Why Data Visualization Important for your Business

Data Visualization business

1 – You Need Data Visualization business: To answer business questions

You can type in a question to get an excellent visual of relations and trends of your data. Interactive visualizations lets you drill down to understand the details or easily add more data for a new or different perspective.Data visualization or data visualisation is viewed by many disciplines as a modern equivalent of visual communication. It involves the creation and study of the visual representation of data, meaning “information that has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information”.data-visualization-to-answer-business-question1

2 – You Need Data Visualization: To tell a compelling story

Building a dashboard or an info graphic and express your story. Select your template and put the data you want your audience to understand. A simple drag and drop experience to the user creates beautiful visuals that will display your data to its best advantage.

data-visualization-to-tell-compelling-story

 

3 – You Need Data Visualization: To analyze trusted data

Data for analytics can come in various forms. Now there is a place where one can make sure it is synchronized, whether you are investigating, predicting or organizing. Which means you can trust what you’re using for your insights. Visualization helps us to focus only on the data that is important.

data-visualization-to-analyz-data

Keys To Successful ERP Implementation

Keys to Successful ERP Implementation

Are you planning to implement an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for your business? You must be excited about the benefits it brings. These include making processes easier, boosting efficiency and productivity, and improving decision-making.

Implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) can significantly transform your company. In this blog, we will look at these important keys. We will also share tips on how to make the implementation process easier. The first thing to understand about an ERP system implementation is what ERP is: enterprise resource planning.

What is ERP Implementation?

An ERP implementation includes all the steps required for an organization to use an ERP system. They include planning, configuring, training, and pre- and post-go-live actions. During the implementation, we make many important decisions. These choices affect how well the ERP system meets the organization’s needs.

No matter which ERP software you choose, the success of the system depends on how well you implement it. This includes user acceptance, process integration, data quality, and how well it fits the business.

Why Choose an ERP System?

Choosing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is only the beginning. From early preparation to after migration, using best practices for ERP helps companies avoid problems. This approach helps them save money and reduce risks.

Ninety-five percent of companies improved their business processes by using an ERP system. Now, it’s time for your organization to make a change. An organization can boost its Return on Investment (ROI) and improve efficiency by using this new system. This system helps them use the data they have collected to make smart business decisions. To help you, here are some key considerations to ensure your ERP implementation is successful.

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Key ERP Implementation Best Practices

  1. Clear Objectives and Vision

Ensure that there is a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with the ERP system. ERP system must align with the overall business strategy, enhancing specific business processes.

  1. Strong Executive Support

Obtain backing from top management, as their involvement is essential for decision-making, funding, and managing internal resistance.

  1. Thorough Requirement Gathering

Document current business processes, pain points, and inefficiencies. Engage key stakeholders and end-users to ensure their needs shape the system’s design.

  1. Choosing the Right ERP System

Assess multiple ERP solutions based on factors such as functionality, scalability, cost, and industry-specific features. Decide the balance between customizing the ERP to fit your specific needs.

  1. Data Migration and Accuracy

Ensure that legacy data is clean, accurate, and complete before migrating it to the new system. Properly map the legacy data to ensure smooth migration and minimize data discrepancies.

  1. Change Management

Provide comprehensive training to all users to minimize resistance. Continuously communicate the changes to all stakeholders, fostering a positive attitude toward the new system.

  1. Testing and Quality Assurance

Allow end-users to test the system and provide feedback to ensure it meets their needs and is user-friendly. Run the system in a controlled environment to identify any remaining issues.

  1. Post-Implementation Support

Ensure there is adequate support from the ERP vendor or internal IT team for troubleshooting and resolving any post-go-live issues. Make necessary updates as the business evolves.

  1. Monitoring and Measurement

Establish KPIs to measure the ERP system’s impact on business processes. Continuously monitor these metrics and adjust processes, as needed to maximize the system’s value.

  1. Budget Management

Plan for all phases of the ERP implementation—initial setup, training, data migration, and post-implementation support. Maintain a contingency budget for unforeseen challenges.

Six Main ERP Implementation Phases

Planning

Project objectives, important stakeholders, a project team, and a thorough implementation plan are all designed during this stage.

