You Spoke, We Listened! Customer-Driven Product Evolution

Customer collaboration makes for great products

e-automate is the leading ERP solution for managed office technology providers because of the relationships and ongoing dialogue we have with our customers. This connection affords us an intimate understanding of our customer’s pains and challenges and helps us to continue meeting the evolving needs of office technology businesses using print management software.

Many of the new enhancements described in this article were born out of the feedback that we received from the e-automate Users Group, an independent organisation of e-automate users formed to share knowledge and experience using e-automate. Their feedback and collaboration have been invaluable throughout the development lifecycle of e-automate.

Our collaboration with customers is what allows us to continue delivering the highest functioning ERP for office technology businesses.

What’s new in e-automate this year?

e-automate had a number of releases this year that delivered a number of subtle but impactful enhancements to improve the daily workflows of e-automate users. Our print management software users told us about the biggest pain points they face in their daily working days, and we responded. Here are some of the pains we recently addressed:

PAIN POINT #1: My customers complain when a bill includes unexpected overage values. How can I validate those overages before billing?

To improve visibility into and recognition of unusual overage values, we’ve provided a better way to identify overage amounts prior to invoicing meter-billed contracts. This new functionality will help to identify any unusual overage activity before billing your customer, giving you an opportunity to investigate anomalies before your customer receives an alarming bill.

Three new columns are added to the Ready to Invoice/Propose tab in the Contract Billing screen.

• Last ovg. amt. shows the last overage amount previously billed for the contract.
• % of last ovg., shows the percentage change from the last overage amount, so you can quickly identify great fluctuations in overages from one billing cycle to the next.
• Diff. of last ovg. is the amount by which the Overage Amount has changed since the Last Overage Amount. A positive value indicates an increase in the Overage Amount since the previous billing. A negative value indicates a decrease in the Overage Amount since the previous billing.

Additionally, you can use these column headers in QuickSearch filters to more easily locate overage values to investigate before billing the contracts.

PAIN POINT #2: We have daily meters pushed into e-automate, and when it's time for billing, there are invalid meters that need to be removed to ensure our billing is accurate. Is there a faster way to remove multiple meter readings from an individual device?

e-automate's print management software now provides the ability to bulk remove meters associated with a single piece of equipment.

Previously, when users needed to invalidate or delete multiple meter readings associated with a single piece of equipment, they had to remove those readings one at a time. Now, in the Meter Reading Console, you can identify a single piece of equipment and select multiple meter readings to bulk invalidate or delete.

PAIN POINT #3: Locating customer records is challenging if their business name has changed or if they are identified under multiple names (i.e. General Savings and Loan Corp/GSL/GSL Corp). Is searching for alternate business names possible?

It is now possible to attribute aliases to customer records. When you have a customer that everyone refers to by their acronym, sometimes it’s challenging to find their business name in your systems. Similarly, when your customer is merged with another company through acquisition, modifying the company name in your systems can have knock on effects throughout your different departments. e-automate now allows you to associate aliases with your customer records, so when conducting a QuickSearch to find the customer records, you can search by any alias associated with the business.

Additionally, you can now search for Bill To aliases. This capability means that anyone using e-automate can find the records they need. Whether they are searching for General Savings and Loan Corp, or GSL – the names are all tied to the same records.

PAIN POINT #4: When I need to place a credit hold on a customer, the credit hold is applied to the leasing company being invoiced and not the customer. How do we avoid this?

New allowances have been made to ensure that only the customer can have credit holds/releases applied.

When placing a credit hold or release on a customer, if the system can’t distinguish the customer from the leasing company, credit holds, and releases can be troublesome. To overcome this, there is a new ability to define a customer-type assignment for a leasing company and then configure the customer for Leasing Pass Through. This ensures that when a credit hold or release occurs, it applies to the customer and not the leasing company you are using to invoice your customer.

The Cloud Advantage

Because e-automate is a cloud-based print management software, we can roll out product updates on a regular basis. e-automate’s monthly update cycle ensures that improvements and enhanced workflows are continuously delivered to users. e-automate’s cloud users have been using these enhanced features for several months and have provided highly positive feedback.

e-automate systems that are not cloud-hosted are on a separate, less-frequent release schedule, but customers who self-host will also receive these updates when the next self-hosted system upgrade becomes available.

More information about all of these new features for your print management software can be found in the e-automate WebHelp.