Secure and powerful data management is a necessity for Angelo Celesia, Principal, and his team of customer service representatives at Professional Answering Services. Over the past year and a half, Angelo has discovered new ways to leverage the power of TrackVia’s online database solution to improve the efficiency of his call center and the value added services offered to clients ranging from George Washington University to Massimo Zanetti Beverage Company.

We recently recorded the following discussion with Angelo about his experience with TrackVia. During this brief podcast he mentions three tips for individuals exploring an online database:

1. Don’t let the application intimidate you.
2. Make sure the solution you are evaluating has good and responsive support included.
3. Do a test drive with your real data to fully experience the online database.

Listen to the podcast for more insights from Angelo and click here to read a more detailed case study.

Listen to TrackVia’s podcast with Professional Answering Services discussing their experience with TrackVia’s Online Database

Win a Flip Video Camcorder!

Do you have a good data blunder story (funny or tragic) to share from work or life in general? If so, TrackVia wants to hear it!

Think back to a time when data “just disappeared” or you sent the wrong set of data to a colleague. The topics are endless when you consider data encompasses everything from music downloads and photo sharing to numerical analysis for a company presentation.

When was the last time you were rewarded for a mishap? The best-shared stories (500 words or less) will receive a Flip Video Camcorder in time for the holidays.  Click here to share your story today!

As a buyer, I’m all about calculating the ROI of each purchase. It’s an inexact science – trying to put an objective number on a decision that’s loaded with uncertainty. But just going through the exercise of listing all of the benefits and expenses associated with the decision is eye-opening. The biggest benefit is that it helps me “normalize” the different options, and often makes it clear that the lowest priced option isn’t the one with the best ROI.

In that spirit, here’s my top 5 list of alternatives to TrackVia’s online database that may be helpful in thinking about the ROI for your business or organization.

1) Call a web developer and get a quote for a custom database application that would include a web form (gathering more sales leads from your website – great for the front end of the funnel!) that sends info straight into a web-based CRM that allows you to send personalized, targeted email campaigns.

2) Call a custom database developer and ask how much it would cost to take your existing database and web-enable it, including hardware, systems administration services (gotta apply those patches!), backups and redundancy.

3) Take a look at your Salesforce.com monthly bill, and then look at TrackVia’s pricing. I know – your employees will whine and complain about having to switch to a new application. But in the current economy, isn’t it worth putting up with a bit of whining to switch and save the money? And don’t worry, the whining won’t last long, soon it will be raving that you hear.

4) Take a look at your QuickBase monthly bill, and then look at TrackVia’s pricing and included online database features. Sure, the entry-level prices are the same, but continue reading. You’re paying extra for all of those database records and file storage. And if you don’t have at least 100 seats, you don’t even have access to important security features like IP filtering that come standard in TrackVia.

5) Take a look at some low-priced web applications, and use them for a while. See if you find yourself tapping your foot each time you click to do something (“loading – please wait….”). See if you find consistent complaints about the service’s uptime and response time. And, try to get hands-on help from a real human who’ll do things like customize your HTML web forms and HTML templates for you – for free!

I had the opportunity to attend a recent “Tweetup” in Boulder with special guest Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester. Check out the Twitter roll call.

In true Meetup fashion, there was no agenda and no way of knowing who would show up. In casual conversation it became clear that we all shared a common link that the ways in which we communicate and get information has radically changed. Even that morning, I had no plans to drive to Boulder but was thankful to connect with a group of brilliant people helping to drive innovation in web technology. Being online or connected through social media tools such as Twitter is what brought us together and had I not been dialed in, I would have missed this opportunity.

This got me thinking how important it is for the tools that we use be as mobile and as easy to access as possible. Server-based apps surely won’t keep up with the likes of this crowd; some of which continued on to work from a local café. Glad to know that tools like TrackVia are perfectly suited for the professional on the go. No reason to be far from your data or information just because you decided to leave the office.

It was great meeting @hollyk, @jowyang, as well as many others. Connecting in person is always good and staying connected through web tools is equally as important. It is clear that times have changed and the methods for sharing and accessing information must change as well.