System Design

During this stage, the ERP system is configured to meet the specific needs of the organization. System design often involves collaboration between the implementation team and ERP consultants or vendors.

Development

In this stage, any necessary customizations or enhancements to the ERP system are developed. This may include writing code, creating reports, designing user interfaces, or building integrations with other software applications.

Testing

The ERP system is thoroughly tested to make sure it satisfies the needs of the company and performs as intended after it has been developed and configured.

Training and Deployment

The deployment of the ERP system into production and end-user training are combined in this phase. Instruction can take many forms, including workshops with real people, user guides, online courses, and in-person training.

Go-Live and Support

The final stage of ERP implementation involves deploying the system into production and transitioning from the old systems to the new ones. This may involve data migration, system cutover, and user training.

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How To Measure the Success of ERP Implementation

ERP implementation effectiveness must be measured by organizations to determine whether the system is providing the expected benefits and to identify areas that require improvement. These are some key aspects that businesses can monitor to assess how well their ERP implementation is going.

Cost Savings

Check the costs associated with their ERP system, including the cost of the software, implementation, and ongoing maintenance, and compare them to the cost savings generated by the system.

Process Improvements

Businesses can monitor how the ERP system has improved important business operations like financial reporting, inventory control, and customer service.

Data Accuracy

Monitor and compare the accuracy of data manually entered before ERP system implementation with data entered into the system, including sales, inventory, and financial data.

User Adoption

Organizations can track the rate of employee adoption of the ERP system, including the number of users logging in, the number of transactions processed, and the number of support requests.

Return On Investment (ROI)

Measure the system’s benefits, such as cost savings, process enhancements, and data accuracy, and compare them to the system’s costs to determine the ERP system’s return on investment.

Guaranteed ERP Project Success With Bista Solutions

Apps Associates ERP Solutions ensures that the following critical components are executed thoroughly and properly:

  • Well-defined goals and objectives
  • Executing a rigorous, phased approach
  • Prioritizing testing, training, and change management
  • Measuring post-project results and benefit
  • Supportive post-go-live support and sustainability

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Critical Failure Factors You Must Consider To Avoid ERP Failure

The analysis of the critical failure factors of the ERP implementation process is critical because it is believed that knowing about potential future problems is the best way to prevent them. These factors will better inform stakeholders to avoid similar scenarios, further reducing the ERP project failure rate.

Inadequate Knowledge: Businesses looking to upgrade or implement an ERP system on their own are more likely to lack adequate ERP knowledge. Failure can be avoided by seeking an ERP consultation from a qualified consultant.

Insufficient User Training: Insufficient end-user training may lead to serious consequences for organizations. Failing to provide them with adequate training will continue to demotivate users from accepting the change.

Extensive Degree Of Customization: ERPs are not one-size-fits-all. Adding or removing modules from the system is crucial; however, problems will arise as soon as drastic changes are made.

Reluctance to Change: A common cause of ERP failures is the business’s reluctance to change the way it operates. For a successful implementation, all departments must believe in the benefits of such a system and adopt and use it to its full potential.

Start Your ERP Implementation Process With Bista Solutions

Is your business ready for its ERP Implementation journey? By focusing on these essential steps, you’ll be well-prepared for successful implementation and a smooth transition into the next phase of your company’s growth.

Bista Solutions is an Odoo Gold Partner and has been awarded the prestigious title of Best Odoo Partner North America consecutively for 4 years (2024, 2023, 2022, 2021) and 7 years (2018, 2016 & 2015) in total. We know how to ensure successful processes and design solutions that boost operational efficiency, productivity, and growth.

Read more about our ERP Implementation Services here and Contact Us to start your ERP implementation journey.

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Master Data Management Best Practices

Master Data Management Best Practices
  • by bista-admin
  • Mar 09, 2016
  • 0
  • Category:

In this business world, We manage people, inventory, and time. All these things are essential for business but the business that doesn’t care about their data can fall in big trouble after a few times when their business goes ahead. Because data grows unexpectedly and if your data is not accurate, not in proper understanding format then you are going to make bad decisions, inaccurate reports.

Hundreds of company in this corporate world is following proper data management by putting their data in appropriate place. Hence to achieve this we should start with most important information about data.

