MarketingCentral and Advantage today announced new integration plans.
“Advantage Software powers over 300 advertising agencies and marketing services companies today,” stated Ellen Coulter, President of Advantage Software.” These firms all have the need to share a wide variety of files and documentation produced from the Advantage Agency Management System with their clients. For many, email isn’t the right communication solution. Many of these files need to be reviewed, annotated, or approved by several people, and email isn’t designed to manage these processes. We’ve teamed with MarketingCentral, the industry leader in client communication systems, to provide an integrated, best-of-breed solution for full client communication.”
Added Dave Ryan, Chief Executive Officer, MarketingCentral, “For most agencies, production work can’t start until the client approves an estimate or quote. Advantage Software provides a robust estimating and quoting tool that is in widespread use by agencies all over North America. Many agencies produce dozens of estimates weekly and sometimes daily, and many need to be reviewed and signed off by more than one person. The integration announced today extends the existing integration between our systems by enabling an ‘Estimate or Quote’ generated in Advantage to be automatically posted for client review in the agency’s MarketingCentral account. Now in one safe location accessible through the Web, the agency team and clients can collaborate, review, and approve project briefing documents, estimates, schedules, timelines, and creative work.”
“Over time, we will be enabling Advantage to post any file or report seamlessly into our clients’ MarketingCentral accounts, stated Art Lacerte, Founder of Advantage Software. “Our success in the market is tied directly to our customer service and our knowledge of agency management operations. We fully understand the value our clients receive from a robust client communication system, and the integral role that Advantage plays in producing much of the information that flows to our agencies’ clients. We’re partnering with MarketingCentral because of their specific focus on automating the needs related to client communication and service. Developing the optimal solution for client interaction requires different technologies, different focus, and different skills.”
Added Dave Ryan, “The Advantage Software system was developed to manage work and to control the operation of an agency. A function like the general ledger needs to comply with complex accounting processes and laws and is designed and built with very robust capabilities. A tool that is designed to empower a client to review, markup, and approve documents online must be available 24/7/365 from any web browser. The technology used to create the right user experience for this type of work is very different from that used to streamline billing, AP, and general accounting work. It is reasonable to expect an agency person to undergo some training to be able to reconcile a ledger, but an agency’s client has neither time nor interest in having to learn a new tool to approve an estimate online. This partnership makes sense because each company brings to it a solution that is highly optimized to solve different problems.”
“Early in the decade when most agencies had interactive staff, many developed simple extranets,” added John Vasileff, Vice President of Solutions for MarketingCentral. “We saw some pretty clever home-grown extranets. Even though few had the functionality we deliver, one of the biggest reasons agencies began to abandon them was opening their internal networks to inbound Internet traffic. The time and expense, combined with the technical expertise needed to keep equipment safe and free of viruses and worms, compounded the normal work and complexity of hardware and software maintenance, running backups, and other system administration work. We invest a lot of time and money to ensure a 99.98% uptime performance. Few agencies can afford the costs and fewer have the expertise to achieve such performance, but few can afford not to provide excellent availability to their clients. The doors must always, always be open for business.”
“There are a lot of bad and bored people out there,” continued John Vasileff. “Message Labs reported that at its peek rate, 1 out of 12 emails on the Internet were MyDoom Viruses. AOL reported intercepting over one half a billion virus-laden emails in a 6-month period in 2003. Trend Micro reported that the estimated cost of PC Viruses to businesses was approximately $55 billion in damages in 2003, $20-30 billion in 2002, and $13 billion in 2001. And the worst part is that Microsoft Windows server is the choice of small businesses, and the one exposed to inbound Internet traffic is the most targeted and vulnerable server around. In addition to providing our clients a great tool, we offer a superior, high availability service that few agencies could afford or hope to attain.”
The automatic estimate posting announced today will be made available to clients in the fourth quarter 2004.
