Maney Publishing Chooses Advantage

by Cindy Morphew 1. June 2008 13:47

ACS is pleased to welcome Maney Publishing, located in Leeds, England, into the Advantage community.

Maney Publishing began in 1900 as a specialist typesetting and printing company. Maney services evolved over many years and they currently provide publication and fulfillment services for journals and books. Their customers are academic societies, their editors, authors, and members. The majority of Maney journals are available online.

Maney’s increasing growth fueled a need for a comprehensive fulfillment system that could combine several disparate databases into one. They also needed a system that could assist them in managing their marketing and online fulfillment operations. These requirements led them to Advantage as their system of choice. Maney plans to begin live operations on Advantage this summer.

Denise Feeley, Maney fulfillment manager, says this about Advantage: “We chose Advantage over the other short-listed systems due to its robust functionality, and flexibility to meet our business needs as a subscription management system, including accounts receivable and marketing tools. Advantage will allow us to compile, analyze and use data about our customers in order to create better tailored, better timed products and, more importantly, to perform sophisticated database marketing campaigns.”

Maney Publishing also has offices in London and Boston.

The ACS team on the project includes Tim Zapawa as project director, Mike Miklosovic as project manager and Karl Davis as the lead engineer. Levi Hyssong is assisting with the subscription and customer data conversions.

Tags: maney

General | News

Advantage: Sustainable Technology for your Organization

by Tom Burbeck 1. June 2008 13:37

Mona Hidayet and I recently met with the executive committee of one of our largest publishing clients. The executives wanted to hear about new features in Advantage that might be leveraged to further expand their business. Their use of Advantage has grown several times over, as has the size of their publishing business. With each Advantage upgrade, information details contained in the hundreds of pages of software release notes offer links, although sometimes quite subtle ones, to new business opportunity through enhanced software. The links are easy to overlook, and the result can be missed opportunities to leverage Advantage for major business benefit.

We at ACS put great effort into ongoing software development in order to continually improve Advantage with new functionality. Did you know that over the last five years…

15 new revisions of Advantage were released.
125,000 hours of ACS development were invested in enhancing Advantage.
807 new features were added to Advantage.
Release notes filled 1,500 pages.

Many continue to report that the Advantage software leads all competing software packages in application functionality. And that the pace of functionality enhancement is unsurpassed. While, I assume, this is good news for our clients, it raises the question: Is this pace of software evolution sustainable when it comes to leveraging Advantage for your business success? Are you taking full advantage of the 25,000 hours of development we put into the software every year?

It should be no surprise that publishers, as in many other fields, find it hard to harness the benefits of rapid technological change. New business strategies made possible through technology are developing so rapidly that it has become increasingly difficult to keep up. Among our clients, the trend appears to be that the companies experiencing growth have figured out how to master this challenge. In my visits to our clients, with increasing frequency I'm noticing the emergence of business/technology "mavens" (a word coming from Yiddish, and meaning one who accumulates knowledge. See Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point). These individuals show an uncanny knack for quickly making connections between evolving technology and opportunities for new business strategies. In the past, I would generally see this role relegated to the IT group—and in some cases, quite effectively so. More and more, I'm seeing the business tech mavens resident in the business units, voicing their thoughts among the executives.

As with the executive committee I mentioned above, many of our clients face the challenge of digesting the large volume of information necessary to evaluate the hundreds of new features in Advantage. I would like to make sure you are aware of the ACS services and methods offered to help you get maximum benefit from upgrading to new revisions of Advantage. Each of these has been designed to enable your organization to manage the rapid evolution of Advantage as a strategic business tool for your business.

Free one-hour webinars that present new Advantage features.
The Advantage Operations Review, a structured methodology for auditing your current operations on Advantage and identifying ways to get more benefit from your enterprise fulfillment software.
The Advantage Systems Analysis, a detailed review of how you're using Advantage from an IT perspective, with recommendations for ensuring best practices and leveraging common systems tools.
Release notes for each new Advantage revision, documenting all new capabilities and enhancements of the software.
Through Evelyn Acton as the designated member of the Advantage User Group steering committee, and participation by many at ACS, we actively support the annual user group meetings which offer new features presentations, client-led topical roundtables on using Advantage, user presentations on implementing key features of Advantage, and networking among our clients.
Disciplined use by our software development team of the latest technology for software configuration and release management, which makes possible three Advantage upgrades per year.
Automated upgrade scripts and a project methodology to enable efficient revision upgrades.

