Catalog Management Software management solutions

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Catalog Management Software

Response for Windows is a powerful and richly-featured business application designed to execute and optimize the direct commerce procedures, policies and activities of small to mid-sized companies (<$1MM to ~$50MM). To see a comprehensive Visual Overview [a 1.8 MB download] click here.

Key Features
Customer Management
Real-time Order Entry and Fulfillment
UPS OnLine® Tools & UPS OnLine® WorldShip® Integration
Remote Call Center Support
Electronic Credit Card Processing
Inventory and Warehouse Management
Multi-Carrier Manifest w/competitive service pricing
Sales and Marketing Reports
On-Line Customer Service
Comprehensive List Maintenance
Returns, Refunds & Exchanges
Media and Catalog Tracking/Analysis
Prospecting/Telemarketing
Accounts Receivable
Purchasing
Sales Tax Compliance
Network Fax Service
Real-time Web Connectivity
Want to see how your present system measures up? Check out our Direct Commerce/Fulfillment Checklist.

UPS OnLine® Tools/UPS OnLine® WorldShip®
Response for Windows can provide real-time shipping data using the UPS OnLine® Tools. Access to comprehensive shipment data including shipment status and the time and location of each scan are available as the package makes its way to its final destination through the integrated UPS OnLine® Tracking Tool.

Having real-time access to this data enables your call center agents to provide customers with accurate and up-to-the-minute shipping information. This enhances their shopping experience and reduces call times (and, consequently, costs). For those who would like to provide their on-line customers with real-time shipment tracking, but don't already have this functionality enabled on their web site, the Response Web Connectivity Kit, with some simple server-side scripting, will do the job.

Comparing shipping rates by services during order entry is another feature supported by the UPS OnLine® Tools. A real-time quote via the UPS OnLine® Rates and Services Selection tool can be generated on demand for single packages shipped from the U.S. This comparison enables your CSR's to suggest the optimal level of service for both timely and cost-effective delivery of a customer's order.

Response for Windows also includes an extensive interface to UPS OnLine® WorldShip®, a client software provided by UPS to its customers, free of charge.

Windows GUI
To achieve total customer satisfaction requires a careful and intricate orchestration of numerous business processes. Doing so in an efficient manner requires familiar, integrated tools that are at once intuitive and demonstrative to the end-user.

A user-friendly and feature-rich Customer Service module exemplifies our design philosophy and a key objective: To enable our clients to provide crisp, timely and accurate information and services to their customers.

Consistency
By embracing and strictly adhering to the Windows® programming rules and standards, Response for Windows promotes overall office efficiency and greatly facilitates new employee training by presenting the same, consistent interface as, for example, Microsoft Office®.

The application must also, however, enforce the established rules, methods and procedures of the organization. But the extent to which these procedures are to be strictly, or loosely, enforced must be equally flexible to accommodate growth and change.

Custom Configurations
No "off-the-shelf" Direct Commerce system is likely to completely satisfy the varied needs of all the companies using it. Vast differences in product, service, distribution, marketing, merchandising and customer care strategies exist from one company to the next. The goal of business automation is to abstract, embed and carry-out the discreet business rules and practices of an organization. Response shares that goal and supports it more capably with each new release.

Vendor-provided software customization is often necessary to address especially unique requirements. In other, less radical, instances the tools we provide to customize the application at runtime will be all our users need to modify and extend the application's behavior as desired.

Since 1985, CoLinear Systems has created and maintained more than 100 custom systems -- on-time, on-spec and on-budget. Many of these systems are still in operation today and most have undergone repeated enhancement to meet the evolving needs of the businesses they serve.

No Rewrites
Unlike the work performed by competitors, customization in Response is largely transparent to the software upgrade process. This enables our clients to receive future software upgrades like everyone else, without having to "rewrite code" for each new release.

If you're considering any other system and need to have customization performed, ask the vendor for a written statement that you can receive standard upgrades in the future. Or, if not, what the issues and estimated costs of future upgrades are likely to be.

Chances are, you won't be able to receive standard upgrades at all. Instead, you'll probably be asked to "cherry-pick" whatever new features and functions you wish to add to your now "orphaned" system ... and at considerable expense.

This puts you at a terrible disadvantage. You'll either reject some of the enhancements to keep costs down (and orphan yourself even further from the mainstream product!), or you'll (literally?) go for broke and pay to have your mods written all over again in the new release. This numbing cycle repeats itself with each new release of the package.

Version-Proof
By using rigorous and innovative programming techniques nearly all custom work in Response "coexists" in a single set of program source files for ease of administration, maintenance and upgrades. Our customized systems upgrade just like standard systems, with only minor installation script changes, for the most part.

We pride ourselves on producing top quality, single-source customization services in a cost-effective, stable and reliable manner. A less ambitious and uncontrolled approach to customization results in an orphaned system for the end-user—along with significant long-term risk and expense.

More than 4,000 function points are expertly woven into the fabric of Response to streamline and control the business and workflow logic that ultimately drives the application. Exposing any number of these to the System Supervisor (via secondary process engines in the runtime environment) makes "on-the-fly" customization possible to an extent never before seen in an application of this kind.

For example, customer communications -- such as an email to acknowledge receipt (or shipment) of a customer's order -- are driven by these external, expression-driven engines under the control of your system Supervisor. Even the most complex scenarios can be handled without any traditional application programming whatsoever.