1. How Master Data can provide efficiency to a business:-

A master data provides decision-making process better to carry your business ahead in right direction. For example, if I am going to buy certain product for business before that I will check my master data that will this be beneficial for me by looking at my master data product chart. After observing my master data I can decide in how much quantity which product I should buy.

2.Collection of data from different sources:-

We collect data from different sources and put that into the data warehouse. But to make proper and accurate decision our data should be in structured format .The redundant data should not be present in our database. In this case industries requires Business Intelligence developer who can retrieve the data from different sources and can provide report on their daily business activities by putting their data in structured format.

3.The role of data model and data container in MDM:-

  • Data container: It holds the data that we manage for processing.
  • Data Model: A model which helps in validating the data and defines data type of attributes .The data model helps finding the relationships of data like customer to account, customer to product and their location. This data model helps in finding the schema of entity.

4.Fuzzy search:-

Mdm provides fuzzy search mechanism for searching the data in data container. It helps in processing the record efficiently. With the advent of this user need not to type exact word in search bar of data.

5.Handling of data duplication:-

MDM uses data deduplication algorithm to put consistency in data.

6.Data Auditing:-

MDM puts the track of all dml operation performed on it. This is achieved by putting the record of user and action performed by them with the timestamp in audit table.

7.Data Integration:-

MDM provides easy to integrate with third party application and business process. This provides the features of data to process in batch mode.

8.Customization:-

MDM provides customization without affecting the performance to meet the customer requirement by following agile methodology. This leads to flexible data model and scalable architecture.

The Worst Advice we’ve ever heard about Enterprise Resource

Enterprise Resource

As a Business owner or a manager, you may have got many business suggestions/ advice from friends, consultants and other people around, but most of them would be misinformation and misconceptions which can hamper your business. Today ERP is acting as a backbone of every company. It has become an important aspect for all type of Businesses. In this article, we will be highlighting some major misconceptions which you may think about ERP system.

1. My company is too small to implement ERP, It is only for Large organizations:

This is one of the major misconceptions we hear a lot, many company owners think that they are not big enough to start with an ERP Solution. The objective of ERP software is to streamline and automate business processes across all the departments in an organization and this works with any size of companies.

ERP implementation becomes little expensive when it has to acquire huge IT infrastructure and IT staff for regular maintenance, but the latest cloud technology is a preferable solution for SME’s. Cloud ERP helps reduce the upfront cost by minimizing IT infrastructure cost and subscription fees to zero %. Moreover, Cloud ERP gives SME companies the ability to plan and execute their business as large organizations

              2. Take too long to Implement:

Another common misconception people have that most of the ERP implementation takes years to roll out. This myth is may be through the stories of large and complex implementation in the early ERP days.

Today most of the ERP systems are affordable and easy to implement, they are now more reliable and the earlier day’s issues are been transformed into advance ERP. Thus, these ERP’s systems can be implemented in reasonable time.

3. My Business Process is too difficult to convert into ERP System

This sense is a perception of difficulty; you may want your business processes should be adaptable along as company grows.

Instead of looking at how outdated business processes can be adaptable to a new phase, you need to look at the end results. Do your orders get fulfilled very fast and accurately? Are you’re shipping and payments are taken in a timely manner? ERP is beyond managing all of these business processes

                     4. ERP systems are very easy:

Another myth which people think about. “ERP software systems are very easy”. After implementing ERP system, you and your employees will have to put some time and efforts to learn the software. ERP software’s improves your business processes by increasing your business efficiency, but your employees still need to know how to use the software on daily basis. It is similar to learning new rules of the game before you start playing it.

5. Difficulty in Integrating with the devices/ other services:

A very common question people want to know before ERP implementation is that, “Will it be integrated with current – ongoing software’s”? And the answer is “Yes” Some flexible ERP solutions such as Odoo, NetSuite and Ramco can be easily integrated with any third party applications, software’s, and web portals. In fact, the data can be easily transferred from other software and portals to these ERP systems.

Importance of Data Visualization in Analytics

Importance of Data Visualization in Analytics

We are living in the era of big data where Data has been described as the raw material for business.

The volume of data used in businesses, industries, research organisation and technological development is massive and it continues to grow every day. The more data we collect and analyse, the more capable we become in making critical business decisions.

