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Computer Society of South Africa boosts e-mail control with GoldMineComputer Society of South Africa boosts e-mail control with GoldMine The Computer Society of South Africa (CSSA) has replaced an ageing, proprietary membership management system with GoldMine Sales and Marketing supplied by FrontRange solution partner, Pro-Formance. The GoldMine solution overcomes e-mail problems for the society and allows it to post invoices and receipts electronically, greatly reducing costs and staff overheads."We needed to replace our old system because it forced us to send e-mails to our members in batches of 50. With thousands of members this placed a heavy burden on our staff," says Roger Dawes, executive director at the CSSA. "Goldmine is an important aid to our current service upgrade, designed to bring new and exciting benefits to our members." Dawes says GoldMine will play an important role in the organisation of two of the CSSA's key events this year: Tel.Com Africa 2002 which runs from 23 to 25 October (www.teldotcom.org.za) and the annual President's Banquet on November 14 (www.cssa.org.za). GoldMine Sales and Marketing is a sales force automation tool that manages contact information for workgroup environments. Pro-Formance customised the solution for the CSSA to be deployed in its membership environment. Information is regularly passed between the head office in Gauteng and the various chapters based in the major centres around South Africa. This includes updates on events, lectures, seminars and other organised meetings to benefit the members. Attachments form a major part of this communication, most commonly in the form of PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents. "Before, when any chapters sent us information in attachments to be passed on to members we had to convert it to text format. As notifications are sent on a regular basis, it became an extremely time-consuming and difficult task to perform. We send these member updates once a month so it was a regular occurrence," says Dawes. GoldMine Sales and Marketing facilitates the sending of attachments and of a single e-mail to all members simultaneously, and enables the society to maintain a history of contact with members. When a member e-mails, faxes or phones the society, staff make an entry in the online journal. This allows the society to ensure action is taken where needed on specific member issues, improving the service it offers. "e-Mail communication with members is automatically added to the history file of each member and we simply add a note about telephonic or fax communication," says Dawes. The automated solution operates in a centralised architecture on a Microsoft SQL 2000 database and its functionality will be rolled out to the chapters around the country once implementation has been finalised at head office in Gauteng. The project included extracting the data from the old proprietary system, ensuring its integrity was intact and populating the new database. "It has been a challenging implementation. We made heavy use of the automated processes included with GoldMine to populate the new database. The system now automatically generates new invoices, receipts and reports for the society," says Tony Goncalves, technical director at Pro-Formance. Pro-Formance is performing first-line support for the CSSA and has delivered training to staff at the Secretariat. Part of this training process saw the CSSA performing some of the implementation procedures itself, in order to ensure proper skills transfer."GoldMine Sales and Marketing is ideally suited to the needs of the Computer Society due to its ability to share member information and schedule activities with other users in the society," concludes Tracey Newman, MD of FrontRange Solutions. About FrontRange Solutions (SA) Pty Ltd FrontRange Solutions (SA) Pty Ltd develops software and solutions that allow organisations to deliver extraordinary customer relationships and service. An international market leader in customer-centric software for more than 10 years, the company is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with offices in Los Angeles, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Australia and Singapore. Solutions include: industry-leading GoldMine® software for customer relationship management (CRM), fully integrated contact management and sales force automation; and the award-winning HEAT® software line for world-class customer service and support. FrontRange drives business decisions for profitability in market-leading companies such as Coris Capital, De Beers, Standard Bank, Volkswagen SA, Mosaic, Coca-Cola, Chevron, Lucent and Smith Barney. Industry awards for FrontRange include Software Magazine's "Hot 500", Call Center Magazine Product of Year, Entrepreneur Magazine's Best Software, Users Choice Awards, PC Magazine "Editors' Choice" and Forbes Online "Best of the Web". For more information about FrontRange Solutions (SA) Pty Ltd, call 0800 009111 or visit www.frontrange.co.za About the Computer Society of South Africa: The CSSA has over 3 000 members from the IT industry, to whom it provides information in the form of seminars, workshops and major events, as well as news letters and other communications. Elected members work to a code of conduct which ensures integrity in all their dealings. The CSSA represents the voice of individuals working in IT. Editorial Contact: Frank Heydenrych FrontRange Solutions +27-11-608 1228 frankh@icon.co.za top of page |
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