Advantage Users Group 2010
Please join us for the annual Advantage Users Group conference, which allows members the best opportunity for sharing ideas and networking with our peers from publishing companies around the globe.

This year's conference will focus on "Supporting the Marketer" and will feature topics that AUG members have identified as being of particular interest. We will once again welcome a guest speaker and vendor sponsors. See the enclosed agenda for all the details.

Dates
January 13 - 15, 2010

Location
New Orleans, LA

See the attached PDF document for more information and registration form.

AUG2010.pdf (93.94 kb)

Fall is here in Michigan. The carefree lazy days of summer have faded away.  For some of us, it's time to adjust to new schedules, figure out how to juggle kids' school, and make that difficult transition to a season of much shorter and colder days.  For me, the fun part about fall is shopping for new clothes.  Of course, before I cram my closets with new outfits, I need to get rid of the old stuff.  A clean closet holding only the essentials keeps me organized and moving efficiently every morning – important when you have two kids who ask for more sugar on top of their Count Chocula! I've found that those same principles of cutting clutter in order to operate more efficiently at home also apply to Advantage.  And, it's with that thought that I hope to inspire you to also tune-up your Advantage system by removing all the extraneous data that you no longer need.

Over time, your Advantage system can get disorderly with all sorts of files and extra data that can slow down operations and make it difficult to locate important files.  If you haven't purged any of your data since the original implementation project, perhaps it's time to think about removing data that no longer has any value.

Improving Performance Let's look at some of the main reasons for purging data:

• Faster Advantage processing time
• Decreased backups and restore periods
• Reduced disk space
• Speedier Advantage lookups

After removing your old data, you'll notice that Advantage processes run faster, because there are fewer records to process.  Smaller datasets also yields quicker lookups in Advantage views and workspaces.  Additionally, a smaller database can help reduce the necessary backup time and conserve valuable disk space.

If you are interested in realizing these benefits, there are 3 key steps you should follow for getting your Advantage system in order:

1. Ensure system options are set to retain the appropriate amounts of data
2. Run an initial set of Advantage purge processes
3. Establish an ongoing purge schedule

Setting System Options The first step is also one of the simplest tasks in cleaning up your Advantage area.  Here are some system options that you can use to limit the amount of transactional data, user reports, logs, and other temporary files that you may no longer need.

*To view images in a larger format, right click and select 'view image.'

Running an Initial Purge Once your files are organized, you're ready to perform an initial purge of old Advantage data using standard purge processes.  There are numerous purge programs available across several modules.  And, each purge process produces a sequential file of the records removed from the database; very helpful should it ever be necessary to load this data back into Advantage for viewing, analysis, or reporting.  Note that these sequential files are immediately removed from the production server and transferred to offline storage.

The purges are split out by module. The principle areas where significant disk space and performance improvements can be achieved are described in the table below.

There are also numerous purge programs that are available in other modules, such as Campaign, Royalty, and Book Club. Review Appendix B, the online help, or your associated module user guides for more information about these processes.

Implementing Ongoing Purges Many improvements result from the initial purge.  However, without an ongoing program, the database will eventually grow to its previous size and possibly even larger (see Figure 1 below).  Rather than performing a huge purge every so many years requiring careful planning and coordination, you might consider establishing an ongoing program where data is removed more frequently in smaller increments.

Figure 1: An ongoing purge can help ensure that the database does not grow back to its original size or larger.

The ongoing purge program is usually developed after the initial purge is completed, because the organization develops a better understanding of how long processes take to run, how much disk space is saved, and how lookups are improved.  This enables your organization to easily determine a suitable purge plan and frequency.  I provided some general recommendations and an outline in Appendix C that you might find helpful toward establishing your own ongoing purge program.

Getting Your Purge Underway Advantage provides comprehensive and automated data management tools that help you limit the size of your database and the number of files, reports, and logs that are maintained.  There have also been several recent enhancements made to Advantage purge processes that enable you to run purges during operational hours and also in smaller increments that can be customized through select sets.

