Paul DesRosiers is a man of many talents and he has put them to good use in his 12 years at ACS.  After earning a degree in computer engineering, his first job was as a programmer for a company that developed accounting software.  During his time there, he enrolled in night school at Eastern Michigan University, where he earned an MBA with a concentration in Strategic Quality Management.  Paul still retains his membership in the American Society for Quality.

Although he enjoyed programming, Paul wanted to use his business skills as well.  He joined ACS in 1997 as an analyst in the implementation area, and began learning Advantage and the project methodology.  Paul has great memories of working with Caryn Bair on his first implementation, at what was then called Intertec.

Caryn remembers that time also: “We tortured Paul so thoroughly, that I am surprised he is still with Advantage, let alone that he still speaks to us.  He was brand new and assigned to our first implementation.  He took the heat from both sides, yet managed to present a positive attitude to his customer every time.  But with the trial by fire beginning, we do take credit for how thoroughly he learned the product and the project needs of clients!  He put tremendous effort into keeping us satisfied and moving forward.  I always ask if Paul can be on my projects because of the confidence I have in him.”

During the 1999 Y2K compliance push, many clients scheduled upgrades and Paul was asked to help with resource planning and scheduling in that area.  He has worked in the upgrade realm ever since and today, as a Project Director, is the acknowledged Upgrade Guru.  Under his leadership, the section has grown from an average of five upgrade projects a year to 20 or more.  Since taking over responsibility for the area, more than 100 upgrade projects have been completed.

Steve Miller, of Wolters Kluwer Health, has high regard for Paul: “I’ve had the pleasure of working with Paul on several upgrade projects here at WKH over the years, and I can say that each of those projects was very successful because of Paul’s project management skills, communication abilities and attention to detail at every level.  I look forward to working with Paul again on our next upgrade or whatever project Paul may be leading.” 

Paul earned his Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute and called upon this training to help him implement a methodology for Advantage upgrade projects.  Since earning his certification, Paul has helped to develop training materials for other candidates looking to earn their PMP.  Helping to create the foundation, plus metrics and standards, was an enjoyable exercise for Paul, as he relishes challenges which enable him to learn new things.

Evelyn Acton worked with Paul at their previous workplace as well as here at ACS.  She has this to say about him:  “As a programmer, Paul was always top notch.  He was VERY dedicated to figuring out solutions and serving the clients well……..that’s a quality that has stayed with him throughout the years.  I truly enjoy working with Paul.  He has an open-door policy and is always willing to help on tasks or let you bounce ideas off of him.”

Greg Stout, Paul’s supervisor, describes him this way:  “In essence, Paul is a guy who gets things done.  He is always on top of his various projects and responsibilities, and gets the work done while continually looking for ways to improve customer satisfaction and operating procedures.  He is great at working with all kinds of people and offering solutions that work for everyone.  When a new initiative presents itself at ACS, I can always depend on Paul to take on the challenge and be an enthusiastic member of the team. And he appears to do all this with the easy stride of an accomplished long distance runner (which he is).”

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of his job, Paul says, is that he gets to interact with so many clients and departments at ACS.  Upgrades have an impact on--and are important to--nearly every area of the company.  Paul works with the support center staff, the account managers, the QA folks, the engineers and the documentation team, all of whom are involved in an upgrade project in its various stages.

Larry Kleber works with Paul on the “nuts and bolts” of most upgrades.  “Paul always knows what’s going on in all the projects in his area, but never micro-manages. If you can’t get a hold of the project manager, chances are that a quick call to Paul will get you the answer you need,” says Larry.  He goes on to say: “Paul is constantly asking the question ‘How could we do this better?’ Even if the process is working well, he is constantly looking for ways to optimize and streamline the process.”

Paul and his wife, Lisa—his high school sweetheart—live in Dexter with their three children: Cadey, 12, Blake, 10, and Tommy, 5.  Paul and Lisa enjoy camping with the kids and are both Sunday school teachers at their church.  Paul’s hobbies also include biking, hitting garage sales, exercise and running.  He likes both trail and road running, and ran in 12 races in 2008, ranging from 5K’s to half-marathons.  Paul has brought this outside interest in to the workplace, as he was responsible for arranging a professional trainer to come to ACS twice weekly and lead core exercise classes for ACS staff.

Whatever he does, Paul goes at it with enthusiasm and determination, and you can count on him to keep at it until he achieves his goal.  Your upgrade is safe in his hands.  

Penton Media, formerly known as Intertec, just completed a comprehensive seven-month project that included an upgrade that took them from Advantage 7.0-0 to Advantage 2008r3. In addition to making an eight-year jump in Advantage revisions, the company consolidated the Penton Media Loveland, Colorado into the upgraded Overland Park, Kansas operation.  The two business units now co-exist in one happily united installation of Advantage at the Kansas location. 

To make things even more exciting, the project also involved implementing two new modules, Conference and Event (CEM) and Access Management and Billing (AMB).  This involved several CIR to AMB conversions, some software modifications, and a complete rewrite of their web interface.  Additionally, Overland Park moved their cash applications to their Cleveland location.

Evelyn Acton, Penton's Account Manager at ACS has this to say; "This was truly a team effort between all parties involved. The complexity of the project and the sheer number of components coming together under one project displayed the effectiveness of the true working partnership between ACS and Penton Media."

