As a businessperson, you are probably familiar with Windows-based software. Perhaps you regularly send e-mail through Outlook or write customer letters in Word. Many business owners keep financial information in Excel so they can easily analyse their data. One of the advantages of these programs is their interoperability. You can merge a document in Word using data stored using an Excel file, and e-mail it from Outlook.

Prophet 21, Activant's Windows-based enterprise software solution that uses a SQL Server database, integrates easily with most Windows-based products. This integration enables you to use the tools you are familiar with to access, analyse, and distribute important business information from your Prophet 21 solution.

Additional CRM

Many distributors use Outlook to help them with customer relationship management (CRM). Prophet 21 integrates easily with Outlook, so you can store e-mail addresses with other customer information in Prophet 21. When you need to e-mail a customer, you simply click on their e-mail address and an Outlook window will open inside of your solution.

You can also use Outlook with Prophet 21 alerts and workflows. For example, if a customer requests that you send him an e-mail every time one of his shipments leaves your loading dock, simply set that workflow alert in Prophet 21, and the e-mail will be delivered via Outlook.

Personalise Communications

As a distributor, you probably create thousands of pieces of customer correspondence each year, ranging from letters offering special promotions to dunning notices.

You can easily pull data from Prophet 21 into Word, word-processing software, to customise these communication pieces. For example, if you send dunning letters once a month, you can create a generic letter and import customer-specific information like contact name, address, account aging information, and even specific invoice information to create personalised letters at the touch of a key.

You can also use Word to create labels for letters by simply importing customer address information from your solution to the word-processing application. It's much easier than assigning one of your employees the task of typing 300, 600, or even 1,000 labels.

Export and Analyse

Executives often store important financial data, such as sales trends, profit and loss reports, and commission statements, in spreadsheets for easier analyzing.

With Prophet 21, you can export key data to a Windows-based spreadsheet application such as Excel or Access to create charts and share information. It is much easier -- and more secure -- to e-mail employees this data in spreadsheet format than it is to give everyone access to your database.

Mapping a Plan

When integrated with MapPoint mapping software, Prophet 21 can help distributors track sales trends by location or to plan delivery routes. For example, you can plot driver's routes by importing customer address information from Prophet 21 to MapPoint. You can also import and view sales data in a graphical, location-based format, or import a few client addresses to help sales representatives map low-mileage routes for customer calls.

Using software like Word, Excel, Outlook, and MapPoint as companions to Prophet 21, you can maximise the use of your solution while increasing efficiencies.

For more information on Activant's enterprise software solutions, please fill out our Web Contact Form.

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