How well does your organization leverage the benefits of new revisions of Advantage? Do you have a business/technology maven watching for new business opportunities made possible through new Advantage features? Is the rapidly evolving Advantage software fully serving your business enterprise?

Please send email with your thoughts on how we can help you take better advantage of new releases of Advantage.

Tags:

Voices

Larry Kleber: Never a Dull Moment

by Cindy Morphew 1. June 2008 13:35

Underneath the seemingly rough exterior that Larry Kleber likes to project, lies a sense of responsibility and dedication to his job that would embarrass him to have to admit. Larry likes to make people think he is only thinking about his next ball game or beer with the guys.

Not so.

"Larry is very focused on the delivery of our software. He is not happy unless the client is happy. He is willing to go the extra mile to do something right," says Ray Zick, Larry's supervisor.

A 13-year veteran of ACS, Larry currently works in the Upgrades and IT department, led by Ray. Larry thinks Ray is an excellent boss, and appreciates the way they work together. (He assured me that the fact that annual performance reviews are just around the corner had nothing to do with these comments.) Larry says that he and Ray make a great team, working together to make upgrades go smoothly.

While attending college, some of Larry's pre-ACS jobs included selling dictionaries door to door and managing a Little Caesar’s Pizza store. Making a jump from retail to technical, he then joined a company that developed point of sale (touch-screen) systems where he specialized in system installation and maintenance. In 1995, Larry joined ACS and was put in charge of configuration control. He pioneered a successful system of organization and control that has allowed us to more effectively produce three releases per year. With the current technology, however, it doesn't require as much management as it once did.

As Advantage config control became less time-consuming, Larry branched out into working on new client implementations and upgrades. He handles the mechanics of getting a client from one rev to another, or, as he puts it, the "nuts and bolts" of upgrades. This includes tasks such as database restores, table upgrades, and updating table schema in a database for a new release. Since most upgrades are done after hours, Larry spends a lot of evenings, nights, weekends and holidays running and monitoring upgrade processes.

"I've had the pleasure of working with Larry off and on over the past six years," says Pat Sharpton of God’s World Publications. "What I appreciate most about Larry is his ability to communicate in a non-technical, easy-to-understand way. He helped us through our last upgrade and taught me a lot about how Advantage works behind-the-scenes. With the help of Larry and others at ACS, I feel confident that our upgrade to 2008R1 will be a success."

As his job is a unique one at ACS, Larry has been a part of several different departments over the years. You might say that we didn’t know what to do with him and that wouldn't be far off. However, "Larry's willingness to tackle anything has served us well," says Dick Hile, VP of Product Engineering. "In the complex, ever-changing, surprise-a-minute world of software configuration, where you can't predict what will be needed, Larry's talent for improvising solutions is invaluable."

Larry's favorite aspects of his job are the flexibility and the independence. He also likes getting to know clients and helping them complete their upgrade projects successfully.

"I have worked with Larry Kleber through two upgrades and he has helped me on several occasions when I had trouble with my Production server," says Frits Buningh of Army Times Publications. "Each time, Larry resolved the problem with a cool head and quick wit. I love working with Larry; he gets my problems resolved, and if he does not know the answer, he'll go and find it. Larry is my first line of defense when I have systems problems; he's my 'go to' guy!"

In his leisure time, Larry spends time with his wife, Jen, and on the activities of their three children. A big sports fan, Larry likes to play almost any sport involving a round ball: basketball, volleyball, baseball, paddleball, softball and soccer. Not football, because he says he "wants to keep my knees," or golf, because "golf isn't a sport." Larry also likes to play video games, although his 16-year-old son routinely beats him, and participate in online poker tournaments. (And yes, he does report his poker winnings to the IRS.)