The ACS team on the project included Angie Markel as Project Manager, Tim Zapawa as Project Director, Karl Davis as Lead Engineer, Dan Sneed as Conversion Engineer, Larry Kleber and Martha Krieg as Upgrade Engineers, and Matt Varblow as Manager of eCommerce.  The Penton team was led by Carver Bonine as Technical Project Manager, Caryn Bair and Mary Salvia as business unit leads, Kathy Cone as Project Manager, and Jay Swift as Director of Business Integration.

Jay Swift, Director of Business Integration at Penton Media, shared his thoughts. “I am very proud of the results that Kathy, Caryn, Mary and Carver were able to deliver, particularly in light of the tremendous effort required in such a short timeframe. Their efforts, along with the exceptional focus and turnaround time for requests to Angie, Karl, Dan, Larry, Martha, and Matt at ACS made this project extremely successful. Congratulations to the entire team!”

In these hard economic times, it's easy to think of reasons not to begin a new project. However, there are some very compelling reasons why right now is an excellent time to conduct an upgrade project. Upgrading to the latest revision of Advantage could not only increase operational efficiencies and reduce costs, but also improve customer service. In addition, implementing new features may well help you to generate additional sales. And when the economy improves, being ready to handle new business could be key to your success.
We at ACS can help you to determine if an upgrade makes good business sense for your company.

An Advantage upgrade project focuses on the delivery of a new software revision to your site. This delivery brings you:

• New features – all fully explained in the Release Notes

• New industry standards – such as credit card masking and encryption

• Adaptations to new technologies – operating systems, database, and web technology changes

• Better efficiencies – as evident in the new user interface to make the software more intuitive and user friendly and MSTDAT/FST to streamline order entry

• Operational optimizations – such as the new CDSREQ process request enhancements to more efficiently request and run reports, processes, and job streams

Reading the Release Notes is your key to understanding all the new features and enhancements. We make available a Release Notes 'Highlights' document that identifies the high-profile changes in the annual release and summarizes the feature for quick and easy reading. This document may be found on the client area of the ACS website, on the list of downloads.

Another key resource is your Account Manager—someone who is familiar with your business and can point you to those features that will make the biggest impact at your organization.

Change is inevitable. The business environment in the future will not be the same as it is today. By being on a regular upgrade schedule, you are assured that your organization has the most recent software, with the most effective tools possible to improve the efficiency of your operations. It positions you to be ready for change. You can anticipate new business segments and capitalize on that change in your business with a software package capable of identifying those opportunities, marketing to those customers, and handling those transactions. While change is inevitable, ACS' commitment to delivering updated software will remain steady.

Today, October 20, 2008, is the first day of live production after OSV's upgrade to 2008R2 this past weekend. It's the 100th Advantage upgrade of the 21st century, says Upgrade Manager, Paul DesRosiers.

"It's core to our business," says Paul, "that clients are on the latest release possible. Frequent upgrades are key to client satisfaction and also make support more efficient for us."

"It's important to us to stay current with the software," says Joe Wixted, Manager of Publishing Business Systems at OSV. "We targeted an upgrade to 2008r2 in order to tie into another project going on at OSV and also to take advantage of its new features; specifically support of the ONIX standard."

It's our goal at ACS for the majority of Advantage clients to be on releases within the last two years.

•  to get new features designed to give you a competitive edge
•  to realize efficiencies designed to reduce your cost of doing business
•  to decrease the project length by doing upgrades more often

To help you meet this objective, we have continued to refine our project methodology and to decrease the time and resources needed to complete an upgrade. As a result, today, over two-thirds of our client base are on a revision within three years of the current (Release 2005r0 or higher). The higher this percentage goes, the more it allows us to focus resources on the current revisions of the software instead of on maintaining older releases, which is something everyone benefits from.

Who is upgrading?

2008r1 is being implemented at three sites, with go-lives for all three in April and May. Five additional clients are slated to get this release early second quarter, with another dozen clients discussing upgrade plans with their respective account managers. We will complete more than 20 upgrade projects this year, and by year’s end, 12 – 15 clients will be on an 8r1 or higher revision.

The first client to use the 2008r1 revision in a live production environment is expected to be… ACS! We use the Advantage software to track issues and have multiple users in the system every day. We also employ web capsules to show your open issues lists via the client web page. Our go-live is targeted for early April and we’re currently working through the upgrade methodology like any other client would.

What’s in this release?

The 2008r1 revision brings many fantastic new features and enhancements including:

•     * The Global Process Request View – CDSREQ. One centrally located workspace to request processes, reports, and job streams. This display also supports the scheduling of job streams.
•     * CIR Subscription fields in MSTDAT scripting
•     * Telesales to Teleservice redesign
•     * Plus many, many more

For more information on any of the new features in the 2008r1 release, contact your ACS account manager to request a downloadable version of the full Release Notes. If you’re looking for something more abbreviated, you can ask them for the ‘Highlights’ document that touches on the most high profile changes of the release.
When can I get the current release?

Now! 2008r1 was released on February 15. 8R2 will be available June 9th. Contact your account manager today to start the process.