting:

Big Business eliminates the need for separate software products by integrating a contact manager with an inventory database and an accounting program. Big Business provides a single point of reference for current and historical information about a company's business activities with its customers, vendors, inventory, and transactions. This unprecedented integration increases productivity and allows managers and employees to make more effective and informed decisions to meet their business objectives.

- Grows with Companies:

Big Business meets the collaborative needs of small business by automating workflow, facilitating communication, and centralizing all company information. When companies need to share this automation among multiple users, they can easily move to Big Business Server, which handles many simultaneous users.

- Maximizes Sales and Profit:

Big Business is the complete small business management solution that allows a small businesses to maximize profits and sales, dramatically increasing their return on investment.

-Adds Value:

Big Business is competitively priced, providing the most value to the small business, while delivering many more features than its competition.

- Enhances Collaboration and Productivity:

Offering seamless integration of sales, marketing, inventory, and accounting, Big Business helps employees of a small business work together and share information, allowing them to know at a glance how sales, marketing programs, and all other aspects of their business infrastructure are affecting the company's bottom line.

- Has an Easy to Use Interface:

Big Business is a powerful program that is also incredibly easy to use. Its top-rated interface has won raves from numerous industry publications. Users learn the program quickly because its interface is based on real-world metaphors such as checks and deposit slips that are intuitive and easy to fill out. Big Business also fills in information wherever possible, saving users time from retyping data.

- Offers Relational Database Technology:

Based on a relational database, Big Business centralizes company data and details the relationship among different aspects of a business.

- Delivers Advanced Technology:

The latest technologies are integrated into Big Business to automate the entire business process and company infrastructure, making the company more productive and profitable.

- Based on a Client/Server Architecture:

Big Business can grow with a company. The Big Business multi-user, client/server version can scale up as companies grow.

- Gives Users the Ability to Have Internet and Intranet Capabilities:

The Big Business Web Server is an add-on to Big Business and Big Business Server that lets users view Big Business data via an internet or intranet. Users--either local or remote--simply run a popular browser to view Big Business data, such as open orders, past due payments, and inventory levels. From their client machines, users can search for and print quotes, orders, invoices, and purchase orders. To ensure the same system security as is available in Big Business, the system administrator can control access to any area of Big Business and can require passwords for all clients.


Key Features

- Optimizes Sales:

Big Business optimizes sales by generating customer quotes with reminder notes, providing multiple bill to and ship to addresses, evaluating profitability, creating sales orders and tracking shipping histories, preparing customer invoices, and processing cash receipts.

- Improves Marketing:

Companies can improve their marketing with Big Business, which maintains customer records with purchase histories, identifies prospects using definable fields and tags, and produces targeted lists, labels, and reports.

- Manages Inventory:

To further integrate company processes, Big Business automatically generates purchase orders, tracks vendor back orders, defines multiple price levels, and prepares custom price lists.

- Performs Accounting Professionally:

Users can now manage their company's finances without learning complicated accounting procedures. Big Business maintains accounts payable and receivable, generates complete accounting information and financial statements, reconciles accounts, prints deposit slips, keeps a general journal, transfers funds between accounts, and manages cash flow. It also prints checks, deposit slips, and other financial printouts and reports.

- Creates Internet Web Pages:

Big Business automates the process of creating and maintaining a catalog of products or services on the Internet. Users can select the items, item descriptions, prices, and pictures they want Big Business to format into HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) web pages. Big Business creates three-level web pages and manages all the appropriate links. This feature allows Internet users of all levels to easily create their own web page catalogs.

- Delivers Multi-level Security:

Big Business offers multi-level security, allowing administrators to lock individual users out of tabs, quickpops, terms, and exports to protect sensitive company data.

- Includes Reports and Forms Customizer:

Users can create completely custom reports and forms using Big Business' built-in reports and forms customizer. Users can use the customizer to analyze data, format printouts, and create customized reports. The powerful customizer offers a full-featured WYSIWYG reports and forms writer that has full access to the information in Big Business.

- Provides Built-in Notes:

Big Business' built-in notes are like having an e-mail system for all Big Business users. Notes allow users to attach comments directly to individual contacts or transactions and electronically send them to other Big Business users. Using notes alone, users can send and receive mail messages and schedule appointments and meetings.

- Delivers Drill Down Capabilities:

Big Business includes an unprecedented drill down capability that lets users simply double-click to drill down to specific cards, invoices, or other data in the software and find detailed information without having to search through manual files.

- Offers On-line Help:

To further simplify small business management, Big Business provides context-sensitive assistance throughout the application.

- Connects to Payroll Products:

Big Business supports third party payroll products from Aatrix Software (Macintosh only) and CheckMark Software. Users can import journal entries and check information from these payroll systems to print employee checks and track employee payments.

- Offers Multiple Bill To/Ship To Addresses:

Users can store multiple bill to and ship to addresses that can be selected from a pop-up menu.

- Calculates Commissions and Royalties:

Big Business calculates commissions and royalties. Commission codes and rates can be added to employee cards. Big Business allows users to select a number of methods to calculate commissions and royalties.

- Converts Contacts:

At the click of a button, Big Business converts contacts to customers or vendors.

- Offers More Chart of Accounts:

Big Business provides over 90 default chart of accounts for a variety of company types, including attorneys, clubs, distributors, publishing companies, computer dealers, farms, beauty salons, bookstores, bridal shops, chiropractors, interior designers, drug stores, graphic artists, photographers, printers, shoe stores, and travel agencies.

- Supports International Taxes, Formats, and Currencies:

For international sales management, Big Business lets users replace the dollar sign with a foreign currency symbol from one of 16 English speaking countries. In addition, users can modify number formats for various international currencies. Big Business 2.0 also adds VAT and GST tax capabilities, allowing users to have an unlimited number of tax entities per tax.

Services

Free technical support is available to new Big Business users for the first 30 days, and a range of affordable support programs are offered for ongoing assistance. In-depth training videos, training seminars, and accounting CDs are also available. Big Business provides a consultants' referral service of Authorized Big Business Consultants and VARs for those customers who desire face-to-face support from a local resource.


System Requirements

Macintosh System Requirements
Processor Recommended RAM Hard Disk
Single-user/Client 68040 or Power PC 16MB/24MB 50MB
Server Power PC 24MB 50MB

System 7 or higher required
Ethernet required for Server

Individual systems may require more RAM if other software applications are run simultaneously. Additional hard disk space will be required as company information is added to the system.

Windows System Requirements
Processor Recommended RAM Hard Disk
Single-user/Client 486/66 or Pentium 16MB/24MB 50MB
Server Pentium 32MB 50MB

Windows 95 or NT 4.0 required
Ethernet required for Server

Individual systems may require more RAM if other software applications are run simultaneously. Additional hard disk space will be required as company information is added to the system.

Network Requirements

Big Business requires an ethernet network for multi-user installations. 10BASE-T (Twisted pair cable) ethernet networks are preferred to 10BASE-2 (coaxial cable/Thin ethernet) ethernet networks (10BASE-T networks are inherently more reliable since they use a star topology as opposed to a station-to-station daisy chain. The active hubs used by 10BASE-T networks are able to isolate individual network faults to preserve the entire network's functionality).

Big Business

Since 1993, Big Business has been developing comprehensive, award-winning business management software for the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Big Business is available in single-user and multi-user, client/server versions.