With the start of a new season, I encourage you to look at your Advantage areas to determine whether some additional cleanup could be helpful.  Be sure to run purges in a test area if you're inexperienced with these programs or it's been a long time since a purge process has been run.  Your ACS representative can assist you with planning an initial purge, establishing an ongoing purge program, or better understanding how a purge could optimize your Advantage system.

Appendix A – OPR/ARCHV system options used by CDSCLN

Appendix B - Advantage Purge Processes

*Remember to always verify a purge process in a test environment before running in Production

*Note that customers can only be removed if there is no activity for them in other modules. Therefore, start with purging those modules first. CDS819 creates a customer purge work file (CDSCPG-R) that CDS820 uses.

Appendix C - Ongoing Purge Process Schedule

*Remember to always verify a purge process in a test environment before running in Production

*To view images in a larger format, right click and select 'view image.'

There may be times when you have an item that cannot be purchased separately, but must be included with another item, for instance personalization services, shrink-wrapping, or logos.  Advantage uses the related items feature to handle cases like this, and prohibits the entry of a related item.  It must be added with another item.

Set-up of related item

Related items are set up at INVDAT like any other item.  However, the related item check box must be checked.  You must also set up a warehouse record for the item.  Depending on the nature of the related item, it can either be stocked in inventory or set up as a non-stocked item.

Adding Related Item to Order

After adding the primary item to the order, you can right-click in the line section at MSTFST to add the related item.

Selecting Add Related Order Line… will bring up a dialog box to enter the related item and optionally override the descriptions.  Using the drop-down on the Related Item Number field will show only items at INVDAT that have the related item box checked.

The related item will be related to the order line that was entered before it.  If you later delete that line from the order, it will automatically delete the related order line.

The annual Advantage Training Week was held September 15-18, at the ACS office in Ann Arbor.  Courses included key Advantage operations areas such as Maximizing Personnel Efficiency and Powerful Contact Management … as well as sessions on Marketing Analysis Reports and Financial Management within Advantage.  In addition, a half-day User Forum addressed the concept of Product Families, Hierarchy, and Granularity.  The User Forum topic was chosen in response to continued high interest among ACS clients in the Access Management and Billing and Business Intelligence Modules.

ACS remains committed to offering training sessions that address the topics that are of highest interest to our clients.  While attendance this year was less than we hoped for, virtually all who were unable to attend cited as the primary reason their organization's travel restrictions due to current economic challenges.  Hopefully, the economy will turn around soon and, once again, we will have Training Week with each class filled to capacity, exciting client networking and, of course, a return to Whirly Ball!

The forum produced a lot of thoughtful debate.

Discussion flourishes in the Product Families, Hierarchy, and Granularity forum.

Andy Wright is known for his sweet tooth, but this is ridiculous!

So, you ask: "What happened with all those great ideas generated at the Advertising Forum in May of 2008?" (Previously reported in the June 2008 eVantage) I'm glad you asked!  Here is a summary by release.

• 2009r1   In this first release of the year, ADM's financial accounting feature was converted to use account mappings.
• 2009r2   This release provides a new ADMDAT workspace and simplifies the order database for reporting.
• 2009r3   ADM's Short-rate/Rebate feature is added to the ADMDAT workspace in this release.

Certainly the star of the show is the ADMDAT workspace, which replaces six screens that contained over 100 different functions – one screen alone had 41 different functions.  This "new-style" screen allows you to do all your Advertising work in one area.  The A/R view from customer service (SVCDAT) was also included so that you can look up that information in the same workspace.

The Data Entry Script feature was incorporated so that you can control how you want to use the many data elements involved with an Advertising order.  You can create as many scripts as you want – each prompting for the data elements appropriate for the transactions you are working on.  This is particularly helpful with the production data elements, which are numerous and used in different ways by each client.

Several new features were added along the way.

