The Importance Of Unlocks

Sales Manager Joe Jardine blogs about the importance of making sure your software unlocks are available on time...

Lastminute.com is for holidays not software.

As most customers are aware your Access software is registration unlock code driven. Each year when you renew you need to apply a new unlock to extend the licence term. If you do not renew or if you do not apply the new unlock the software will provide users with notifications to warn you that the software will expire and after a short while the software will become locked preventing people from logging in. Likewise if you wish to extend your software’s functionality by perhaps purchasing a new module or adding extra users/employees then again we will supply you with a new registration unlock key.

New registration unlocks are generated by the software authors ‘Access UK’ rather than ‘Atlas’ your Solutions Partner. Access have always had a policy whereby they state that they will turnaround new unlocks within three working days or customers can pay a £25 premium for same day delivery. In the past Access have been promptly releasing the unlock codes within 24 hours of orders being placed and this has become recognised as the norm. More recently we have noticed that this is creeping towards 48 hours. This turnaround creep is being caused by an ever increasing customer base with thousands of licences to maintain, orders to process and some periods are busier than others, for example the recent Payroll Year end was manic! Access UK still strive for new registration unlocks within three days but where customers are used to same day turnaround we want to encourage you to place orders with sufficient time to meet your deadlines and avoid downtime.

ProspectSoft Update

Craig and Joe blog about this quarter’s ProspectSoft Partner Day where the latest exciting news, version releases, training and accreditation schedules and a roadmap for what the future holds were all revealed.
Version Information

Several mini scenario demonstrations were provided by some of the key ProspectSoft team members including MD Andrew Ardron and Sales Director Stuart McLaren.

ProspectSoft CRM 6.02.002 is now available. Having listened to customer feedback this version addresses introduces some efficiencies and addresses some of the users frustrations. New features include the ability to search for existing database records that are near a postcode, clickable URLs from within reports, adding an individual to a campaign from the contact record screen, the option to cancel quotes or orders and then re-open, plus much much more.

It was announced that 6.03.000 is in QA testing and will be released later in the year. Following is a mini list to provide you with a sneak preview of what is on the way. The VAT calculator is being re-written so that quotes can be built faster, a ‘recent objects’ feature is being introduced similar to ‘Recent Documents’ that is available in Microsoft Word, the Save to CRM feature is becoming more ‘intelligent’ so that is only requires 2 or 3 clicks and is able to make certain assumptions about what the user wishes to do and the telephony integration module will now sit in the Windows system tray rather than embedded in ProspectSoft.

Having the Telephony sitting outside of the CRM does offer significant benefit. For instance, you could be working in MS Word or MS Outlook and when someone phones in their CRM record pops up on your screen. Imagine being able to say Good Morning Mr Jones thank you for calling Atlas!

The Content Management Solution is now up to version 3.0. The latest enhancements include a new easy to navigate menu structure and a re-write of some of the core code that in bench tests resulted in pages loading at least 25% quicker.

Webinars

There is going to be a series of customer webinars available during May and June. These will offer plenty of hints and tips on back to basics core functionality, marketing, sales management and after sales. We will inform you of the dates as soon as they have been fixed. Watch this space.

New Director

From all at Atlas a big congratulations goes out to Jon Brewer, who has been promoted and is now ProspectSoft’s Client Services Director. Jon has worked at ProspectSoft for many years and is a popular figure at customer events. Jon is very experienced in the subject of CRM and has extensive product knowledge, we know he will make some valuable contributions and improvements to the helpdesk team as well as assist existing customers with any new requirements they may have.

Awards

Last year ProspectSoft won “Best Small or Medium Sized Enterprise” at the “Rate my Placement” awards and this year they made it to the final four shortlist but were pipped at the post. However Vicki Watmough their Sales and Marketing assistance did scoop the award for graduate placement company of the year for “best Student contribution”. ProspectSoft has since offered Vicki the job as Partner Liaison and she has accepted and will join full time once she has completed her degree in July.

Focussed Efforts

Having spent the last six months working hard on e-commerce, content management and email marketing, ProspectSoft and us Partners will be concentrating our efforts during quarter two back on the core topic of CRM. In particular we’ll be looking at tracking and recording all company communications, pro-actively shrinking the sales cycle, and reporting.

Performance

This Q2 meeting announced that last year was another record achieving year with ProspectSoft continuing to grow from strength to strength. Also Q1 had outperformed the same three months for last year so this year was already off to a good start. ProspectSoft only sell via Partners and therefore Managing Director Andrew Ardron thanked us all for our efforts, and then in his very next breath announced that our targets for next year were being increased significantly! He accounted the success to the roaring trade in web solutions and eCommerce.

If you would like to discuss your CRM requirements or learn more about the ProspectSoft CRM offering please do not hesitate to contact our sales team on 0333 666 3330 or email us at newsletter@atlasbiz.com.

Atlas Customers 'Go Ape' After Event Day Success

Atlas successfully ran our QlikTalk event this week at our customer Go Ape's Delamere site. You can read about exactly what a QlikTalk is and how it was received on our main site here and here. The Atlas Blog was also present at the even and we captured some of the images that told the story of the day...

David (far left) and Darryl (far right) from QlikTech set up the room with Joe (second from right) and Craig (second from left) from Atlas.

The Shell Forrest Classroom was a great location from which to launch the event.

Located towards the rear of the Delamere cafe at Delamere forest we had to procure extra seats to fit all the attendees in!

Jan from Go Ape gave the first talk which was well received by those in attendance.

Jan discussed why Go Ape had chosen the QlikView product and what they had achieved with it so far.

After a brief break for coffee, Darryl and David (out of shot) delivered a presentation about how other companies have put QlikView to good use.

We were lucky to largely avoid the rain on the day and served attendees a buffet lunch outside the classroom.

After lunch attendees were invited to join Atlas on their very own Go Ape experience. Joe and Tony Butler from Koch Glitsch get ready by reading the safety instructions.

The team from Venture, all looking very nervous!

Our brave Go Ape participants get in to their harnesses, led by David (centre) from QlikTech.

Craig crosses one of the first obstacles...

... and then sets off down a zip wire into deepest Delamere!

Leanne from Sense lands perfectly at the end of one of the courses' five 'stages'.

Joe takes care when crossing one of the later obstacles.

With the lake in the background, Leanne swings across to the next platform...

... and watches on as Craig and Tony prepare for the next zip wire...

... which Tony is first to attempt.

Atlas would like to thank all of the customers who attended the event. We hope you found it as unique, lively and engaging as we all did!