News & Tips – Summer 2007  

News and Tips is an occasional e-mail Newsletter from RD Associates (MK) Ltd. 

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Tel: 01234 756011 www.rdassociates.co.uk

Well, summer has been a long time coming but hopefully it is here to stay for a while now.  Welcome to the latest issue of "News and Tips" from RD Associates, in which we keep you up to date with the latest developments in CRM solutions we provide, our Training services and try and give some useful tips that you may like to incorporate in your systems.

If you have any useful tips that you would like to share with other readers, please email them to pam@rdassociates.co.uk

IN THIS ISSUE

• Implementing Customer Relationship Management
• GoldMine Standard Edition
• GoldMine Premium Edition
• ACT! Summer Offers
• Training Schedule
• Hints and Tips
• Keep up to date – current version numbers

Implementing Customer Relationship management

Are you looking to implement or update your Customer Relationship Management?  Don’t know where to start or what benefits you will get?

1. Minimise the levels of customer attrition by implementing strategies to keep in regular contact with customers. (Over 50% of customers switch suppliers because of “perceived indifference”)

2. Improve the effectiveness of marketing activities by improved targeting of potential clients for new business and existing clients for cross and up-selling opportunities.

3. Obtain more new customers by refining the sales process, enabling more effective use of sales resources, reducing lead times between enquiry and order and higher conversion rates.

4. Simplify internal communications by providing an easily accessible database of all the communications and commitments (Calls, letters, meetings, documents etc) between the company and its external contacts.

5. Make yours the consistent and reliable company that people want to do business with. Be confident that all the commitments you make are done on time, even when staff members leave, are off sick or on holiday. No more nasty surprises.

6. Reduce administrative costs by simplifying routine administrative tasks such as producing letters, emails and faxes.

Implementing a system that will provide these benefits may sound an awesome, expensive and difficult task. Potentially it is; however RD Associates (MK) Ltd has extensive experience of implementing these systems for 100’s of clients both large and small in a wide variety of industries which minimises the risk and costs to you, as well as the time it can take to implement a system.

GoldMine standard edition

GoldMine Standard Edition (dBase) has now been withdrawn by FrontRange, the software authors.  For those of you on the latest release, 6.7.70226, this will continue to be supported until the end of April 2008.  If you are on an earlier build of 6.7 you can upgrade to this latest build.

Additional Licences are no longer available for GoldMine dBase or GoldSync.  We currently have TWO dBase licences remaining in stock and these will be sold, at list price, on a first come first served basis – so if you need additional licences act now and contact Pam Mannell on 01234 756011 or email pam@rdassociates.co.uk

GoldMine premium edition

GoldMine Premium Edition (GMPE) enables you to effectively manage every facet of your business relationships. Opportunities to win and retain customers occur at every phase of the customer relationship lifecycle. GoldMine Premium enables you to turn more of these opportunities into additional bottom-line value, often by leveraging data you already collect.

Created for entire medium-sized enterprises or distributed enterprises, GoldMine Premium delivers software the way you want it.

GoldMine Premium adds a service and support module and a newly developed, intuitive interface to the robust CRM functionality of GoldMine Corporate Edition.

We have already upgraded 2 dbase customers to GMPE and have more scheduled.  If you would like a demonstration or further information, please contact us and we will arrange this with you.

 ACT! Summer offers

If you are currently using ACT6 (or earlier) now is the time to upgrade.  There is a 50% discount available (on licences only) for existing users who upgrade before the end of August 2007.

If you are using the current version of ACT! (2007) and require any additional licences, there is a 25% discount available until the end of July 2007.

Please call for further details or a quotation.

Training schedule

The GoldMine Public Training course schedule for July to September is give below.  To check for changes to this at any time please refer to our web site – www.rdassociates.co.uk

*GoldMine for Database Managers

This is an updated version of the Administration course.  For details please contact us, or download the datasheet from our website http://www.rdassociates.co.uk/Training.htm

A wide range of other courses covering GoldMine and add-in products is available.  Please call for details.

Courses/Workshops are also available in QuoteWerks, MasterMine, Commence, ACT! Premium and Sage CRM MME -  please call for further details.