Join me on Twitter, @edunigan

In the history of commerce, I would guess that we in the technology industry are in a somewhat unique period. I’m talking about the current business model where a software company offers its product, or at least an entry level version of it, for free. So, when I see an article like this, where it’s stated that it’s time for a valuable product like the Office Suite to be provided for free, I have to roll my eyes…

Any product that I get value out of, I’m willing to pay for, and am actually more comfortable if I’m paying something for it. (I’m the guy who actually pays the extra $10 to www.weatherunderground.com for the “premium” offering that’s not ad-supported.) Why? So I can reasonably expect the product to be available and of high quality.

At TrackVia, we have the same approach to our own business. As a hosted application provider, we incur some level of infrastructure costs for each account that’s created. And that infrastructure cost pales in comparison to the cost of providing the hands-on customer support that we deliver (for example, we have a human being, in our office, answer all of our calls during business hours). So, if we were to offer a permanent free version of our product, then we’d be burning cash to cover the expense of supporting our free users, and would either have to pass those costs along to our paying customers or we’d be on the quick path to being out-of-business.

We’ve never offered a free version of the product, and we have no plans to. We’re just old-fashioned this way, and believe that we’re building a more fundamentally sound business by providing a valuable product that we’re paid for in return.

So, as easy as it is to dislike Microsoft and to resent the amount of money we pay for their products (I agree that monopolies are a bad thing) it doesn’t mean that the opposite extreme – free – is the right answer. Companies that provide a valuable product and that receive a fair price for them are built for the long run.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the Web 2.0 Conference in person but have been following the conversation via Twitter. I commend the organizers for structuring an impressive and diverse range of speakers and topics that have elevated the conversation beyond solely the web’s challenges and opportunities. It is great to see the web community explore new roles the web can play in the challenges facing our world today from politics to global finance to healthcare.

Following the tweets got me thinking about TrackVia and how we have expanded our own line of thinking from where we started several years ago. We got started by helping a $5 billion transportation project solve a major data management problem. The problem: How could they track, manage, and respond to the unexpected volume of comments received from the community? The solution: TrackVia’s online database that provided a powerful and user friendly database that collected comments via web forms, organized comments by relevant category and provided a tool to share information with the community, vendors and government agencies.

By harnessing the best that technology has to offer and providing software through a web-based approach, we have evolved our online database solution that has been embraced by thousands of users in industries such as real estate, recruiting/hr, advertising/marketing, money managers, and non-profits alike in nearly every U.S. state and over 30 countries. When we started a few years ago, we knew a really diverse group of companies and industries would find our solution a useful tool. For example, a major food bank in California is tracking donors and campaigns with TrackVia and a global sustainable energy company is tracking logistics, inventory and wind generator defects with TrackVia.

We agree with Tim O’Reilly that this is just the beginning of the Internet; we also believe that this is just the beginning of TrackVia. We look forward to further expanding our presence and evolving our product with our current customer organizations and exposing our web-based database to new industries looking for a better way to collect, organize and share data.

To our customers, we are curious, what were you using before TrackVia?

It’s been interesting, to say the least, to watch how people and companies behave during the current problems in the financial sector. It’s given me just a hint of how people must’ve felt at the onset of the great depression, when there were runs on the banks. Knock on wood, we don’t seem to be headed for large scale runs on the banks this time around, and I think that the underlying reason is that people today have more confidence that their money is secure with their bank. And they certainly seem to believe that their money is more secure with a bank than it would be under their mattresses.

That realization has led me to an analogy about companies’ willingness to store their information with someone else, rather than keeping it on their own servers and PCs. As with cash, it’s tempting to feel that your information is more secure if it’s on your own machines, under your own control. However, I think that this feeling of security is largely an illusion. Today, “security breaches” are more ho-hum than they are the result of sophisticated, stealthy hacker attacks. For example, a company is much more likely to lose control of information through lost and stolen laptops than through a sophisticated hacker attack from Eastern Europe that overcomes multiple security layers protecting a network.