• Ad Rate – As you enter an order, you can access the Ad Rates limited by what you know about the ad the customer wants to place – enter ‘1/2' in the size field and then get a list of all the half-page ad rates, for example.  Select one, and it pops in the applicable codes to identify that ad.
• Searches – For Ad Orders and Ad Insertions a customer-search style search capability was added.  Nine of the major look-up fields can be filled in and you get a list of transactions that satisfy your criteria.  Click on one to "select" that advertiser/agency/contract.
• Tabbed views – Like SVCDAT/PRO and SVCDAT/CIR, ADMDAT allows you to much more quickly access information about an Advertising order.
• Insertions – Insertions are like order-lines for Product Order – an advertising order can have multiple insertions.  A new view was provided focusing on insertions.  This view allows you to quickly get a list of the ads you want – who is running covers for the rest of the year, for example.  The list-frame approach allows you to quickly select those and paste them into a spreadsheet.

Many thanks to the clients that have been with us along the way.  Your feedback on the design document, development schedule and WebEx views of ADMDAT as it began to take shape were invaluable.  Special thanks to the folks at Kalmbach Publishing who are in the midst of an upgrade to 2009r2 as this is being written.  The upgrade has been much more exciting for the Advertising team, to say the least.

Do you have Advertising transactions?  Consider getting a demonstration of the new and improved Advertising module.

It's Access Management and Billing (AMB) month! We've packed October full of sessions geared to give you the latest information on the most popular module of late. Using the AMB functionality, Advantage manages orders and access for all types of digital media, from your online newsletter to content databases.

October 15th and 22nd, Corey Mantel and Phil Montgomery will be demonstrating the AMB module. These are FREE sessions… don't miss out!

Later this month, John Sheehy will be providing in-depth training; "Administering the AMB module" on October 27th and "AMB Data Entry and Customer Service" on October 29th.

You can register online or contact Doug Moore to reserve your spot.

About 200 people gathered in Minneapolis in September for the first Niche Digital Conference.  As one of the event sponsors, ACS attended the conference which was chock-full of the latest in the world of digital publishing.  The conference offered tracks for CEO/Publishers, Advertising Directors/Sales and Content and Audience Development and covered topics such as "Turning Clicks to Cash," "How the Heck Do You Sell Digital?" and "Get Your SEO Groove On." 

It's important to us as a vendor to support the industry and conferences like this one serve double duty because they help us to keep current with the changes and developments in the publishing world, which is another important goal.  Meeting and talking with publishers helps us to decide what enhancements and new features to develop in upcoming releases.

If you couldn't attend, we hope to see you there next year!

Oxford University Press (OUP), a department of the University of Oxford, is the world's largest and most international university press. Their mission is to fulfill the University's objective of excellence in education, scholarship, and research. They believe in bringing the highest quality educational resources to the widest possible audience.

Founded in 1478, OUP has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, children's books, materials for teaching English as a foreign language, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and journals.  Currently they publish more than 6,000 new publications a year.

OUP approached ACS in 2001 because they needed a more flexible and powerful journal subscription platform which would enable them to sell and market their products more effectively, and to take advantage of growing sales opportunities.  The growth in online journals was leading to new ways of selling content.  Consortia deals, involving multiple institutions negotiating for access to hundreds of titles, were being handled manually, since

OUP's current subscription platform couldn't handle the ever-changing sales models.  After a thorough analysis and a design phase, OUP chose Advantage as their new journal subscription platform.

OUP now uses Advantage to manage other sources of revenue in addition to subscriptions. In the years since 2001, ACS has worked with OUP so that sales of advertising, consortia deals, miscellaneous invoicing, and reprints are now processed through Advantage.  A project is currently underway to allow OUP to sell online books on Advantage as well as journals.

Dan Heffernan, then project manager for OUP's projects, says "OUP's discipline in carrying out projects is second to none.  They control scope and risk and are completely committed from the top down to the success of every project they undertake.  They are competent, calm and completely dedicated to success.  On top of that, it is a pleasure to work with them."

Andy Wright, System Manager for Advantage at OUP: "Our business models are changing fast with the academic publishing sector moving ever more rapidly to online as their preferred method of communication, and the purchase and delivery of content.  Having a system as flexible and versatile as Advantage means I can be confident in delivering system solutions that work in the time-frame asked of me. The people at ACS understand what we are wanting to do, often anticipate our needs before they become apparent to us, and respond quickly, adapting and developing the software as required."

