Newsletters – July to September 2007

Scam Warning

During June, we were approached by a Zambian company, "Katanga Technologies", with an order for 70 copies of Windows XP Pro.  Our little red lights went on immediately, but we did invoice them.  They faxed us a page purporting to be an Internet transfer from Nedbank for the full amount.  Simphiwe went through this with sharp eyes and picked up discrepancies in the dates and reference number.  Needless to say, the money never reached us and we cancelled the invoice.

Moral: Unless you know with whom you are dealing, do not let go of your goods until your bank has cleared the transaction!

Remember that a yahoo, gmail, webmail, or similar e-mail address is most likely to indicate a fraudster.

FLOOR truncates "number" down (toward zero) to the next lower multiple of "multiple".
CEILING truncates "number" up (away from zero) to the next higher multiple of "multiple".

Why CRM? –and a look at the options

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a much maligned and underutilised tool for staying close to your customers.  When it first came into South Africa in the early 90s, it was purely a sales tool.  Today, that same product has grown into a customer service and marketing tool as well as still performing its sales function.

Even more than that, it can be used as a fully fledged system sitting on a web server and hosting an eShop; driving your sales through the Internet and increasing your reach.  The cellphone synchronisation feature makes your sales force truly interactive using the tool that they know best!  They leave the office with all their client details on their phones and update the records as they talk to clients.  Then they return and update the main database, collect their new appointments and put through their orders.

Please note that Maximizer 9.0 (the non-Enterprise version) also has the cellphone capability.

The laptop interface through MaxExchange is still a strong feature and has improved greatly over the years.  In these days of wireless connectivity - any time and anywhere - users connecting to a web server can update on the fly.  Management can draw incisive reports from the system, pointing them clearly to incoming sales and problem products.

Because integration with other solutions is vital, Maximizer has a number of accounting packages that it interfaces with including Pastel, Accpac, Quick Books and SAP.  The backend Knowledge Sync Server solution means that virtually any other form of integration can be done and special alerts can be worked into it.

Want to know if your best customer has just placed an order or encountered a product problem?  Alerts in Knowledge Sync can put the information at your finger tips.

Newsletter – August 2007

Editorial

It is so good to see South African companies coming back to the forefront in software solutions.  It seems that we are regaining the ground lost after 1994, when so many of our best people were enticed overseas.  Why?  Because we had some amazing people at that time with skills that more than matched the rest of the world!

Now it appears that a passion for IT is so powerful that more highly skilled people are coming to the fore.

The really worthwhile implication of this is that we are producing world class products, which can easily be marketed over the Internet.  I smell a growing export impact here!

With the arrival of August, we can also smell the coming of Spring and warmer weather plus the dawn chorus is back practising at 5am.  One achievement has been made as well.  Our Labrador that we donated to SA Guide Dogs graduated successfully and is working with a student in Potchefstroom.  They both walk out strongly and will probably win prizes in walking competitions!

Of "EVEN", Microsoft Help says: "You can use this function for processing items that come in twos. For example, a packing crate accepts rows of one or two items. The crate is full when the number of items, rounded up to the nearest two, matches the crate's capacity."

Microsoft Help doesn't give an example of where you might use the latter function.  Which is odd, if you think about it.

Our contrived Example: The Odd Fellows Hiking Club hiked upstream on Sunday 7 January 2007, downstream the next Sunday, and has alternated since then.  We want a formula that will give the direction of next Sunday's hike. On a blank spreadsheet, copy these formulas into the indicated cells:

What is the difference between the Maximizer versions and which one is for whom?

First Maximizer PE 9.0 - this is the entry level product for small companies with a maximum of 10 users.  It is purely a sales management tool, with a mobile component.  Not yet able to synchronise directly in real time, but nevertheless it is a good solution.  Users are loaded individually and then connected to the central database.

Second Maximizer Enterprise for Workgroups - this product is able to run marketing campaigns and customer service resolution.  Again it takes up to 10 users and allows for laptop and cell phone mobile users.  It is server based and users rollout from the server.

Third Maximizer Enterprise for MS SQL - this version is scalable for medium enterprises.  The number of users is limited only by the power of your servers.  Dashboards are available for management reporting.

Fourth Maximizer eCRM - the powerhouse product.  This has a web store and is fully Internet based, with customers and partners able to access via secure log-on.  When powered in the backend by KnowledgeSync Server, it becomes an amazing product with strong workflow capabilities.  It becomes a real anywhere, anytime solution for large companies who have internal and external staff.

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Newsletter – September 2007

Editorial

Spring is here at last and everything is flooded with perfume.  The birds are madly nest building and sales people are energised. This means that the roads are busy and defensive driving skills are in order.

High interest rates are proving to deflate the economy somewhat and growth is dropping.  I am not sure that this is helping anyone and would really like to see some "out of the box" thinking in the Reserve Bank.  Gautrain is giving away soil, so rush out with your truck and collect it for your garden!

Things are becoming hectic in the stadia development side and I am wondering if we really need all the new shopping malls, when food production is far more critical.  We are losing farmland, increasing our urban food dependent populations way beyond what can be produced.  Water is being polluted with impunity and yet here we are in a water scarce country.  Hang on to your garden - and turn it into a veggie patch.

A Quick Windows Tip

Would you like to run Windows Explorer ("My Computer") easily?
Hold in the "Windows" key on the keyboard (ÿ) and press E (for "Explorer").