CRMtimes - September / October 2002 Edition
CRMtimes is the eNewsletter for Business Managers implementing CRM (Customer Relationship
Management) Systems - including Contact Management, Sales Force Automation, Help Desk and
Marketing. CRMtimes is aimed specifically at small to medium sized organisations - with 3
to 50 employees.
In this issue
* Welcome
* Commence RM 2.1 New Features
* AccountLink Bi-directional Interface From MYOB to Commence
* Commence Maintenance And Support
* Upgrade To Commence 2.1
* Sales Tip - Body Language On The Phone?
* Technical Desk - Backing Up Your Commence Data
* Forms Expert - Capitalising Names And Checking Phone Numbers
* Your Comments And Suggestions
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Welcome to the October Edition of CRMtimes. In this eNewsletter
we are aiming to bring you information that will be useful in your business as you
implement and improve on your Customer Information Management system. As well as providing
information about Commence RM, the award winning CRM system for small to medium size
business, we will update you on associated products and provide technical tips. We will
even give you the occasional sales and support tip that will help you to win more sales or
improve customer satisfaction.
For our customers already using Commence we will be bringing you some technical tips to
help you get more value from your investment. In this issue we examine backup strategies
and VBscripting to check form data.
We have a special web site dedicated to CRMtimes: http://CRMtimes.aus.com.au (note there is no "www"). Each
issue of CRMtimes is intended to be quick and easy to read. Just scan over the paragraph
or so in the email, then if you want more information, follow the link to the full article
on the web site. The web site will also hold previous issues.
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Commence has now released the latest version: Commence RM 2.1 Designer Edition.
In this release, Commence have focused on the underlying toolkit technology and have
provided major new functionality:
- New Report Designer and Viewer offering full control over appearance of printed and
screen reports.
- Commence Connect for E-mail provides a new solution for in-house email campaigns.
Commence Connect can email any number of files in a variety of formats including plain
text, html, Word, RTF and PDF.
- Enhanced Word 2000/XP integration expanding use of MS Word document formats to reduce
time spent on correspondence tasks and provide tighter integration with Commence.
- Enhanced Outlook integration
- Various new features and improvements
To review full details about the new release visit: http://CRMtimes.aus.com.au/1002/rm21newfeatures.htm
Download an evaluation of Commence RM 2.1 from
http://www.aus.com.au/commence_eval/downloads.htm
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With Commence RM Australian Edition v8, we have introduced AccountLink - a
bi-directional interface from Commence to MYOB! This allows you to share information with
your accounting department using MYOB. Your sales people will always have the latest
information on invoices issued / product shipped, and changes you make to client details
in Commence will be updated automatically back in MYOB.
Commence is the first CRM package for small to medium sized businesses, to be truly
integrated with MYOB!
For more information about AccountLink visit:
http://CRMtimes.aus.com.au/1002/accountlink.htm
Download an evaluation of AccountLink from
http://www.aus.com.au/commence_eval/downloads.htm
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Did you know that with Commence RM we now offer maintenance, which covers free
upgrades and technical support? Best of all, the cost of the maintenance is less than the
current cost of an upgrade! Details of the maintenance plan:
http://CRMtimes.aus.com.au/1002/maintenance.htm
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If you have not taken the opportunity to upgrade to the latest Commence software,
now is the time to upgrade to our newest version 2.1 and get outstanding value at an
attractive price. There is an upgrade path from previous versions of Commence (v3
onwards), and all your data will be preserved.
Commence has a policy to support the current version of the product and one prior version.
As such, Commence 2000 has reached end of life and will no longer be sold or supported
after October 31st. Those customers on a support plan with Commence 2000 will of
course be supported through to the expiration date of their agreement.
Information on upgrades is available at:
http://CRMtimes.aus.com.au/1002/update.htm
Download an evaluation of Commence RM 2.1 from
http://www.aus.com.au/commence_eval/downloads.htm
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Did you realise that the way words are spoken are five times more important than
the words we use? Body Language is more than just our posture and how we appear in a
meeting; it is also our tone of voice over the phone. Factors such as Inflection, Volume,
Pace and Intensity have a major impact on the message we convey.
Read on for some tips on how can you build good body language over the phone: http://CRMtimes.aus.com.au/1002/sales.htm
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In this article we outline a simple strategy to effectively backup your Commence
data. To create a reliable backup, you need to use the Commence backup mechanism - simply
copying the raw Commence data files onto tape may not work reliably and is not supported.
To learn how to set up an agent to automatically backup your data each day: http://CRMtimes.aus.com.au/1002/technical.htm
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The data you collect is a great asset for your business, and it is even more
valuable if it is accurate and "clean". You can minimise data errors through
some simple scripting and checking. For example you can automatically make the first
letter of a person's name capitalised. Or you might want to check that an Australian
telephone number has 10 digits.
We provide working scripts to enable these functions: http://CRMtimes.aus.com.au/1002/forms.htm
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This has been the first issue of CRMtimes. We hope you have enjoyed reading this
eNewsletter and have found something of value.
We would welcome any feedback, suggestions or requests for future articles. In particular,
is the plain text format preferred or would you rather have an html formatted document? Do
you like the brief description to aid quickly scanning the key points or would you prefer
more detail instead of linking to the web site?
Please email any comments to CRMtimes@aus.com.au.
Thank You!
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CRMtimes is published bi-monthly by Advanced User Systems Pty Ltd. |