But with the massive expansion of data, It has becomes harder and harder for business to find key message from this universe of data.

That’s where the importance of data visualization comes in

Data Visualization is the presentation of data in graphical format. It helps people understand the significance of data by summarising and presenting huge amount of data in a simple and easy-to-understand format and helps communicate information clearly and effectively.

Data Visualization

Humans understand data better through pictures rather than by just reading numbers in rows and columns. So if the data is presented in a graphical format, you are more able to effectively ask and answer these important questions as “What are my Sales and Profit Nos.?”, “How much is my Sales growth? Which client of mine is giving me more business?”, Where am I losing? Blah blah ……..

Data visualisation helps the business achieve their goals in the following ways–

Help business convert their data into interactive graphs, dashboards or maps and embed them on their website or blog to engage their customers.

The BI tool connects easily to nearly any data sources, be it a corporate Data Warehouse or  Microsoft Excel or web-based data and helps the business with the insights by transforming data into visually appealing, interactive dashboards on the go.

The data visualisation tool supports a wide variety of tables, charts and graphs and grant the user the ability to visualise the same set of data in different ways thereby strives to create more attractive and informative dashboard every time.

I.e. there are many ways to present a simple Sales data – from a crosstab report to a Daily Sales Chart to Sales by Category by month. Different views answer different questions.

The tool also gives you the capability to look at data with a geographic element on a map and brings in an entirely new dimension in the analysis.

It helps the businesses make appropriate decisions by drilling into the data and finding the insights. I.e. Business can see the patterns, trends and correlations in the data being analysed that will tell them where they can cut cost, improve operational processes and thereby grow their business.

The Storytelling feature available in the data visualisation tool is an emerging art that shows that the data is just not about figures but it’s a way people see the world around them.

The tool allows user to organize and present massive data intuitively. This is very much important as otherwise the information is meaningless without a way to organize and present important findings from the data.

In this age of Globalisation, organisations are trying to expand their reach beyond geographical boundaries and there are required to make quick and informed decisions, this is best justified with data visualization tools.

 

Collaboration of Business Intelligence with Online Marketing

Business Intelligence is an elusive concept that never quite finds its way to the top of the priority list. When it comes to Business Intelligence and Online Marketing both have emerged to work hand in hand. As both are based on data to analyze and make decisions to improve investment gains and processes.

Business intelligence allows companies to craft their audience behaviour patterns across multiple forms of media considering the data collected across online platforms. Online advertising can usually generate faster results reports because they are generally based on impressions, clicks and online purchases as it basically deals with market research strategies. BI offers real-time analytics based on online marketing efforts.

COLABRATIVE

When offline events are promoted online, it gives a good insight into overall customer patterns which helps to increase event marketing effectiveness. A proper online event marketing campaign can trail a customer’s interaction from start to finish which includes tracking of how they found out about the event through metrics such as custom promo codes, referral sites and entrance pages. The chance to combine promotions and real-world events with online marketing campaigns is one of the best ways online marketing and business intelligence can work together.

Companies can use business intelligence to enhance the overall effectiveness of their website by examining the site performance, audience circulation, usage trends, visitor loyalty, search engine performance, content, product placement and overall visitor behaviour.

Suppose a company wants to launch an advertising campaign for a product. Among its current customers the company wish to post product information to those customers with a high probability of buying the product. The company holds data describing each of its previous customer’s behaviour and personal data. There are also customers who have previously bought the product for example in a trial period. The customers of the trial period are divided into two categories those who have purchased the product and those who have not. With this data, a prediction model can be created to predict the probability of buying the product. After that the probability of buying the product is predicted for all other customers. Only those customers with a higher probability are addressed.

When it comes to online marketing and business intelligence, taking big data and forming it into goals and then interpreting it back into actionable vision is one of the best ways to craft a promotional and advertising strategy that works and is continually optimized.

How Can Predictive Analytics Help Small Businesses ?

What is predictive analytics?

 

predective-analysis

 

Predictive analytics is the use of variety of statistical techniques that analyses current and historical facts to make predictions about the future events.

The goal of predictive analytics is to forecast what might happen in the future rather than finding descriptive statistics and reporting on what has actually happened in the past. Predictive models use the past data to develop a model that can be used to predict the future values. This is different from the descriptive models that help you understand what has happened in the past.

