July 2008 Customer Newsletter

Opening Comments

Independence day is over and all of us making plans for Labor day. Planning ahead is to main topic of this newsletter. Preparing for what will happen is what keeps us in business. Another company had "issues" with their Access database last month and decided it was time to switch. The AA-Standard system is excellent and it works almost all the time without a problem but when it decides to go bad it is gone. Do not be caught in a situation where you are in the middle of disaster and find yourself with no way out. We will be implementing Access database recovery charges this month. If we need to recover your database there will be a minimum fee of $1,500.00 for us to recover it. There have been many opportunities to switch over many years. It is time to quit hoping for the best. Yuk. I sound grumpy this morning. On a lighter note the only trade show we have scheduled is the Farwest show in Oregon see the travel schedule later in this newsletter. I hope to see you there. 

Upgrade to AA - SQL Special Pricing Extended

Are you considering upgrading to AA-SQL? If not you should. Get the added reliability and function that the upgrade provides. Spend fewer dollars to get it. Get 15% off the normal price. We now can offer gentle terms to pay for it.

Decide to get off the fence about the upgrade you know you should purchase. Take control of the risks in your business and upgrade before a disaster hits your database. See the Disaster at UDS articles for more information.

The software discount has been extended to 8/31. Contact Brian at 800 626-7247 Extension 203 for details.

Add On Line Ordering to your AA Application Suite

How is your web site running? Are you getting orders from it? Now you can put in a simple link on your existing site and start taking orders. It is not much work and you will be rewarded with a "free" order taker. Reduce the cost of order capture and make yourself look a lot bigger. It is not as much work as you think. Your AA system already has the information just export it to the web site.

It is tried and tested. Here is an unsolicited comments from Dupont Nursery:

“Brian, just wanted to let you know the store is working out extremely well.  I am saving so much time by not having to contact people via phone and email and order entry is flawless. 

            thanks a lot,

            Robert”

On Line Ordering saves your company money and makes the order capturing process easy. Ask Brian how it is done. Take a look at this site to see how it could look for you: http://www.udsgis.com/dupontnursery/index.htm

Contact UDS at 800 626-7247 Extension 203 or 616 942-8142 Extension 203 or email brian@udsgis.com

Disaster at UDS! or was it?

Over this July 4^th weekend we had a major system failure! Did anyone notice? It should have been a disaster but so far only one person noticed.

Late in the day on July 2, 2008 there was a bad thunder storm in Grand Rapids, MI that caused a power outage at our main office.  All of our server and phone equipment is housed there. Power was not restored until July 6.

Hopefully you did not try to contact our office during that time because our servers and phone system were down. We apologize if you did.

It used to be we had telephone lines even when power was out. Now we do not. We have a phone system and do not have plain old telephones. We had no phone system. Because a major portion of our business depends on the ability to forward calls through the phone system, we should have adjusted our disaster recovery plan.

Please Note this emergency backup number
The only way to contact UDS was by cell phone. If you do not have Brian’s cell phone number (it is 616 299 9916) you could not contact us. A power outage like this does not happen often but when it does you may need to contact UDS. If it happens again before we get a revised plan in place please call me on that number.

Disaster Assessment
Our assessment is that the impact of the outage was minimal. Most of the credit for the minimal impact is due to our fanatic dedication to quality programming. It is much less necessary to contact support than it used to be. Although the outage was serious it was not earth shaking.

The one person that noticed is a company that has us host applications for them. If the hosted services portion of our business model is going to increase as we expect in the next few years we will need to be ready for it.

How this applies to Your Business
You can apply some of our experience to your business. I have been preaching to you about system reliability and avoiding potential disaster in your business before it happens. We know that the ActiveApplications Standard (Access) system is not as reliable as it should be. We cannot make it more reliable because the problem is in the Microsoft Access database and they are not going to change it. Many of you think it is good enough for you what are you going to do when your database fails? What is your disaster recovery plan?

This could be a disaster for you. Can you run your business for 4 days without your AA program? If not you can eliminate a potential disaster by getting AA – SQL. What would the cost be if you had to make up four days of business? The cost of the upgrade is small in comparison.

Many of the same things I have been suggesting to you have direct bearing on your company. If you have not switched to AA-SQL you should. We will soon be requiring payment for the recovery of a corrupted database. Avoid the expense and reduce the risk Upgrade Now

It Has Happened Before
It has now happened twice in our almost 30 years of business. The first time was an ice storm that knocked out our electricity for several days. It created major havoc with support because it was during mid week and our customer call volume was much higher. This time it happened over the July 4 weekend and our call volume is very low in comparison to 15 years ago.

This time we were saved because the software is much more reliable and fewer support calls are required.  

Since the nature of our business has changed we should have taken additional steps to insure your access to support. We will in the future

Can it Happen Again?
The short answer is yes. We will get a generator for this situation or house our servers at a third party site. Until then keep my cell phone number.

We are geographically diverse so the chance of a single disaster taking out both locations is remote. With all the bad publicity Florida gets about hurricanes, you would think it would be the FL location that caused the problem. Guess again. We in FL were enjoying a beautiful July 4^th weekend.

New! X-Charge and AA Web Site

Our preferred credit card payment processor has created an informational web site for ActiveApplications and their service. It is www.udsgisx.com. Take a look at it. They do a better job of explaining the benefits to you than I can in a newsletter.

We encourage you to move to the X-Charge service it will be a key component of our AA-On Line payment system.

Contact UDS sales at 800 626-7247 Extension 202 for more information. 

Travel Schedule

Brian is scheduled to be at the Farwest Nursery Trade show August 21 to 23, 2008. It is our only summer trade show event this year. If you are in the area please visit me at booth 3089. I look forward to seeing you there.

Brian is scheduled in Michigan July 23 to 29. If you would like to meet with him then please let him know at 800 626-7247 Extension 203.