Does your business include the ability for customers to become members of a club, group, society or other such organization? If so, the Membership (MBR) module may be right for you.

MBR allows you to manage one - or more - membership organizations, and administer related tasks such as dues collection, fulfillment of membership journals and newsletters, and participation in organizational activities (councils, discussion groups, etc.). Actually, any membership activity for which you charge a recurring fee can be set up as a participation element within the organization.

Users have a lot of flexibility in setting up the benefit-of-membership tables, where you define the benefits that a member receives. You might choose to base them on a certain level of membership or perhaps on a "trigger" purchase of another membership element. All fulfillment activity occurs through the Circulation module, whose extensive analysis reports can be used to track Membership promotion responses, renewal rates, etc.

Members are recorded within the Advantage customer file. A customer's presence within a membership organization begins with the member record, which has the flexibility to handle multiple types and levels of membership. You can set up user fields for entry of data elements needed by the membership organization.
A customer's involvement--his or her participation--within a membership organization is represented by publication codes within the Circulation module. This means you can track expiration dates and use the Circulation module's powerful renewal features.

Participation elements can be actual publications, which are fulfilled like any other journal/magazine. Or they can represent an activity for which the member is billed, but which don’t involve specific fulfillment actions.
Tables within the Membership module allow you to establish participation rules that are checked during entry of a membership order. This gives you many options in your offer, such as:

•  becoming a member means you automatically subscribe (as part of the membership fee) to the membership organization's publication,

or that members have a choice of benefit-of-membership elements, such as:

• becoming a member gives you a choice of publications---for example "up to 3 pubs." You can vary the number and titles of these publications by membership level. For example, perhaps your Gold members are entitled to choose up to 3 premium publications, while your Silver members are entitled to choose up to 2.

Membership transactions are tightly integrated with other Advantage modules. Membership orders are entered within Master Order Entry (MST module). Certain changes to a customer's membership elements are made at the MSTDAT/SVC view, while a few specialized modification transactions occur at MBR-dedicated workspaces and views. Orders can be entered with payment, or billed through the Accounts Receivable module (ARP).
For more information about the MBR module, contact your Advantage Account Manager or Ken Nemerovski.

ACS sera présent au Congrès de la Presse Française, le 19, 20 et 21 novembre, à Lyon. Alors que l’ensemble de la profession sera rassemblée autour du thème « La Presse à l’Offensive », ACS présentera toutes les possibilités que le logiciel Advantage offre pour transformer cette accroche en réalité : approche « client », développement multi-produit, intégration multi canal, optimisation de la distribution et du fulfillment… Un atelier spécifique de présentation, le jeudi 20 novembre 2008 à 16h45, permettra au plus grand nombre d’éditeurs de découvrir les principaux points forts de notre solution. Si vous êtes présents au Congrès, venez nous retrouver sur notre emplacement (C4) et découvrez la nouvelle version 2008R3 (tout le programme du congrès : http://www.congresdelapresse.com ).

ACS will be exhibiting at the French Publishing Congress, November 19 - 21 in Lyon, France. The theme is "Publishing on the Offensive," and ACS will present all that Advantage offers to turn this into reality: customer service, multi-product development, multi-channel integration, optimization of distribution and fulfillment… On November 20th, 2008, at 4:45 p.m., ACS will present a workshop demonstrating the benefits and strengths of the Advantage solution. If you attend the Congress, you can find ACS at location (C4) and view Advantage revision 2008R3. (For a full description of the congress, click here: http://www.congresdelapresse.com)

Weekly Reader recently implemented the Access Management and Billing (AMB) module in a quick and easy project that went remarkably smoothly. Susanne Goebel, Manager of Advantage Support and Planning, said that the set-up was relatively simple and she was pleased that they were able to roll out the module and go live in less than a month. She added that ACS staff - Tom Hermans and John Sheehy - were extremely helpful.

AMB allows Weekly Reader to offer online access to archived issues and to be able to charge for the service based on the subscriber status. WR has found that teachers, and subscribers in other specialized markets, are more willing now to give their email addresses, making it more feasible for them to offer more online access products.

Weekly Reader also uses AMB for their division called Facts for Learning. That organization offers online access to research content.

Advantage users at Weekly Reader are very satisfied with the functionality of the module. "AMB will open doors of opportunity for us by allowing for the management and fulfillment of on-line and virtual products," says Susanne.

Once upon a time, a multi-title publisher would have multiple boxes of subscriber files to handle fulfillment. At some point, these card files went onto computer systems, but remained segmented by title. Then a revolution came along: a single customer database. First, this meant that a subscriber to two publications would have just one customer record in the database. Then later, it meant that a subscriber to two titles, who purchased books and other products, who also attended a conference and did some advertising and bought online content, still had just one customer record in the database. Marketers were thrilled! In one place, they could see everything such a customer had done– all the buying behavior, payment patterns, responses to promotions and even demographic information. They had all of this information in one database, and since it was the transactional database, this information was accurate, up-to-date, and accessible. (Well, accessible might have come later.)

Somewhere in here came e-commerce, and customer self-service, and the API and lots of wonderful technology that made it easy for readers to subscribe, purchase and read content. Software came along that could tell the publisher how much their customers were actually using the content. Marketers began to move away from print marketing into electronic marketing. The message about their products went out quicker and at less cost than with traditional direct mail.

