Philippe van Mastrigt has been appointed the ACS Director for European Operations.  In this role, Philippe provides a permanent ACS presence in Europe and the UK, working closely with current and prospective Advantage clients.  Philippe's move to ACS was made possible through his work with Bayard Presse, ACS' first major client in France. Philippe led a successful implementation of Advantage in 2007, and he now continues to provide services for this major French publisher as an ACS consultant.

"Philippe provides for ACS a new level of competency in serving our clients in the publishing marketplace in Europe," explains Tom Burbeck, ACS Executive Vice President. "His 11 years' experience at one of the top five publishers in France, combined with his competency in publishing fulfillment, marketing, and project management, and his many contacts in the publishing industry, make Philippe the perfect ACS executive for ACS/Europe.  With Philippe's lead, ACS will carry on the mission already well underway to bring the Advantage software to a European marketplace hungry for 21st century technology leveraged to address the radical new demands faced by the publishing world." 

Philippe's responsibilities will include supporting ACS marketing and sales, serving as project director for implementation projects and building partnerships.  He will offer ACS teams from Ann Arbor a local presence to support business activity and will work closely with them.  His appointment demonstrates the company's commitment to further develop its presence in Europe, and allows it to offer existing—and future—UK and French clients enhanced support, as well as to strengthen the European focus in product and business orientations.

"Building ACS's structure for Europe is an exciting challenge after my 15+ years in the fulfillment business and in the publishing world," says Philippe. "The quality of the software and the caliber of ACS staff give me confidence to take this new step.  European publishers need innovation and professional expertise to face the large challenge of reworking their business model around brand extension, digital content and multi-channel marketing.  I'm happy to represent an American company with strong business values; one that will provide viable solutions in an area of great importance to the European economy.  I consider my task as creating a link between the two market places; helping ACS expand internationally, and bringing innovation from the European marketplace to benefit ACS clients in the United States and Australia."

Prior to 2008, Philippe served as the Director for Projects and Client Marketing at Bayard Presse. Philippe's many responsibilities over the past 10 years at Bayard Presse included project management for major corporate initiatives, direct marketing, data mining, customer relationship management, database marketing, business reporting and analytics, and controller functions.  Philippe started his career at France's leading cosmetic mail order company Yves Rocher.  He is a 1994 graduate of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (H.E.C.), Paris. Philippe speaks French, English, and Dutch.

Philippe, his wife, Simone, and their two daughters reside in Paris.  In his leisure hours, Philippe enjoys history books and films and genealogical research and writing about his family roots.  The van Mastrigt family enjoys regular visits to Corsica to relax with their extended family and leave behind the hectic Parisian life.

On July 7, 2009, an historic meeting took place in London.  The ACS clients in the European region came together to meet one another, talk about their participation in the Advantage Users Group, view presentations on product direction at ACS, hear about some of our latest features and spend plenty of time networking.  Five clients were represented at this first meeting, with a total of 20 attendees.

The day began with an introduction and news update from me (VP and Chief Product Manager at ACS), followed by a presentation about AUG from Andy Wright, Advantage Administrator at Oxford University Press.

Andy's presentation was the catalyst for a lively discussion about meeting together regularly in the EU region as well as participating in the AUG meetings each year in the US.  Many of the ACS clients at this meeting share similar challenges, and plans were made to address these via future meetings.  The EU ACS clients are a diverse group of publishers, from consumer to special interest to academic/scholarly.  Nevertheless, they found many things in common, such as what resources and skills are needed to effectively manage the system.

It was an excellent morning, followed by a networking lunch and then the software direction presentation which I had given at the AUG meeting in January.  This was followed by a presentation of new features by Philippe van Mastrigt, Director of European Operations for ACS.

Andy—who is the current chairman of the AUG Steering Committee-- had this to say about the day:  "I'm very encouraged by both the turnout and the positive attitude of those who gave up their time to attend. I believe we have the beginnings of a group who are prepared to make the effort to share their knowledge to help each other in their day-to-day work. There are areas of specific interest to European businesses and we now have a group that can jointly work on these with ACS."

All in all, the feedback we received was that the day was a tremendous success and well worth the trip for those able to attend.  We will keep you posted on further developments for meetings of this group.

