1. There is a new function in Machine Inquiry (F8) that allows you to send a quick email to the owner of an S machine to check the availability of the machine. The A<vail> function is displayed only for S machines where the machine owner contact #1 has an email address. The new control variables F8ATOP and F8ABOT specify boiler plates that appear at the start and end of the email. If these are left blank the default wording in the program is used. We suggest sending one of these to yourself to see the default wording, then using the boiler plates to make changes if necessary.
Note that this function is also limited to those salespeople who are allowed "full display" on F8.
2. Coupled with the A<vail> function is the new C<onf> function in F8. This also applies only to S machines and updates the new "CnfDt" (confirmed date) field in F8 as well as generating a tracking line in F4. The intent is that when an S machine is confirmed to still be available, this function will be used to tell TARGET that.
3. While we are on the subject of Machine Inquiry, the secondary searches have been improved. The "#" (search by serial number) and "*" (search by tag number) now both load the match list so the F<wd> and B<ack> functions work the same way as for the normal search. Also, the SHIFT-F8 key will repeat the search results for both of these searches.
4. When you email a quote, you may now send a copy to another prospect. On the quote email screen, below the attachments, the "ECpy?" field controls the copy process. Values are:
N=Do not send a copy (the default)
Y=Send a copy
O=Only send the copy; do NOT send to the quoted prospect
The "To:" field is a prospect search just like the one in F3/F4 except that the number of matching prospects displayed on the screen is smaller due to space limitations. The copy will always be sent to contact #1; if contact #1 does not have email you will not be allowed to send a copy. Prospect Tracking (F4) for each prospect will show the copy operation; the quoted prospect's entry will reference the prospect receiving the copy and the copied prospect's entry will show the original quoted prospect.
The Only option is to allow you to send a copy of a quote later (perhaps to a financing company) without resending the quote to the original prospect.
5. There is a new item on the Letter Maintenance (F11/13) screen; the "Preload" field accepts either a blank (the default) or a "P" (for prospect). If you put a "P" in this field, a brief prospect search (like the one used to email a quote copy) comes up; the selected prospect's information from F3 is used to prefill lines 6-13 of the letter. Note that this function is only available if the "UseMW" question is answered "N".
The idea behind this feature is to provide a quick way to send a prospect's contact information to another prospect.
6. In Prospect Maintenance (F3), the record locking rules have been changed. The prospect record is not locked until the M<odify> or D<elete> choice is selected. If you select either of these, the screen will refresh because it is possible that the content of the record has changed since it was displayed.
It is no longer as disruptive to leave a prospect up on the screen in F3 UNLESS you have selected the M<odify> or D<elete> options. If you have, the record will stay locked against all use until you confirm the deletion or hit either F1 or F2 on a modify.
7. The Back Office menu layout has been changed. A new sub-menu Prospect Maintenance Menu (15) now has some of the functions from the Sales Reports Menu that were used to maintain the prospect data base. The relocated choices, with their new numbers, are:
11 - Prospect Purge
12 - Prospect Merge
13 - List Duplicate Prospects
14 - 3 Field Changer
21 - Merge/Rename Batch Setup (new)
22 - Merge/Rename Batch List (new)
23 - Merge/Rename Batch Process (new)
The choices marked (new) are explained in #7 below.
7. There are several new functions on the new Prospect Maintenance Menu; the Merge/Rename Batch Setup function (21) allows you to set up prospect name changes and prospect tracking merges to run in a batch. The batch update may be started from item 23 on the same menu or we can set up it to run automatically every night. If you would like it to run automatically, please call or email us after you have installed the update. Item 22 provides a list of the changes that will be run on the next batch update.
The updates are processed in a single run through the file; a maximum of 100 updates can be done in a single pass. If you enter more than this, only the first 100 will be processed in the first run. The remainder will be done on the next manual or automatic (next night) run. Processing speed is dramatically improved on the batch runs. Tests in our office show we can do 50 total changes (half merges, half renames) in under 10 minutes; the test database for this had 100,000 prospects with over half a million tracking details and 250,000 machines.
Unlike the standard single prospect merge, this version of the program will always remove the "from" prospect after a successful merge. On a rename, of course, no prospect is removed. The batch update process does not currently provide a purge mechanism to completely remove a prospect from the database but this is planned for a future release.
8. The format of the Sales Manager Report has been changed slightly to add extension numbers after the phone numbers. This required showing a few characters less than the full company name in some cases. The report logic has been changed so it will not show quotes that are automatically resolved as no-sales due to prior sale or scrapping of a machine.
9. The Prospect Tracking screen (F4) has a new option H
A few columns on the display may need a bit of explanation. The "Qst"
column shows the current quote status (CFN) and the following date
column shows the data of the last status change on this quote. The "Mst"
column shows the current status of the quoted machine (ISKBZ) and the
following column shows the date of the most recent status change on the
machine. The "SldPrice" column shows the price for which a B machine
actually sold.
We invite comment on whether it is worth taking up a second line on
each quote displayed to give the brief machine description.
10. The Prospect List Generator, Multi Choice logic has been changed;
if you specify anything in the SIC field, the match is now on however
many characters you enter, not the entire field. This means you may
now enter "34" to mean "3400-3499" or "341" to mean "3410-3419".
11. Machine Inquiry (F8) now shows the advertising codes assigned to
each machine.
12. This release also has a few fixes for minor problems we have found
over the last few months. Most notable of these is we have cured
the famous "now you see it now you don't" problem with the Web and
Pict options in F8.