What can predictive analytics do?

Predictive analytics can help to:

  • Identify the trends
  • Understand customers
  • Improve business performances
  • Predict future behaviour

Predictive Analytics for Growing Companies:

There are many advantages of predictive analytics for the growing businesses. The most widely used objectives are

1) Customer Retention &

2) Demand Forecasting

Customer Retention:

It’s always good to keep your loyal customers than to get the new ones. Predictive analytics help you to analyse your customers’ behaviour, to predict what and when a customer may buy. It is important for new businesses to identify which prospect groups are most likely to buy their products or services so that the precious marketing money can be spent on the most promising ones.

For example, suppose an online shopping company Flipkart.com has the data of customer purchased specific product (say Books). Then this company can use the predictive data to send the emails to the loyal customers. Once a customer has purchased online a book three times, then the predictive analytics automatically finds the next order date and the products, after which the company can send mails marketing the various  products based on the customer’s purchasing behaviour.

Demand Forecasting:

Demand forecasting is the most common application of predictive analytics. In business, if the demand is more than the inventory, sales can be lost due to the lack of supply and if demand is very less than inventory, then there is huge stock of particular inventory then also it will incur financial loss. If any company knows the demand of their products and services in advance, then the company can plan for the future production. Predictive analytics is a statistical approach applicable for demand forecasting. It is used to detect the pattern in the data.

For example, suppose a company wants to know the how much sales will happen in the next quarter. In this case, predictive analytics can be used to estimate the current trend in the market and the seasonal pattern of the sales for the next quarter. Using this, the company can review the inventory of the particular product. If the demand of that product is more than the inventory of the specific product then the company can plan for the production of that particular product.

Conclusion:

If you want to use predictive analytics you have to first understand the idea behind it and the difference with the other methods. The predictive analytics is used to forecast the event which might be happen in the future by calculating the probability of the occurrence of event on the basis of the historical patterns. For example, to predict the annual sales (target) we will need to have the historical annual sales data with a bunch of variables related to sales. Then we can study the relationship and patterns between the variables and the annual turnover. Using this relationship and the historical pattern we can predict the future sales. The predicted results can be used to make various business decisions.

ERP Implementation Strategies: Big Bang vs. Phased

ERP Implementation Strategies

BIG BANG ERP IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY:

Big bang ERP go-live strategy is the one where all of the main modules of an ERP system go live at the same time.

PHASED ERP IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY:

A phased approach describes a scenario where elements or modules of the ERP system are introduced in a planned sequence, replacing the old systems gradually.

The feasibility of a strategy is based on the following factors:

1. Impact on the organization

A big bang approach exerts additional pressure on the business and the project team during the cutover – simply because there’s so much activity going on all at once. A phased approach can lead to quick wins, which provides confidence and helps in selling the advantages to the rest of the organization. On the other hand, poor experiences in early phases can lead to the negativity around the ERP project, and in a worst-case scenario, it could even undermine a rollout plan.

2. Temporary Interfaces:

Phased implementations often require temporary interfaces to provide a temporary working solution. It is costly to implement temporary interfaces.

3. Duration

Phased strategy implementation takes longer time than big bang strategy. Factors such as regulatory compliances, acquisitions, new product introductions, and other capital expenditure programs can influence the required timescale for an ERP implementation. Planning the project will need to take these other factors into account and could well influence the big bang versus the phased decision.

4. Business units

Generally, it is easier to manage multi-site and multi-business unit implementations in a phased manner. Except for the scenario involving a hub site with satellite or regional sites dependent on the hub, it may be easier to go big bang for this full group of sites due to the interdependencies involved.

5. Expenditure

Phased implementations levy:

  • Additional external costs
  • Additional internal costs
  • Additional costs for temporary interfaces

6. Risk

Generally, big bang implementations are much riskier than phased implementations.

  • It’s more difficult to revert to the old system if everything goes wrong.
  • There’s a higher risk of serious damage to the business.
  • Full end-to-end testing is much more difficult to achieve
  • A big bang go-live places a huge strain on all parts of the organization

If you’re interested in implementing an ERP system and want a consultation, contact us or email us at sales@bistasolutions.com

TTC (Task to Complete) Functionality in Odoo

Bista Solutions has developed TTC (Task to Complete) feature for Service based customer.