Chris Elson and Ben Cartwright of Saga Magazine

Sam Hinkley, Claire Kearney & Megan Ruddock of Oxford University Press

Kirsten Woolley & Denise Feeley of Maney Publishing, Andy Wright of Oxford University Press, Tom Burbeck of ACS

Andy Wright discusses future meetings of the EU User Group

Emmanuel Chevalier & Jean-Philippe Martin of Bayard Presse listen to Sam Hinkley of Oxford University Press

Dan Heffernan talks about what's new at ACS

Iain Cunningham, Jeff Sturgess & Sebastien Fournier from Agora

Tony Stephenson & Cat Barker from Traplet

Philippe van Mastrigt presents new Advantage features

Bayard's Product Order (PRO) activity--called VPC (Vente par Correspondance) in French--went live on Advantage in early January 2009.  Establishing a multi-product, multi-channel approach around its customers was a key component of Bayard's decision to move the VPC business onto Advantage. Bayard chose Advantage initially in large part because of the multi-product capabilities and with PRO running on Advantage, they are able to perform total e-commerce integration.

Bayard's implementation strategy called for moving the product order business onto Advantage in a second phase, after the initial implementation of subscriptions was successfully completed in July 2007. This strategy enabled Bayard to gain significant expertise with the Advantage Inventory and Product Order modules through its sophisticated handling and fulfillment of premiums linked to subscriptions. Thus, when the VPC project started, Bayard staff already had considerable training and expertise with the inventory and product order handling in Advantage. This allowed Bayard to rapidly move the 150k+ annual VPC orders onto Advantage.

Prior to running VPC on Advantage, Bayard's product order activity was fully outsourced and separated from its subscription business. Now, with both subscriptions and VPC running on Advantage, opportunities for integrated customer service and marketing have been greatly increased. Bayard has since gone live on the 2009r1 revision and is looking forward to completing their web integration project, planned for go live soon.

The VPC project was run by a core team around Emmanuel Chevalier, including Alexis Berniot (administration), Naura Talbi (set up), Catherine Galland and Virginie Motte (fulfillment), Astrid Neujahr (customer service) and Alain Dubois (distribution). It was supported by Philippe van Mastrigt and Timothy Zapawa at ACS.

At SVCDAT/ARP, the customer service A/R view in Advantage, you can quickly add a payment to an invoice on a customer's account using the Add Payment button or right-click action. Unless you have received Alert 254096, however, adding payment to a partially paid order may create a payment for the full order amount instead of the remaining amount due.

If this alert applies to your revision of Advantage, you may read about it here.

If you are within the affected revisions for this alert, please contact the Support Center or your ACS representative. We can quickly adjust the Add Payment action so that it performs correctly for partially paid invoices. In the meantime, please note the workaround of using ARPCSH instead to enter payment for a partially paid invoice.

This workaround is just one of dozens of Advantage Alerts, which form a knowledge-base of software conditions that may affect your business. Critical alerts (those that are high frequency or severe in nature) are emailed directly to your inbox using Advantage's communication templates. We also use the Alert system to send general customer service announcements or reminders to you, such as holiday office hours and the like.

If you are not currently receiving email alerts, but would like to, simply send a request to the Support Center asking to be added as a system administrator for your company. Then you will receive all alerts that may affect your operation.

You can also view or search for alerts that affect your Advantage revision by logging in to the ACS support website and using the Knowledge Base links at the left.  For more information about alerts, please contact Angie Markel.

ACS is pleased to welcome Derek Johnson as a new employee.  Derek is joining the eCommerce and Enterprise Integration team headed by Matt Varblow, and comes to ACS with experience in software development in a .NET environment.

Derek attended Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, which is about as far north as you can go without falling into Lake Superior.  (The college is 570 miles from Detroit, for example.)

Derek studied electrical engineering and after graduation, accepted a job in Ann Arbor for a defense contractor firm where he worked on inertial navigation systems.  He moved from there to an automotive supplier, where he wrote control software for large machines that tested engines and transmissions.  Before coming to ACS, his previous position was at a company that developed consulting-ware for companies that did not have an IT department of their own.  Derek was responsible for both writing software and maintaining it.  He describes this previous experience as "two years of hard-core .NET boot-camp."

