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BergerNews |
Berger Software MAKING IT work for YOU |
Welcome to our second
edition of BergerNews. We were pleased to receive a generally favourable
response to our first issue. Thank you to those who have provided feedback.
Since we service
several diverse market segments, some of the topics we cover will not apply
directly to you. Nevertheless you will gain some insights into the full range
of products and services we offer, and who knows where this may lead.
Project News
We have just completed
a very active 6-month period. Some of our key projects during this time
include:
The Beringer Blass Division of Fosters Group has selected an Electronic
Territory Management System (ETMS) developed from the Berger Consumer Products
model. This project is currently in the pilot rollout phase.
ClearSales is also in the pilot rollout phase of an ETMS solution,
this time based on the Berger HealthCare Consumer model.
Kirin
Direct Marketing has selected
and has recently gone live with our Contract Warehousing system.
GlaxoSmithKline has completed their rollout of a 300-rep ETMS system. This
was the culmination of an extensive period of development and implementation.
Roche
Products is currently in the
Business Analysis phase of their ETMS upgrade to Berger HealthCare V9. This is
based on Visual Elk 9, a major new release from StayinFront (see separate story
below). Roche agreed to work with Berger as the Beta site for Berger HealthCare
V9 and Berger is working closely with StayinFront to ensure we maximise the
potential of this new release.
Solvay
Pharmaceutical completed their
rollout of their ETMS solution based on Berger HealthCare V8.
Stream
Solutions won the Print
Management outsourcing contract for ANZ. This was based on Berger Contract Warehousing.
The software was implemented and went live on July 8 – less than 8 weeks after
the order was placed.
RMS completed implementation of their Contract Warehousing
solution. It is now being deployed over their many clients. During this period
RMS also acquired DAS Distribution
(another Berger client).
New Products
Our R&D team has
a very active program of new product releases and enhancements. Some of the key
developments are provided below. If you need more detail of these or have ideas
for other developments please email R&D.
eZfreight
- is a web application that can
either run on a desktop or remotely via the web. It produces carrier documents
and enables local freight charges to be determined and printed on clients’
invoices. This is currently in Acceptance Testing and should be released in Q3.
eZtracker – is an Incident tracking and monitoring system developed
using Visual Elk 9. It is currently in Beta testing and its release is planned
for Q3.
eZorderform – is an electronic order form. It can be delivered by email
to existing customers inviting them to place an order. This is currently in
Acceptance Testing.
Berger
HealthCare V9 for Pharma - is based on
Visual Elk 9 suite from StayinFront and is currently in System Testing.
Berger
HealthCare V9 for Consumer – Business
Analysis has started on this product and it is due for release during Q4.
Berger
Consumer Products V9 - is
currently in Business Analysis and is scheduled for release in Q4.
Berger
Logistics on Windows NT - Over the
past 12 months we have had a project to re-write the Berger Runtime, which is
the platform used for the entire Berger Logistics suite of applications. The
new runtime extends the range of supported Unix platforms and adds the
capability for the entire suite to run under Windows NT. The runtime is now in
System Testing and is due for Beta release in Q3.
StayinFront with Visual Elk 9
Visual Elk 9 is a
significant new release from StayinFront. It provides a single engine for the
development of models that can run on desktop, web and PDA devices and
consequently it further boosts the productivity of application development.
We have been working
closely with the StayinFront R&D team in the development of our new Visual
Elk 9 models, ensuring that we take full advantage of the new platform. We are
currently Beta testing eZtracker – a web based System Reporting (SR) and tracking
solution, developed in Visual Elk 9. Our complete suite of V9 models is due for
release over the next 6 months.
It’s TIMe for ePaper!
Some of you may have
seen our recent press release on TIMe or the new pages on our web site.
The core focus for
our eBusiness team is to help organisations replace manual and paper based
processes by electronic information flows. The benefits include significant savings
in costs while at the same time increasing the speed of information flow. The
paybacks can be rapid – often less than six months.