All public training courses are held at the RD Associates training centre in Cranfield, Bedfordshire.

Delegates are provided with their own pc for the duration of the course, course manual to take away to provide on-going reference, refreshments throughout the day, and lunch in the on-site coffee-bar.

Additional courses will be scheduled according to demand.

This schedule is subject to change without notice, but the website will be kept as up to date as possible. 

Don’t forget our unique promise - Protect your Investment in Training

If one of your staff attends a public GoldMine for Users or Administrators course, and subsequently leaves within 12 months, we will train their replacement for 50% of the cost (at the time the new person attends). 

This offer is retrospective to all attendees on GoldMine public training courses since 1st July 2005.

 Find, win and keep profitable customers

Our series of seminars "Find, Win and Keep Profitable Customers" continues to draw lots of interest, and a further date has been scheduled after the summer – September 11^th.   Following feedback from some of the earlier seminars we will be starting earlier at 08:30 and aiming to finish by 12:00.

If you know anyone who is considering implementing a Customer Relationship Management system, or looking to upgrade/replace an existing one, please pass on our details to them.  They can pre-register online and we will ensure that they receive full information nearer the time.

 Hints and Tips

If you are not the GoldMine Administrator please check with either you administrator or RD Associates before making changes to your system.

1 How can I change the Goldmine shortcut to log on with a username?
1. Right-click on your GoldMine icon
2. Select <Properties>
3. Edit the "Target: " value to include " /u:USER-LOGIN-NAME " after the path to GMW6.exe

Example...
Target: X:\crm\gm_svr\gmw6.exe /u:PAM

This will now login with this username instead of the default Windows userid.

 

2 Want to make sure you follow up all activities?

When completing an activity, you can have Goldmine select the “schedule a follow-up” box automatically?
Open the username.ini, and under the [GOLDMINE] section, place the following command:

Followup=1

 

3. User Friendly Dates

Did you know that GoldMine allows you to enter shortcuts for dates to help you increase your productivity.  In your daily activities you can make the best use of your time by minimising repetition.

·        When scheduling an activity for instance, select Schedule|Call.

·        Click in the Date field.

·        If you'd like to schedule the activity for one day into the future, type "1d".

·        Then press Tab.

The date of the activity will advance to tomorrow.  Use the same method for week (w), month (m) or year (y).  For example, to schedule a call for 2 weeks time enter 2w.

4. Display Activity Code in History Tab

By default, the History tab shows the Result Code of an activity, but not the Activity code.  If you want to display the activity code as well you need to add the following line to the username.INI files.  For example I log in as PAM so I need to add this to the pam.ini file.  It does mean that this change has to be made for each user that requires it.

NOTE: Before making any changes to ini files make sure you have a backup of the files.

[ActvObj] (this section will probably already exist)

ShowHistActvCode=1 (add this line)

   keep up to date – current version numbers

Check the details below and contact us if you require more information or to arrange an upgrade.

ACT! 6

ACT! 6 has not been supported by Sage since July 2006. If you are currently using ACT! V6 and want to discuss the options and benefits of upgrading to the latest version please call us.

With the release of Release 9 this year, the naming of the various ACT! versions has changed.  The current versions are:

ACT! by Sage 2007 (9.0)

Base version for up to 10 users

ACT! by Sage Premium for Workgroups/Web 2007 (9.0)

The Premium versions are available for either SQL 2005 ST (Standard) or SQL2005 EX (Express).

For full details of each version, technical requirements etc please contact RD Associates or look on our website where data sheets can be downloaded.

GoldMine SE (Standard Edition/dBase)

6.7.70226  

GoldMine CE (Corporate Edition/SQL)

6.7.70226  

7.04.70302

GoldMine PE (Premium Edition/SQL)

8.01.70621 has just been released

QuoteWerks

Version 4 - Build 30

Version 3 - Build 38 (final build)

Details Plus 2.7.6

There have been a large number of enhancements over the recent releases of this essential tool for all GoldMine users.  If you have Details Plus and want to know what benefits you could gain by upgrading contact us for further details.  Upgrading to the latest release of software is free of charge.  Installation & training are additional if required.

Commence

Version 3.5 Service Pack 1