A native of Dexter, Michigan, Derek married his high school sweetheart, Eva.  She also attended Michigan Tech, but after marriage and graduation, they went back to their hometown area.  Derek and Eva have two sons, Collin, 5, and Josh, 3, and they currently live in Ypsilanti.  Derek greatly enjoys spending time with his family and their friends, and his hobbies include gardening and home-brewing his own beer.

Welcome, Derek, to the ACS family!

Postscript to story:

Several ACS employees knew Derek from high school and decided to make his first day memorable.  They dug through the ACS archives and the business equivalent of an attic and managed to furnish Derek's work area as it might have been a number of years ago.  On his desk was a word processing machine circa mid-1980's, a bottle of Wite-Out, a phone modem, and a"Cobol for Dummies" book.  Windows 95--and older--manuals populated his bookshelf, along with several magnetic tapes, floppy disks and even some reports printed on green-bar paper.  All it needed was Madonna playing on the radio for you to think you had stepped back in time.

ACS is offering two multi-session webinars in late September.  Each webinar will consist of two different sessions, with an exercise or quiz to be completed after the first session in preparation for the second.

On September 21st and 23rd, Mike McCarren will provide information about setting up and maintaining Customer Service responses; both via E-mail and Mail Merge.  This was a popular topic last year.  Don't miss out!

On the heels of this training session, Daryl Vautour will provide some in-depth training on reviewing process logs (proclogs).  He'll also cover some techniques used to better review and handle nightly processing.  These sessions will be presented on September 30th and October 2nd. Reserve your spot at the webinar registration page.

The 2009 Advantage Training Week will take place in Ann Arbor September 15-18.   We have an outstanding program of popular training courses led by experienced ACS trainers.  The courses offered are in response to surveys taken a few months ago from you … the Advantage user community.  To encourage participation even further, we have reduced the course fees from last year and have increased the discount for those registering for three full class days.

The due date for Training Week registrations is August 17.  After reviewing the brochure, feel free to contact your Account Manager or me if you have any questions.  I look forward to receiving your registration and seeing you in September.

2009 Training Week Brochure (PDF - 205.45 kb)

The Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), organized in 1972, is the independent, private-sector organization with responsibility for the oversight, administration, and finances of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB).  The FASB was established by the FAF in 1973, and has been delegated the authority to establish standards of financial accounting and reporting for private-sector entities, including business and not-for-profit organizations.  The GASB, organized by the FAF in 1984, has been delegated the authority to establish standards of financial accounting and reporting for state and local governmental entities.  The pronouncements of both the FASB and GASB are recognized as generally accepted and authoritative.

Based in Norwalk, Connecticut, FAF provides online, CD-ROM, print, and subscription services comprising the accounting standards promulgated by the FASB and GASB.  A major restructuring of the FASB pronouncements into a topically organized structure required the development of an online research system, the FASB Accounting Standards Codification™.  In support of this change, along with a redesign of their web store, they implemented the AMB and WEB modules, which went into live production on July 1st.

Eric Burbeck served as the ACS project manager for this endeavor.

French publisher Vidal began live production use of Advantage on the last day of June.  Located in Issy-les-Moulineaux, just outside of Paris, Vidal publishes medical information to French healthcare professionals.  VIDAL's main drug compendium is the indispensable reference for French healthcare professionals in their everyday practice. It is available in print, on CD-ROM and on a website. The product is the equivalent of both First Data Bank and PDR in US products.

They also publish a variety of other products including: books, electronic subscriptions, subscription-based newsletters, advertising and other one-off products.

The Vidal team included Claire Baldeyrou as the executive sponsor and Martine Thiery as the project manager.  Levi Hyssong served as the ACS project manager, and he worked closely with Philippe van-Mastrigt as the European Project Director.

As the executive sponsor, Claire was quite impressed with the work of the entire implementation team and the success of the project.  "I was pleased to find that the software turned out to be ‘as advertised,'" she said.  "I would definitely recommend it to other publishers." 

Vidal Project Team, left to right: Martine Thiery (Project Manager), Sylvie Herscovici, Carole Chamillard, Nicolas Martelliere, Magali Dumas, Claire Baldeyrou (Executive Sponsor), Levi Hyssong (ACS Project Manager).