Generally this Feature helps project manager for adequate project planning and controlling. 

Let us discuss in detail:

Project-Task Management: Project management in Odoo includes the terminology for creating project and then subdividing them into tasks. Each task has its own start date, end date, deadline and planned hours (initial planned hours); based on these parameters we can plan our project schedule, however, the deadline, start date, end date and planned hours are not interrelated to each other. As a result, if we make changes in the start date, or deadline it doesn’t get reflected to other field.

TTC-Task to complete: TTC terminology is used to calculate the start date for the respected task.

The date for the TTC is calculated as per the planned hours and deadline mentioned. The computation for the TTC Date will consider deadline as end date for the task, and will give us least start date for the respected task. Also, the computation for the TTC date would exclude weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and we will consider five days in a week with working hours as 8hrs/day.

Odoo task management

The TTC computation will be based on two parameters for the task, namely the deadline and initially planned hours.

As we can see in the above screen shot, our deadline, start date TTC and our initial planned are related to each other, we have start date TTC as 08/13/2015(Thursday), Deadline as 08/17/2015(Monday); so we need to compute our planned hours based on these parameters. In this scenario, we are having weekend hours excluded from the planned hours, so we have only three working days including the deadline date; so these would be 3*8 hours=24 hours

Computations of TTC When We have Dependencies OF Task (Chain of Task):

In the scenario where we have task interrelated with each other, we would compute start date TTC value based upon the parent task or predecessor tasks. In such case, we would find the maximum Deadline for our predecessor tasks and that would reflect as TTC for our Current Task.

To view the functionality for adding predecessor task and successor task for the respected task, we need to check the check box named as “Compute earliest start date”, when we make these check box “True” , it will compute our start date TTC based upon the task we select in our predecessor task. As a result, these would form an iterative graph for the computation of the TTC.

 

Task-Managament

 

The change in the start date TTC will again reflect the change in planned hours based on given deadline for the task.

Note: When we compute start date TTC based upon the maximum deadline for my predecessor task; it does not make change in the deadline value, we just update our planned hours based on the deadline and TTC date computed.

 

As we can see in the screen shot above, we have check box “Compute earliest start date” and we will compute for TTC based upon the maximum deadline for my ‘n’ numbers of predecessor task.

For more information on this module or to learn about project management in Odoo, kindly email us at sales@bistasolutions.com

Bista Solutions Certified for Avalara’s Sales Tax Automation Solution

As a result of this partnership, customers of Odoo now have access to AvaTax™, Avalara’s cloud-based solution, to automatically calculate the final sales tax amount on every invoice. This eliminates the tedious work and complexity of calculating taxes across multiple jurisdictions and helps businesses focus on their core offering.

Avalara Partnership

Avalara, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based software delivering compliance solutions related to sales tax, VAT and other transactional taxes, today announced Bista Solutions Inc., a leading provider of ERP, BI and Big Data solutions, has joined Avalara’s community of certified solution partners. Avalara’s solution partners are software publishers that integrate Avalara’s software as a service (SaaS) offering for sales tax management directly into their own applications.

As a result of this partnership, customers of Odoo now have access to AvaTax™, Avalara’s cloud-based solution, to automatically calculate the final sales tax amount on every invoice. This eliminates the tedious work and complexity of calculating taxes across multiple jurisdictions and helps businesses focus on their core offering.

“We pride ourselves in understanding the business needs of our clients and providing the right solutions to help them achieve maximum ROI,” said Faisal Basar, Chief Technology Officer for Bista Solutions Inc. “Our integration with Avalara will allow Odoo users to easily manage and remain up-to-date on increasingly complicated tax regulations.”

Pascal Van Dooren, Chief Revenue Officer at Avalara, said, “This partnership allows Avalara to provide its comprehensive solutions to Odoo customers in a fast, easy and cost effective way. In today’s electronic world, it just doesn’t make sense to manually manage sales tax. We’re pleased to welcome Bista Solutions into our community.”

Read Full Story here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/10/prweb13050754.htm

 

If you are looking to integrate Avalara with Odoo, you can contact us using our contact form or at +1 (404) 631-6219.