This intelligent data management software does away with multiple screen confusion, making accessing customer information quick and easy.

Article extract from I-Start Magazine Australia & New Zealand

Silos of information that don’t connect to each other are a big business bugbear. SmartPoint overcomes this by using a dashboard that pulls out the relevant information from different databases, making dealing with customers easier and more efficient.

The UK product has just arrived in Australasia and is being distributed in New Zealand and Australia by Auckland & Melbourne-based Strategis. Managing director Mike Carroll describes SmartPoint as a dashboard that sits next to the user’s main screen and displays relevant data from two or more databases in a simple format.

By making workstations “intelligent” in this way, a call centre operator, say, now doesn’t have to jump about between different screens, to access information from various databases, all while talking to a customer. Carroll gives the example of a telco call centre operator who might need to access details about a customer’s main account, then access the customer’s internet account details, and then find out what broadband plan the company concerned is on; all to add an extra phone line.

“SmartPoint does away with the need to jump between screens as it automatically finds the information with no extra keying”, says Carroll. Large companies have at least two and sometimes three or four different databases. These can be embedded in the ERP system or Business Intelligence or Data Warehouse system, creating the aforesaid “silos” of data that SmartPoint provides a hook into.

The other useful feature of the software is that the information that’s pulled into the dashboard can be different depending on each user’s role.

“A call centre operator would be looking for different information to a credit control person, who might want to know what promises a person has made earlier regarding their payments. The information displayed changes according to the role of the operator logged in,” says Carroll.

“Companies invest millions of dollars in software, so they can manage their transaction needs via ERP, and their information needs via business intelligence. But much of this information ends up being spread across the business in different silos of data. SmartPoint brings it all together by drawing data from multiple silos at once. This gets information to end-users in a timely, sensible way.”

Carroll adds that the software is simple to use – staff training takes minutes not days. Given the turnover of call centre staff, this is good news. It’s also easy to deploy, taking days not weeks, and is affordable, he adds. And it’s tried-and-tested, having already been proven in Europe.

Contact details: Email: mcarroll@strategisanz.com Website: www.strategisanz.com

New to the ANZ market, SmartPoint has been proven in Europe where customers want to Know Everything about their business but don’t need to implement a new ERP or CRM system.

SmartPoint is the optimum way of delivering higher productivity to any company.  It can be linked to a variety of ERP, CRM, Business Intelligence or other Business Software.  It sits alongside the software, changing the information that it delivers in context to what the operator is doing.  It is smart, it is simple and it works.  Don’t just believe us, look what customers say about this product;

“What impressed us most about SmartPoint was its ability to deliver so much more information to the desktop. Our sales teams no longer have to delve through different menus, screens and files on our systems to find the information for each customer and transaction. This saves an enormous amount of time, which opens up more opportunities for our sales team to sell more products or move onto the next customer.”

Nick Pye, Director, Midwich Ltd

“SmartPoint has delivered exactly what we needed to help our agents work more efficiently - we have been very impressed.”

Susan Attard, Deputy Town Clerk, City of London

“Before SmartPoint, it had not been possible to quickly access information from other systems such as social services and housing. The new integrated system enables our customer service officers to provide an enhanced, faster and more flexible service to customers because they can resolve enquiries about multiple departments.”

Martin Garlick, head of Customer First, Medway Council.

“Currently, to answer a typical customer enquiry, place an order or look at existing orders, agents are required to navigate a very structured and rigid path through our systems that not only requires them to open far too many screens, repeating information input in each, but also means that contact resolution times can be lengthy. We needed a solution that would work with our existing systems and provide agents with an immediate summary of relevant customer information for each contact.”

Peter Pounds, General Manager of Books Customer Service for Europe at Elsevier

SmartPoint Named Finalist in the Prestigious Top Performers in the Contact Centre Industry Regional Awards

Thursday 02nd April 2009, London, UK - SmartPoint is named a Finalist in the 2009 Top Performers in the Contact Centre Industry Awards for EMEA.

Express Group on Right Track with OneOffice

For nearly 20 years Express Group has been providing its customers with practical solutions to printer problems. Their combined sales, repair and service approach, and unrivalled understanding of the marketplace has earned Express an enviable reputation for product availability and customer service.

While exploring the ERP market for a robust, scalable and cost-effective solution for its pan-European IT Spares Distribution businesses, Express Group carried out a thorough investigation of the key players and found that OneOffice from Strategix stood-out above the rest. Joanna Young, Managing Director of the Express Group said, “We knew from the very start of our evaluation process that we were searching for a partner and not just sourcing a product. From the very first phone call, the Strategix team has been a pleasure to deal with; and we are definitely not easy to please!”

The Express Group now has well-established companies distributing IT spares across Central Europe from the UK, France and Belgium and new subsidiaries in Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria and Turkey. The UK Company made its name as a printer repair company and has been repairing printers for the last 18 years, a business it combines with printer and IT spare parts distribution, authorised by leading manufacturers including HP Compaq, Lexmark, Brother, Epson, OKI and Kyocera. In the UK Express is “your printer partner” offering new and reconditioned printers, printer parts, consumables, maintenance and training. Field service technicians provide repair services, printer swaps and planned maintenance to blue-chip corporate and banking organisations.

Express needed to replace multiple business systems in Central Europe while under-taking a programme of rapid expansion into Eastern Europe as an Authorised Replacement Parts Partner for HP. The UK Company was using a system developed in-house over 10 years, which while ideally suited to the local operations was unable to offer a pan-European shared-stock model for its IT spares distribution business without significant further investment and bespoking. Where other ERP systems fell short, OneOffice offered a great pan-European distribution solution as standard core functionality, while also offering full integration for the UK field-service operations and workshop-based repairs. Jo feels confident that OneOffice fits their needs now and for the future.

“We wanted to enhance our business performance by pulling together our geographies through a common trading and financial platform and taking advantage of e-commerce and collaboration tools. OneOffice provides us with a value-add out of the box solution plus the tools to personalise it to ensure a great fit. For Express, doing business with our partners, whether they are customers or suppliers, is all about trust. We trust Strategix; it’s as simple as that.”

About Express Group

Express Group started out as a partnership in 1988 repairing printer Group. In 1993 the partnership was transformed into a Private Limited Company and in 1996 Express opened an office in Orleans, France. Soon after this offices opened in Brussels, Belgium and in Stirling, Scotland. Further expansion came with the acquisition of Laser Printer Services in 2002, which allowed Express to target an established end-user market. Headquartered in Ripon, North Yorkshire and with more than 150 employees, Express continues to grow, most recently developing a presence in Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.

About Strategix

Strategix is a leading European software house, dedicated to the development and rapid deployment of supply chain software.

We focus on the wholesale and retail distribution, logistics and service sectors where our software maximizes supply chain efficiency and accelerates customer service. Our systems are designed for reliability, availability and performance. Our customers enjoy a rapid return on their investment and genuine competitive advantage.

Focused on key growth sectors which range from high technology to household and building products, Strategix numbers businesses such as Fired Earth, Fuller Smith & Turner, Jewson, London Underground, MacLean Electrical, Midwich, Routeco, Virgin Mobile and Wolseley among its customers.