This is pertinent, of course, to TrackVia given that we’re in the business of providing our customers with both a great database application and online access to, and storage of, their information. In that sense, we’re a bank that stores and protects your information for you, a secure online database. Even though the model of hosted applications like TrackVia isn’t new (it’s been called the ASP model, Software-as-a-Service, etc.) I think that the time has come when most companies are willing to trust that their information is safer with us than it is under their mattress.

Welcome to the first installment of our series, “Shoulda Had TrackVia.” If you take a good look around, information is being mismanaged everywhere these days! And at no time is this more evident than when a big election rolls around.

Before reading further, I’d like to point out that this post was written from a data management not a political view point.

Local and state governments all over the country are in a panic, voters are dreading long lines and wondering if their votes will count this year.

If only we could’ve gotten to Ohio faster. It turns out that this crucial swing state’s election chief says they’re going to have to start creating their voter database from scratch after the election! Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said Thursday that voters’ names will be maintained but the system must be fixed to allow easier searches.

Brunner says the system has been flawed since it was built by different vendors who didn’t always create a similar system of data entry fields.

“Shoulda had TrackVia”. Our powerful search tool just may have made the difference; searching in TrackVia is a breeze. And those data entry fields? With our easy import/ export features and the flexibility in our field types, Ohio could’ve saved itself a lot of money.

Jennifer if you or any other election official needs help putting together a voter database after the election, you know where to find us!

A new culture is brewing in the workplace with consumer technology tools changing the way we work. Per a recent Forrester report, Millennials (said to have been born between 1980-2000) entering the workforce are overconfident and bring a new attitude. With that attitude comes the demand for a different way of working, instant gratification and access to information from any location. You won’t find these professionals sitting in front of their desktop computers from 8:00 – 5:00. They are mobile, constantly on the go and likely to do the same job from a cubicle or a coffee shop. Millennials represent a generation born with a computer and are sometimes referred to as the Google generation.

Ron Alsop, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and author of The Trophy Kids Grow Up (released last month) talks about the demands that the younger generation is putting on the workplace and how technology is used.

From what we are seeing and reading, one thing is clear; the ways in which people work with information and each other is changing. These younger professionals don’t want to be held hostage to a desktop computer and are more mobile than ever before. This new generation of professionals demand web access to applications, easy reporting as well as flexible and customized options to satisfy their work requirements.

So what does this all mean? Technology must be flexible and change at the speed of business while keeping pace with end-user interests. We believe that by closely observing consumer tech trends, companies like TrackVia can build a better mousetrap and deliver solutions that professionals are more likely to adopt.

To the Millennials out there, we welcome you to the workforce. I think you will like what you see with TrackVia - but don’t be shy, let us know what you think.

It’s the holiday season and the dreaded holiday card mailing is fast approaching. After a game of “not it” – you feel pity for the poor soul who is assigned the task of pulling together a list of contacts from the company database for the annual company holiday card.

It always seems to be the case that in the process of pulling a list, you realize how outdated your contacts are, how many duplicates exist and how many of the contacts are no longer with the companies that they are listed next to.

Using these simple steps, we hope to make this process easier. Think of it as an early present:

1. Collect:

• Import contacts into TrackVia via an Excel Spreadsheet. Click to view a pdf with a step-by-step guide to downloading your Outlook contacts into Excel
• With our new Excel import feature you can easily update (addresses, emails, company names) your existing records

2. Organize:

• If every manager in your office keeps their own list of contacts, easily de-dupe so contacts only receive one card from your corporation
• Add a field in your database of primary contact’s name for your mailing list and then send “tailored messages” signed by the appropriate contact using mail merge
• Track who you sent cards to and who you received cards from by denoting the appropriate fields (card sent/received)
• Upload an html template to create your own look and feel for your holiday greetings
• Create custom views to send tailored messages to your contacts. For example, thank current customers for their business and let prospects and former clients know you look forward to working with them again in the new year

3. Share:

• Mailing - use the mail merge feature to create mailing labels and/or personalized holiday letters for snail mail correspondence without having to perform a difficult mail merge with two different systems
• Electronic - use the mail merge feature to personalize the email with fields from your database and then send the message via the built-in email campaign tool