Some people are natural problem solvers and Ray Zick is definitely one of them, although he prefers to call it solving puzzles.  As the manager of the upgrades and IT department, he is exposed to plenty of puzzles that need to be solved.  Ray can be counted on to do what needs to be done, whatever it may be, and he does so cheerfully and with an unflappable demeanor.

"I've known Ray for a long time," says Joe Wixted of Our Sunday Visitor.  "He taught me how to program in RepDef in the early '90s.  Ray's one of those guys that, if you ask him a question and he doesn't know the answer (which I've found to be a rare occasion!), he'll work tirelessly to get the answer.  His "If you can repeat it, we can defeat it!" phrase is legendary!"

And, indeed, that phrase has proven to be true, as there has never been a bug that Ray couldn't figure out.  "There's always something else to try" is another of his familiar sayings.  And he doesn't give up.

Upgrades Project Director Paul DesRosiers frequently works with Ray on upgrades.  "Ray is great about investigating client issues, even if they don't clearly fall into his realm of expertise," says Paul.  "He either works the issue through to completion or points us to the person who can.  This is true for support tasks, upgrade questions, and even Emergency Support calls in the middle of the night."

Paul continues: "I appreciate working with Ray because he always keeps a cool and level head.  He clearly understands the technical issues as well as the business ramifications for the client."

"Ray is a great boss," says Linda Ridley.   "He provides assistance when I need it, but doesn't micro-manage.  Ray knows the software extremely well and can usually tell me which source file to look at when I need to figure something out.  He's also available to help other people in the company.   And he can do all of this with both eyes tied behind his back!" (Another famous Ray-phrase.  He is well-known for his one-liners and groan-worthy puns.)

A native of Durand, Michigan, Ray is the 12th of 13 children, or the penultimate child, as he likes to say. (Ray tells his siblings that it's because their parents found that they stopped getting better with him.)  Ray attended the University of Michigan, the 11th in his family to do so, and earned a BBA degree with a specialty in computers from there.  Ray joined ACS in 1983, right after graduating from college.  The last job he held while in college was as a bagel baker, where the ovens were set at 550 degrees.  Ray proved then that he could stand the heat in the kitchen; perhaps good training for problem-solving.

Mike Gilbert of Crain Communications appreciates Ray's tenacity. "During/after our 2005 upgrade, we had some serious system performance issues due to the size of our database," says Mike. "Ray came on-site to visit with our users and take notes.  Back at ACS, he stuck with the issue, and followed it through to its resolution."

And Nikki Lorenz of Kalmbach Publishing has this to say about him:  "I've always enjoyed working with Ray. If an issue gets to his level, it's going to be very technical in nature yet Ray can always explain what's going on in a way that I can understand – and does so without making me feel ignorant! That's a greatly appreciated skill you don't often find in "techies". I've learned a lot from Ray over the years and it's always been obvious that he truly enjoys helping the client."

Originally hired as a configurations analyst, Ray quickly moved into the systems area as a programmer and he has been involved there in some capacity ever since.  In addition to debugging and problem solving, he enjoys making things work better.  He also has the goal of dealing with issues so that his boss, Dick Hile, VP of Product Engineering, doesn't have to.

"The great thing about Ray is that he knows something about everything and everything about some things that some others know nothing about," says Dick. "He got that way through equal parts natural ability and a good-natured willingness to dive in and help customers and co-workers who are in distress."

Ray lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, Suzan, and their 3 children.  Daughter Mary, 21, and son Tony, 20, are in college, while daughter Theresa, 15, attends high school in Ann Arbor.  Ray has always spent most of his leisure time in kid-centered activities, although there are fewer of them as his children grow up.  But as the designated tech support for his extended family, the manager of the family website and email list (with 65 members), plus the manager of the choir and band email lists, he is far from bored. 

He also likes to bike, walk, read and sing in his local choir. He serves as a cantor in his church because, as he says: "I like to chant every chance I get."   In any leftover time, he likes to "mess around with web stuff."

Ray received the Advantage Ace Achiever award earlier this year in recognition of his outstanding efforts in serving both clients and co-workers.