Here are some of the features you'll find in the second Advantage release of this year.  Contact your account manager for more information.

•  A new set of AMB tables gives users access to "virtual" information on transactions which Advantage does not otherwise store with the agreement.  Users can access such data as: agreement start date less free and adjustment days, expire date less grace days, and a conversion from trial flag.  At the access point level, data such as the following is available: access point event (add, change delete), price override flags, discount amount, sales amounts.  In addition, deleted access points are now retained for historical purposes.  Users can make use of these tables---which have been implemented as SQL views---in selects and user-defined reports.
• A "replacement" subscription modification has been added, which can be invoked at SVCDAT/CIR once you have located the customer's subscription.  You might be able to retain a customer who wants to cancel his/her subscription by offering a "replacement."  The modification uses available credit toward the customer's new order---which can be another CIR subscription, but can also a PRO item, an AMB agreement, or an inventory package.  All of this is processed in one seamless transaction from SVCDAT/CIR.
• A dedicated AMBREN/ARN view has been implemented for AMB autorenewal selects (previously, these were set up at CDSSEL).  AMBREN/ARN includes standard "lowest level" functionality, such as the ability to specify a premium set or an agreement choice.
• Autorenewal chain functionality has been added for AMB.  This is closely modeled on the CIR feature, where you can set up a series of autorenew offers through which customers can be stepped---including incremental price increases or decreases, as you prefer.
• Previously, AMB access points were added for all participants, or for just a single participant.  This has been expanded so that you can identify a subset of participants to which the access point should be applied.  In addition, you can set up access point pricing with a participant limit---for example, you can set up the access point with a limit of 6 participants, and add and remove participants within that preset limit.
• A new CIR package synchronization process has been added.  Through this process, you can "synch up" CIR expire dates for subscriptions in a package, if these dates have become disconnected over time.  The process does this by creating adjusting RAT transactions.
• You can now create a master contract in Royalty that earns at the individual contract level (previously, these always earned at the master contract level).  In addition, for master contracts, you can now perform adjustments at the level of the master contract (previously, these were always performed at the individual contract level).

Here are some of the exciting new features in 2011R1.  Click on the "Read more" button for details and for even more information, contact your account manager.

·         Automatic emails to AMB participants

·         AMB items can use credit policies

·         Cancel/suspend direct debit from AMB

·         Monthly invoice option for subscriptions

·         List email event table

1.       You can now configure the system to send automatic e-mails to AMB agreement participants and administrators upon release of the agreement.  Previously, only administrator e-mails could be sent, and only for the first version of the agreement.  Now, you can send participants e-mails for the version at which they are added (for example, with login/password information).  Administrator e-mails can now optionally be sent every time a new version of the agreement is created.

2.       AMB items can now participate in the credit policy feature.  This feature allows you to set up specific terms for cancellations for example, "full refund for 30 days, no refund thereafter."  Previously, CIR and PRO items could make use of credit policies; this has now been extended to AMB items.

3.       You can now set up direct debit rules to suspend or cancel AMB agreements and Conference participation, based on direct debit responses.  Such suspend/cancel handling was previously available for CIR subscriptions, but has been extended to AMB and CEM.

4.       CIR now offers a "monthly invoiced subscription" feature, which allows you to bill only for those issues that the customer actually received during a given month.  This feature works from the issue fulfillment table, and is used in lieu of billing the customer for an entire subscription up front; rather, the customer is billed (and pays) after the issues are delivered.

5.       A List E-mail event table now tracks and records changes to the LSTEML-M table.  This table records when a customer moves onto (or off of) a list at a given e-mail address, and therefore can provide a trail of on's and off's for the list.

The second release of 2010 will be available early in June.  Here are just a few of the new features you will receive.

·         Credit card responses from the vendor are now processed via a flexible, select-driven response code table (similar to direct debit responses).  Besides providing greater standardization for handling vendor responses, the number of possible automated actions you can take based on a particular response has been increased.  For example, you can cancel or bill-suspend the subscription, cancel or bill-suspend the BCL participation, add the customer to a Telesales list, etc.

·         With this release, you can set a discount at the promotion header level, to apply to (or bypass applying to) any CIR, PRO, or AMB item on the order.  The promotion-level discount is overridden by any specific discount set up at the item level.  This feature provides a shortcut method of setting a general discount for the promotion, without needing to set it up for each item.  The promotion discount is expressed as a percent (not an amount).

·         A CDSDWS warehouse extract type has been added for AMB transactions.  The table is populated by AMB210 posting, and provides information on new adds and renewals of agreements, adjustments (including adjustments to access points), cancels, and reversals.

·         ARP310 can now automatically bill-suspend or nonpay-cancel an AMB agreement.  This feature uses the same lowest-level select controls that are used for CIR and CEM suspends and cancels.  AMB suspend/cancels are supported for all billing processes, including "regular" billing and installment billing.

·         At MSTDAT, you can now move an order from one of your control groups to another, or from one closed control group to another, as long as you have security to do so.  This allows much more flexibility in management of control groups; for example, you can move one "problem" order so that the rest of the control group can release.

Advantage 2010R1 is full of new functionality and cost-saving features.  Here are some highlights:

• Auto-renewal Chains --With this release, you can set up auto-renewal "chains," which will allow you to step a customer through a series of structured offers with each CIR350 auto-renewal of the subscription.  For example, the initial offer might be for a basic rate, while term 2 steps the customer up in price, and term 3 offers a "loyalty" premium.  The feature makes use of subscription choices for defining the offers, and the pricing for each step in the chain is up to you.
• Automatic Migration Path --You can now use the Advantage inventory package feature to set up an "automatic migration" structure, whereby a customer is automatically moved from publication A to publication B when the first subscription expires.  You can set up as many publications in the package as you wish, using whatever pricing you want.  When the order is released, the system creates the subsequent subscriptions in suspend status.  When one subscription expires, CIR410 resets the subscription on the next one, and makes it the active subscription.
• First Name in Search --Previously, Customer First Name was available as a filter field at SVCDAT and in Customer Lookup.  You can now set a system option to have first name appear as a search field proper on the main SVCDAT/Customer Lookup view.
• Subscription "Restocking" Fee --With this release, you can link a fee to a customer cancel of a subscription, and credit the customer the cancellation amount less the fee (in this regard, the feature is similar to the restocking fee available for PRO returns).  You can charge the customer either a flat amount, or a percentage of the cancellation credit.  The cancellation fee can be linked to a promotion credit policy set up at CPNTBL/CPT, or it can be entered directly with the cancel at MSTDAT/SVC.
• Reserve Premium Before Earned --You can now configure the system to have it commit stock for unearned premiums, as a way of ensuring that enough of the premium item is available at the time the customer places the order.  Along with the automatic commit, you can have the system display a message if the premium is overcommitted (or out of stock), and optionally offer the customer a secondary, backup premium item.