We believe every one of our clients can benefit from these
technologies. Therefore we will be holding special clients-only seminars
introducing these concepts.
The first will be held on Wednesday August 21 from 9:30 to
11:00am at our Sydney office. Further details and registration is available on
our website or
you can indicate whether you will be attending by just sending an email.
The schedule for Melbourne has not yet been finalised.
Help with User Adoption
One of the critical issues for the success of CRM systems,
especially Sales Force Automation applications, is the adoption by users. The
degree to which a sales rep will utilise their system is dependent on a range
of factors, including the expectations of management, the quality of the data,
the ease of use of the software and the adequacy and availability of training.
In order to assist our clients to gauge the level of
adoption and to provide some guidance on steps required to increase adoption
rates, we are enhancing the services offered under System Administration
Services (SAS).
We have developed some simple reporting tools to gauge the
current level of adoption. These reports will be run and provided for each of
our SAS clients on a monthly basis starting in September. In addition we will
review each client situation and make some suggestions to improve the adoption
rates.
It is anticipated that for most clients the additional work
will not increase their current SAS expenditure, though for some clients there
may be a small impact.
New Staff and Promotions
I am pleased to be able to welcome new staff and
congratulate staff on recent promotions:
Caroline Briggs (Bachelor
of Arts in Education)
Caroline has extensive experience
in project management, technical design, administration, support and training.
She also has experience with Help Desk and CRM software. Caroline has joined Berger as our
CRM HelpCentre manager. The HelpCentre provides end-user support services for
our CRM clients. These include Training, Help Desk support and System
Administration Services. Her team includes Ashly Ross and Rosalyn de Los
Santos.
Gareth Hovey (Bachelor of Computing)
Gareth has extensive experience as a Senior Consultant / Project Manager on various projects including a number of CRM systems. He has joined our Melbourne office as a Project Leader working in Stuart Rosen’s team.
Francois Olivier (Bachelor of Engineering – Computer Engineering)
Francois has worked as an
analyst/programmer using VB, SQL Server, Java, HTML and various MS
technologies. He has joined our Sydney team as a Developer.
Kerry Spero (Bachelor of Information
Technology)
Kerry first joined in 1997 and gained a broad experience
with Berger’s software and clients. He left in 2001 to work as a Team Leader
for Product development of eCommerce Technology – including an “alphabet soup”
of experience with Biztalk, Java, Bull Ant, MS SQL, DB2, XML, etc. He has
returned to Berger as our R&D and (acting) eBusiness Team Leader.
Marc Stevenson (Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Engineering, Master of Engineering
Management)
Marc was promoted from support
roles with our HelpCentre team to a Developer in our eBusiness team.
Adam Wainberg (Bachelor of Commerce, Diploma in Computing Applications)
Adam has several years experience
in various development roles using VB, Java and other MS Tools. Adam has joined our e-Business team as a
Developer.
Web Site News
Our website www.bergersoftware.com.au contains a News page, which provides information on general company announcements, new clients, case studies and products. It’s an easy way to keep informed.
Some of the items added in the past six months are:
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20 June
2002 - Turn paper into e-paper with TIMe |
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24
April 2002 - Release of Berger Local Freight |
User Days
In February and March
we held our annual User Days, for Contract Warehousing, Distribution and CRM
clients. We had a broad range of clients attend and generally all those who
attended found it worthwhile. You can view some of the photographs from the
event here.
A copy of the
presentation slides is available at:
Breakfast Briefings
We hold regular
breakfast briefings on various aspects of Logistics, eBusiness and CRM. These
are held in our offices in Sydney and Melbourne and are generally informal
meetings focussing on a topic of interest.
You and your staff
are welcome to any of these sessions. You can register via our web site..
Please feel free to
circulate BergerNews to other people in your organisation or add names to our circulation
list. Also, we welcome feedback on any/all topics. Simply send to feedback
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here.
Well, that’s about
it… until next time.
Kind regards
Robert Kery
Managing Director