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.

Here are some highlights from 2010R3.

·         Usually, an SVCDAT search returns all addresses that satisfy the search criteria this could be the default address, plus several others for the same customer.  You may wish to have the system display only the default address in situations such as this.  You can use a new option to turn this behavior on.  When the option is enabled, the search result will always be the default address (and only the default address) for any matching customers---regardless of which address the criteria actually matched on

·         A tab has been added at SVCDAT/CTM when viewing a customer record,  to establish links to documents you may need to retrieve for a customer.  The documents must already exist on the network; the Documents tab allows you to establish the links to these.

·         You can now configure Advantage to display the CIR subscriptions for a selected customer, as part of the SVCDAT search results display.  When the feature is enabled, a subscription list frame appears below the main results display at SVCDAT.

·         For credit cards, you can now control whether to prompt for the CSC (Credit Card Security) code during order entry, based on the control group response type.  For example, you would want to have the message displayed for phone orders, but not "heads-down" white mail order entry.

·         You can use the cycle-end multi-queue processing to split the process into separate queues in other to optimize processing.  Note that this is used for multiple queues for different publications (as opposed to splitting cycle-end across queues for a single publication.)  Previously, four additional processes (in addition to CIR410) were available: CIR41A through CIR41D.  Five additional processes have been added: CIR41F, CIR41G, CIR41H, CIR41J, and CIR41K.  These five new processes work identically to the existing A-D processes.

·         In addition to MSTDAT/PRO, the following Advantage views now offer the ability to search by the PO number: SVCDAT/CIR, MSTDAT/CEM, MSTDAT/MST, MSTDAT/AMB.

·         The Prodcut Order upload can now create new and renewal CIR subscription orders, based on the presence of specific input data: the upload file must contain a promotion and promotion choice that defines the details of the subscription to be created. Under these conditions, the Prodcut Order upload will create the CIR subscription (either new or renewal). 

Contact your Advantage account manager for more information.

Advantage 2010R1 has tons of useful new features and functionality, including:

·         With this release, you can incorporate the following into your premium fulfillment flow: 1) you can send a premium set to the referring customer on the order (as opposed to either the bill-to or ship-to); and 2) you can impose a "lifetime maximum" on either premium sets or regular premiums effectively limiting how many times a given customer may receive the premium set/regular premium on the current order, and across all orders going forward.

·         A customer service pop-up has been added to the Subscription Lookup dialog, which allows you to estimate the price of a subscription given the following input parameters: location, copies, delivery code, and optional promotion code and promotion choice.  The system returns the rate per copy, postage, tax, and total amount.  This can be a useful tool to answer "what would it cost?" questions from your customers.  A Web capsule is also available to allow you to present the same functionality on your website.

·         A search field has been added to Advantage filter dialogs.  Many of these dialogs consist of lengthy lists of fields, and the search tool can help you locate the fields you want quickly.  The search is applied to the field caption, actual field name, and field reference name.

·         A "customer permissions" feature is now available, which offers a greatly expanded alternative to the customer promote/do not promote flags.  The feature allows you to structure questionnaires for presentation either to reps at Advantage screens or customers online, which in turn will capture and store the customer responses in a dedicated table.  You can store separate permissions settings for the customer at any of several levels, such as publication, office, and company.  As with the ‘promote/do not promote flags,' the permission settings are available for selects and reporting to help you determine how the customer should (or should not) be promoted.  

·         The report viewer has been rewritten with this release.  Reports are now displayed in a print-preview-like dialog, with expanded tools such as zoom in/out, and on-the-fly resizing so that you can test the report appearance on different printer page sizes.

For more information on 10R1, contact your ACS Account Manager.

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.