françaisJanuary/February 2011
Welcome New Client: A-lehdet
ACS is happy to announce that A-lehdet has chosen Advantage and is beginning implementation.
The Helsinki-based companywas started in 1933 with a single magazine. Today, the grandchildren of the founders manage the company which has grown into a publishing house with a portfolio of 18 magazines, covering topics from politics to gardening, with customer demographics ranging from teenagers to senior citizens. The Managing D irector of A-lehdet is Olli-Pekka Lyytikainen.
The ACS project team includes Eric Burbeck (project manager),Tom Hermans (project director), and Karl Davis (lead engineer). The A-lehdet team consists of Oili Kalm-Parantainen(main business definer) and Timo Kurkikangas (IT architect) and its work will be coordinated by project manager Pekka Kivenjuurifrom Deloitte.
We are delighted to welcome A-lehdet to the Advantage community.
Are You Taking Advantage of Customer Communication in Advantage?
As the arena of customer communication becomes more and more personalized, you need the flexibility to create and send relevant communications as quickly and automatically as possible. Advantage offers you this capability.
Many of you have been using the customer letter functionality for years (note: for purposes of this article, the word "letter" refers to either email or a hard-copy snail-mail letter). This is where you create a set of letter templates and via a Customer Note, Action Code, and MS-Word, Advantage sends the appropriate customized personal letter to a customer when certain conditions are true , filling in such information as customer name and address, order number, subscription details, product order details, and order data. This format is simple to set up and easy to use, but is fairly limited in scope.
Recent functionality, called "conditional letters," provides you with much more flexibility and greatly expanded uses.
Read MoreACS Welcomes New Employee: Sunil Chawla
Sunil Chawla has joined the ACS team and will be providing services to CDS Global-UK. Sunil was the Advantage system administrator, DBA and IT manager at Maney Publications, but had to resign from this position in order to move to London. The timing worked perfectly for him to join the ACS team currently traveling regularly to Market Harborough to support CDS.
A UK native, Sunil holds a degree in computer science from Manchester University and is also a certified Microsoft Database Administrator. He lives in Bromley, near London, and in his leisure time, enjoys playing badminton and tennis and traveling to tropical destinations—anywhere with clear blue water where he can scuba dive and snorkel, although the Maldives is his favorite place.
We are pleased to welcome Sunil to the ACS family.
Read MoreKeeping Pace with Technology
Last evening, I had the opportunity to observe my 13-year-old daughter handle a technical challenge that my wife was experiencing. As my daughter took the laptop and started in to solve the problem, my wife looked at me with that now-familiar frown which says something like "Why can she do this when she’s never taken a computer course in her life, and I, who have used computers for years, can’t figure out how to begin?" I smiled and told her not to take it personally. Based on conversations I’ve had with friends, I believe most parents have experienced this phenomenon.
Perhaps it’s perspective. Perhaps it’s age. After all, we observe children picking up a language without even thinking about it. They just start talking, make lots of mistakes, get corrected, and slowly, over time, they’ve mastered it. Kids can also pick up multiple languages at the same time. Why shouldn’t they be able to handle technology? I recently upgraded my smart-phone and my daughter took it, played with it for a few minutes, handed it back to me and said "cool!"
John Moore: Engineer and Fire Fighter
In his five years at ACS, John Moore has made his mark on the software and in client support. He was part of a team that rewrote MSTDAT/FAST and also worked on converting INVDAT into the new user interface style, which included implementing scripts there. Although John has always been a member of the software development team led by Howie Brooks, he was tapped three years ago to enter the upgrade and support world in engineering. 
John is a key member of the team that works with Agora, Inc. He describes his role as alternating between fire fighter putting out fires, superhero solving issues, and whipping boy (although that happens very rarely). Agora’s Daryl Berver has this to say about working with John: "John is great. He has been able to not only efficiently handle the engineering work on our ever-growing and increasingly complex account, but can also explain complicated GL\ARP transactions in layman's terms. We are very lucky to have him on our account."
Read MorePlease Take our Webinar Survey
By Angie Markel
Dear Advantage Users,
Thank you for your participation in the Advantage Webinars in 2010. Between a dozen Advantage presenters, we hosted 27 different webinars last year to nearly 300 attendees. It was a great year!
To ensure that you continue to benefit from this efficient and cost-effective training program, please take time to answer the following survey questions while we prepare our 2011 schedule.
Thank you,
Angie
amarkatadvantagecs.com
Click here for survey: Advantage Webinars 2011
Analysis of Select Sets
By Molly Mathe
Advantage processes that use select criteria produce statistics reflecting the number of database records that were a) evaluated and b) selected (or deselected) at each level of the select logic.
The process log file contains a message similar to "Selectionanalysis statistics in<pathname>", so that you may move from a particular log file to its statistics. Similarly, the actual statistics file identifies the select name that generated it to help tie stats and processes together.
Read MoreHighlights of 2011R1
Here are some of the exciting new features coming in 2011R1, which will be available in February. Contact your account manager for more information.
· Promotion code user interface rewrite
· Virtual fields in AMB
· Suspended AMB agreements and earnings
· Area transfer feature
Read More
Philippe van Mastright represented ACS at La <<Presse au Futur>> in Paris in December.