An openly honest approach
Merchant software company, Progressive Solutions, held a series of customer days recently to share the direction and roadmap of its bisTrack software application. Managing director, Arthur Duffy, took the opportunity to speak openly about how Progressive had successfully negotiated the recession, its plans for future growth and how changes were being made internally to provide additional support resources as the user base continues to grow.
Customers said they were reassured by this open and honest approach from a key supplier whose product impacts on every area of their business.
Plans for growth
Mr Duffy told customers that, in spite of the difficult trading conditions last year, the number of new contracts signed had still been significant. Six new members of staff had been appointed already this year and the company now employed 30 people in the UK – although its new headquarter building in Runcorn had been designed to accommodate 60. “This gives you an idea of our plans for growth” he said. “We have a strong infrastructure now, and a strength and depth of team we’ve never had before.”
New software features
Product Director, Gary Brookshaw, presented the new features within bisTrack from which all users of the latest version of the software could benefit.
He said the new integrated CRM system provided a level of integration of customer data which was impossible to achieve when using a third party solution alongside bisTrack. Designed to enable merchants to manage their sales force, their campaigns and opportunities, bisTrack’s CRM allowed all of these activities to be fully traceable by anyone with permission to access it. “If you track a campaign within Excel for example, it tends to live on one person’s desktop and no one else can see it” he explained.
“By using bisTrack’s CRM you have full traceability, a central repository of data and you can harness bisTrack features such as dashboards and smart views to monitor and measure activity.” He also warned users that before taking on a CRM system there should be a clear strategy in place for its use and full buy-in from staff. He said that merchants getting the most out of this module were those who had invested time in discussing their strategies and processes with Progressive before implementation.
Smart objects
To provide additional flexibility to the core software, Gary Brookshaw explained they had introduced ‘Smart Objects’ which were simply an extension to the approach of providing users with their own tools such as user defined fields and ‘Smart Views’. He said users could now create anything they wanted within their own copy of the software to store any type of content. They could decide how this content looked, where to see it and what to link it to - all with no programming skills required.
One customer’s idea was to create a ‘Smart Object’ to store Human Resources records for drivers containing holiday requests, driving licence details etc.
Other new features include bisTrack’s integration with Microsoft Outlook enabling users to view and use their bisTrack contacts and calendars within Outlook; support for Postcode Anywhere’s new cost effective ‘per click licensing’ and a product catalogues feature that provides a framework for users to access thousands more products outside of their main product file without impacting on the system’s performance.
Gary Brookshaw also spoke about his commitment to including customer feedback into the new software versions and possible futures for the software, such as a bisTrack iPhone/iPad app. A quick show of hands proved this idea to be extremely popular.
Arthur Duffy concluded each event by reminding customers about the true benefits bisTrack can provide and how, in difficult times with maybe fewer staff, processes need to be improved. He said that every new bisTrack module is developed with this in mind.
© 2010, reproduced courtesy of Builders' Merchants News.