Of course, there were some challenges in all this, like duplicate customers, marketers who had separate marketing databases, and circulation directors who couldn’t get quick answers to questions about their circulation, renewal rates and the like. It used to be that sales people would make a deal and then inform the company of what it had to do to live up to the promised terms of the deal. The rest of the company would roll their eyes and try to figure out how to meet the unchecked promises.

But times have changed. Now technology is in a position to drive the business. In fact, we find that many clients have the latest technology but aren’t fully exploiting it. I realize that I’m uniquely unqualified to say this, but publishers are so busy trying to develop their audience they haven’t always stopped to look at what tools they might already have in place to jump-start their efforts. The integrated database is one of them. With Advantage, you have at your beck and call an enabler of audience development like no other. This integrated database provides you with enough information to keep your marketers busy around the clock. Demographics, buying patterns, RFM scoring, cross-selling and the ability to query the transactional database for online, real-time information are just some of the catalysts to your audience development. Loyalty-building functionality in Advantage will help keep your audience loyal to your brand. Such things include not only frequent buyer programs, sweepstakes promotions, coupons and other such hooks but excellent customer care tools. It is my strong belief that one of the best ways of keeping your audience loyal is to treat them like royalty. Getting their information into your system quickly and accurately is a great way to start, and scanning and imaging are just two examples of many ways to get this accomplished.

If you have one group handling print and another handling e-media, you are missing something. Media is media, from our perspective, and marketing any form of it should be a concentrated, integrated, sophisticated, comprehensive, successful and fun effort. Advantage is there to really push your audience development. Give us a call. We’re here to support your growth.

Users of Advantage software can be found all over the world; in fact, some of the locations may surprise you. The interactive map above identifies each location where Advantage is in use.  To zoom in on a particular area, click on the country or draw a box around the specific area. Clicking on a dot will take you to the homepage of that client. To return to the global view, click anywhere on the map without a dot.  Clicking on land will zoom to that whole country.  Clicking on water will zoom out to the entire world.

Here is a list of all the Advantage user locations we are aware of. If we missed a location for your company, please email me at cmorp@advantagecs.com and I'll be sure and add it. The map will be appearing on our new website, coming soon.

ACP Magazines - Auckland, New Zealand
ACP Magazines - Sydney, Australia
Agora Publishing - Baltimore, MD
Agora Publishing - Waterford, Ireland
Agora Publishing - London, England
Agora Publishing - Sydney, Australia
Agora Publishing - Paris, France
Agora Publishing - Delray Beach, FL
Agora Publishing - Skipton Yorkshire, England
Agora Publishing - Johannesburg, South Africa
Agora Publishing - Bonn, Germany
Agora Publishing - Melbourne, Australia
American Master Products - New Hudson, MI
American Medical Association - Chicago, IL
American Medical Association - Berlin, Germany
American Psychiatric Association - Arlington, VA
Army Times Publishing - Springfield, VA
Bayard Presse - Paris, France
Bayard Presse - Bratislava, Slovakia
Bayard Presse - Madagascar
Boy Scouts of America - Irving, TX
Clement Publishing - Concordville, PA
Crain Communications - Detroit, MI
ELI Research - Durham, NC
Farm Progress Companies - St. Charles, IL
God's World Publications - Asheville, NC
Health Communications - Deerfield Beach, FL
Horizon Publishing - Hammond, IN
Kalmbach Publishing - Waukesha, WI
Lee Agri-Media - Bismarck, ND
Lee Agri-Media - Davenport, IA
Maney Publishing - Leeds, England
Mary Ann Liebert Inc. - Larchmont, NY
Massachusetts Medical Society - Berlin, Germany
Massachusetts Medical Society - Waltham, MA
Motor Information Systems - Troy, MI
National Auto Research - Gainesville, GA
North American Membership - Minnetonka, MN
Oakstone Publishing - Birmingham, AL
Ogden Publishing - Topeka, KS
Our Sunday Visitor - Huntington, IN
Oxford University Press - Oxford, England
Pacific Press - Nampa, ID
Palm Coast Data Palm Coast, FL
Penton Media - Sussex, England
Penton Media - Overland Park, KS
Reed Elsevier New Providence - New Providence, NJ
Saga Publishing - Folkestone, England
SRDS Inc. - Des Plaines, IL
St. Anthony Messenger Press - Cincinnati, OH
The Taunton Press - Newtown, CT
Thomson-Reuters - London, England
TN Marketing - Plymouth, MN
Traplet - Malvern, England
United Communications Group - Gaithersburg, MD
Unity School - Unity Village, MO
Weekly Reader - Delran, NJ
Weekly Reader - Pleasantville, NY
Wolters Kluwer Health - Hagerstown, MD
Wolters Kluwer Health - Hong Kong
Wolters Kluwer Health - New Delhi, India
Wolters Kluwer Health - Tokyo, Japan
Wolters Kluwer Health - Manila, Philippines
Wolters Kluwer Health - London, England
Wolters Kluwer Health - Barcelona, Spain
Wolters Kluwer Health - Baltimore, MD
Wolters Kluwer Health - Philadelphia, PA
Wolters Kluwer Health - St. Louis, MO
Wolters Kluwer Health - Indianapolis, IN
Wolters Kluwer Health - Norwood, MA
Wolters Kluwer Health - Skokie, IL
Wolters Kluwer Health - Ambler, PA
Wolters Kluwer Health - Dallas, TX
Wolters Kluwer Health - Sydney, Australia