Long Reach Releases Version 5.3 of Flagship info@hand
Customer Relationship and Business Management System (CRBM):

Key Additions Include Inventory Management, Knowledge Base, Forums, Bills,
Enhanced Quotes & Invoices, Campaign Enhancements, & Extended Printing Features

ONTARIO, CANADA – (April 14, 2008) – The Long Reach Corporation has announced the release of the next generation of its flagship product, info@hand, a Customer Relationship and Business Management (CRBM) System for small and medium-sized businesses. (Try it here: admin/admin to login.) The application is one of the first to blend first class Customer Relationship Management (CRM) features with extended business management capabilities for Accounting and ERP, e-Commerce, Project & Resource tracking, Customer Service, and Human Resources.

info@hand differs from conventional CRM products in that it offers key features that enable small and medium businesses to out-manoeuvre larger companies by capitalizing on their ability to react more quickly to client requests and changing markets. info@hand does this by eliminating common bottlenecks in finance and administrative areas. For example, it allows customer-facing personnel to create quotes or invoices quickly for clients, and then synchronize them later into the familiar QuickBooks accounting system for tracking by administrative staff - combining a quick response with a responsible audit trail.

Other features setting info@hand apart from the myriad of CRM products offered today include comprehensive project management capabilities such as timesheets, project costing and invoicing; fully integrated customer service management with an automatic assignment mode that pairs cases with the most qualified technicians; and strong international support including the ability to generate quote and invoice PDFs using the full UTF-8 character set needed for many languages including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai.

Some of the key new capabilities of release 5.3 of info@hand include:

• Shipping module, which manages full or partial shipment of sales orders or invoices, links quantity shipped to each line of Invoices, generates Packing Slips, integrates with FedEx and UPS shipping and tracking systems, tracks product serial numbers, and decreases stock levels.
  

• Receiving module, which links quantity received to each line of Purchase Orders, links to Sales Order, and increases stock levels. Shipping and Receiving modules together add full inventory management to info@hand.

• Bills module: Incoming Invoices from suppliers may be entered and tracked as Bills. Purchase Orders may be converted into Bills in a single click. This gives info@hand a complete Purchase Ledger capability to complement its existing Sales Ledger facilities.
  

• Knowledge Base module: Providing single-click article creation from service cases, plus the ability to use conventional detail and edit views to create and edit articles. Articles may be tagged for searching, and binary files and info@hand Documents may be linked to articles; checkboxes control if articles may be seen by clients in the Customer Portal.
  

• Forums module within the CRM (not to be confused with the one in the Customer Portal), with the ability to subscribe to threads for notification of updates. User photos are shown with each post, and threads may be linked to most major items of information in the system. A Forums dashlet is provided as well, to show those threads most recently updated.
  

• Quote & Invoice enhancements: Groups of items on a quote or invoice now have group types defined. Item group types include the existing Product type, plus new Support and Services types, which facilitate quote and invoice preparation for businesses which sell support and services.
  

• Service Case enhancements allow Service Parts to be linked to a Case, and subsequently to be automatically Invoiced.
  

• Accounts module Mass Update panel enhancements enable an Email Template to be used to send an email with attached PDFs containing Statements and optionally all open Invoices, to multiple selected Accounts.
  

• New layout option for Quotes, Invoices and other financial PDFs the system can produce, supporting USA #10 window envelopes.
  

• Integration with the dimdim web meeting system.
  

• Advanced PDF printing features for all list and detail view screens.
  

• Mass export of Contact vCards, for Mac Address Book support.
  

• Calendar day/week/month dashlet.
  

• Campaign enhancements for Newsletters and Web-to-Lead Form generation, plus a new Quick Campaign feature for Leads and Contacts.
  

Pricing for info@hand is simple compared to other CRM products. info@hand is sold for a one-time customer fee of 185 Euros (about $270 US) per user, which includes specific software for mobile access (info@hand Mobile) and the info@hand Customer Portal with eStore (which provides clients with access to automated sales and service 24/7). Also included in the standard price are the info@hand Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, and info@hand PBX software for integrating with Asterisk/Trixbox/Fonality/Skype/X-Lite IP telephony solutions.

An online demo of info@hand is available via their website. A 30-day free trial of the info@hand On Demand (subscription) service is also available. Customers may then decide to implement info@hand as On Premise software running on the customer’s own server or at their ISP, or as an On Demand service.