Larry’s other function at the company is to instill his own brand of humor into ACS company meetings. His off-the-wall comments and good-natured barbs ensure that there are always some laughs at these gatherings. But if you want him to get serious, you just have to set him to work to help a client. (Or bring up sports; that works, too.)

Tags:

Employee Profile

Input Added to 'Ad' Module

by Phil Montgomery 1. June 2008 13:18

ACS welcomed a number of client representatives to Ann Arbor on May 6 and 7 for a Client Forum focused on the Advertising module. We have found that the “forum” format works best to involve you in identifying the best direction forward for an area of the system – in this case the Advertising module.

Participants from Kalmbach Publishing, Motor Information Systems, and The Taunton Press were able to attend. Other clients (Oxford University Press and Traplet Publications) while not able to attend in person, provided input on features that are important to them.

Why Advertising? The Advertising Contract and Insertion Order screens are going to be moved to the new user interface. (This has already been done for the table views.) Improvements can often be incorporated during such a transition. Also, it is a good time to identify functional improvements and additional features in general.

We reviewed functional designs for the key screens and for every potential improvement suggestion that had been made in the last five years. Participants ranked what was most important. The clear winners were the screen improvements and support for Internet Ads.

The Data Entry Script feature (now available at MSTDAT/FST) will be included with the new screen. The Advertising Insertion Order has many data elements and every client wants a different set of them. The ability to control which fields open for input was particularly exciting. The Data Entry Script feature also lets you set default values. This feature will make it easier to enter these orders – easy enough that a sales rep will want to do it!! Guaranteed!

Many thanks to all who participated! Your input is invaluable. It is always great to work with you.

Tags: adm, mst

Module

Even More Highlights of 2008R2

by Cindy Morphew 1. June 2008 13:09

Here are even more highlights of the latest release.

You can now include AMB agreements in inventory packages that are set up at the INVPAK workspace. You can include a CIR subscription (or a PRO product) with an AMB agreement within the same package for your customers, and offer package pricing. Currently, only single-access-point agreements may be used with this feature.
A new view, OPRDAT/SES, tracks the history of user locations, as well as high-level activity (logging in and out, routing between views, etc.). This information could be of use in researching system problems, for example---since you have an audit trail of how users have moved through the system.
With this release, separate transaction tables have been created as associated tables to both the CPNPMO-M and CIRPMO-M tables. The new associated tables contain only the statistical portions of the current promotion tables (and omit the fields related strictly to promotion setup). These tables are updated by Advantage processes, which in turn update the main CPNPMO-M and CIRPMO-M tables when the process completes successfully.

One effect of this change is that users can now be working at the CPNPMO workspace and its views (to add and maintain promotions) while the posting processes are running.
A separate Date of Birth field has been added to the main Advantage customer record. Many clients use this information in their daily business, and previously have had to store this in a customer demographic field. The new date-format field allows the customer's birthdate to be stored directly on the main record.

For more information, contact your ACS account manager.

Tags: opr, amb, cpn, cir, customer

New Features

Is Book Club Right For You?

by Phil Montgomery 1. June 2008 13:07

There’s a lot of competition out there. So, let’s hold on to those customers we have and move them into a more loyal and active relationship with our organization, our web site, our content, our interests.

How to do that? Well, one way is to get them involved with a continuity series. A continuity series allows customers to purchase a set of related products that are released to them sequentially over a period of time. Customers join a club (they become members) by responding to your offers to join, or you can select people and automatically add them. Continuity programs give you the opportunity to periodically remind customers of your brand; the customer gets more exposure to your content and they get to “belong” to a club. Throw in some premiums and it’s a recipe for happy, loyal customers.

You can use Advantage’s Book Club module to create, run and manage these continuity series.

Continuity series are probably most common with consumer-type customers. However, there are many applications for them in the business and academic realms as well. You could easily build a Continuing Professional Education, or Certification type of program around a continuity series.

Once customers have joined a club (called a product series), processes in the Book Club module automatically:

determine which product or products they should receive next
generate orders within the MST/Product Order modules to fulfill them

Customers respond to these orders by sending payment or returning the product. Their participation record is updated as these responses are received/processed. You can adjust product offerings and the timing of order generation accordingly to determine the most effective series.

Book Club gives you lots of room to be creative with the offerings – different products, premiums, pre-notifications, timing, pricing, even sweepstakes – and lots of flexibility in handling customer requests for exceptions.

Statistics are maintained as customers move through the product offers at several levels - at the member, series, and sequence levels, for example. You can analyze the success of the operations through on-line displays (at the BCLINQ workspace), through standard analysis reports, or through user-defined reports that you create.

The orders flow through the Product Order module and use the same inventoried items that are already sitting in your warehouse. The Book Club transactions ride along with your normal PRO business.

Offering a continuity series provides an additional revenue stream, and builds customer loyalty. All it takes is some set-up and perhaps some additional customer service. What’s not to love about this? Talk to your ACS representative today about the Book Club module.

Tags: bcl, pro

General | Module

Major Projects in High Gear

by Timothy Zapawa 1. June 2008 12:03

The ACS Major Projects team works primarily on implementations and new business conversions. During these projects, we cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. For those of you who have worked on projects with my team, you're likely all too familiar with the long hours and tight deadlines we all frequently work through (with the help of plenty of caffeine).

We are less than halfway through 2008, and this year has already been a busy one for the Major Projects team. We've seen four large projects go live, and we’re actively engaged in several other projects in varying stages of implementation. Additionally, several of my team members have either written or managed data conversion projects for their clients. After completing more than a dozen conversions over the past 18 months, several of our clients have found that it's better for them to have ACS do the data conversion programming and reconciliation rather than hiring and training resources. ACS experts can quickly dive into the data, understand it, and transfer it into Advantage much faster than internal programmers or external contractors who have to spend a lot of time learning the meanings of Advantage fields and conversion processes. Additionally, the programming, reconciliation, and management costs are often only slightly higher with ACS than when compared with the costs to train, assist, and manage this activity for the clients who have opted to work on the conversion programming themselves.

In addition to implementation, upgrade, and data conversion projects, the Major Projects team is also engaged in several other key initiatives, both internally and with some of our clients. This includes a Systems Analysis Audit program, in which an ACS systems analyst conducts a comprehensive systems analysis of a client's IT administration of the Advantage system. Together with the ACS Systems team, the Major Projects team plans to review progress during our annual training week in October. You'll also be hearing more from me regarding the Systems Analysis Audit program on the AdvantagePoint blog.

In order to keep up with all the changing technology and project management demands, the project managers on my team are working on their professional certifications and continuing education programs. This year, the Major Projects team members are wrapping up their intermediate-level Microsoft technical certifications and they have all either obtained, or are on track to obtain, the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. Many congratulations to the team for their hard work and success on this professional development front!

Tags: projects

General

Transferring Payments with Ease by Molly Mathe

by Molly Mathe 1. June 2008 12:01

Advantage allows you to transfer credits from one customer to another. This allows you to apply payments from one customer to invoices of another customer.

Open Control Group to Hold Transfers
Create a credit control group at ARPCGP that will hold the transfers along with the new applications.

Delete Any Unposted Applications
Make sure your vouchers do not have any unposted applications on them. If they do, either post them first or delete them using the DAP function at ARPCSH.

Move Voucher to New Control Group
At ARPCSH, move your voucher from the system generated CTG for unapplied credits to your newly created control group.

Search for the voucher in your system generated CTG for unapplied credits
Use the MUC function to move the voucher to your new CTG

Search for Credit in New CTG
At ARPCSH, search for the credit using the S function on your newly created CTG

Transfer Credit to new CTM

Use the AP function and enter the new CTG and your voucher #
Zero out any automatic application that was made
Click the XFER button
Toggle to “OUT”
Enter new CTM# in TO: field
Enter amount you are transferring
Click ADD
Escape to function box.

New Voucher# for XFER
A new voucher number is created for the transferred credit. Search your new CTG for the voucher and use the AP function to apply it to invoice(s) as normal.

Edit and release your new CTG at ARPCGP or using ARP132/ARP136.

Tags: molly minute, arp,

Tech Tip