The Progressive Solutions blog

This is our blog, with extra news, tips & product features. Main Progressive Solutions website here.

Blog word cloud

Wordle is free software that lets you build ‘word clouds’ of strings of words. You can type in your words directly or capture them from a website, RSS feed, blog, etc – here we’ve picked up the front page of this blog.

You can tweak fonts, colours, etc. Strangely compelling.

http://www.wordle.net

New Progressive House photo album

There’s a new photo album of pictures taken in and around the new Progressive House, over at flickr.com. Please take a look and add your comments!

Customer futures workshop

Many thanks to those customers who attended a recent bisTrack futures event. The day was a massive success and we hope people found the day as informative and useful as we did.

We’re always looking to move the company forward and improve ourselves, therefore enabling bisTrack users to have the stability needed to stay one step ahead of their competitors. This event gave us the perfect opportunity to gain feedback on current and future product releases.

For those of you who were unable to attend, here’s a quick summary of the day’s events.

Future bisTrack software development will now consist of less frequent milestones. Urgent fixes will continue to be handled in Service Packs as soon as we can make them. We’ll continue to urge customers to take advantage of the most recent versions of software (for free), giving them the features and us less versions of software to support.

The CRM software demonstration proved a huge success among attendees. Likewise electronic product catalogues, showcasing eBusiness and e-Xact again proved to be a big hit.

Future eBusiness features will include flexible style sheets, flexible eBusiness browsers and batching of outgoing documents.

Web Track* (live) software demonstration, showcasing credit cards, employee log on, style sheets and trading portal customisation. Arnold Laver Web Track trading portal demonstration via an iPhone. Get in touch if you want to see a copy of this video.

Many motivational quotes were gathered on the day, here are just a few.

Colin Dean – Arnold Laver: “Things are changing, bisTrack has helped us hugely and Web Track will too, people need to stay up-to-date with changing trends. Great product: couldn’t bear to be without it.”

Arthur Duffy – Progressive Solutions’ MD: “People want software which will increase productivity and make their life easier. They don’t want to buy software; they want to buy solutions to a problem.”

Gary Brookshaw – Progressive Solutions’ product director: “CRM helps to empower every employee to boost sales, satisfaction and service. This allows each individual to have a system which is easy to use and maintain.”

*Information on Web Track and other Progressive Solutions products, is at www.progressive-solutions.co.uk/products.php

Dale Brooks, December 2009

New desktop wallpapers

We’ve added some free desktop downloads to the website – use them on your bisTrack PC, on the trade counter, in the back office, however you like.

Head over to http://www.progressive-solutions.co.uk/support/free-wallpapers.php to grab them.

Updated: We’ve added a couple of new wallpapers for widescreen users, up to a massive 1920×1200 px resolution.

Progressive Solutions named top employer

Progressive Solutions wins top employer in BC award for 5th straight year

Vancouver BC (Nov 5, 2009) – For the fifth year in a row, Progressive Solutions Inc. (PSI), has been named one of the top employers in British Columbia. Founded in 1989, PSI is the fastest growing supplier of software systems for the forestry and lumber and building materials industries.

Organized by the editors of Canada’s Top 100 Employers, the annual BC’s Top Employers competition recognizes BC companies offering exceptional places to work. Companies are judged on: physical workplace; work and social atmosphere; health, financial and family benefits; vacation and time off; employee communications; performance management; training and skills development; and community involvement.

“We’re delighted to win this award,” said Len Williams, president, PSI. “We think it’s especially significant when you consider the competition is open to any BC company in the private or public sector, regardless of size.

“After 20 years in the software business, we recognize that to create great software you have to recruit and retain great people. That’s why we’re committed to making PSI a fantastic and rewarding place to work and are continually looking for new ways to enhance the work experience for each of our employees.”

PSI human resources manager Paula Bifano said the company’s growth from a startup in 1989 to a recognized leader in the lumber building materials and wood products industry is due, in large part, to hiring and retaining the best and brightest people in all aspects of the company’s operation.

“We believe that when our employees succeed, we succeed,” said Bifano. “Being named one of BC’s top 50 employers shows that we’re just as committed to employee development as we are to developing great products and customer support. When you consider the tremendous input each of our 125 employees has in how our company operates, this really is an award that belongs to each one of them.”

For more information on the BC’s Top Employers competition, visit  www.canadastop100.com/bc/

Biggest ever newsletter online

Our Autumn 2009 newsletter is our biggest yet — plenty of success stories from companies with vision, positioning themselves for the future. There’s no doubting that those companies working hard to see a way through the downturn and investing in new systems and practises are the ones that will thrive when the upturn comes.

You can read about our move into the newly-opened Progressive House. Len Williams, PSI president: “Our move into Progressive House demonstrates our commitment to making further investment and to developing our market-leading position.”

Customer and software stories from James Hargreaves (100-user plumbers’ merchant), Complete Building Materials (using bisTrack and Scan Track at their builders merchants in Halifax), John Cavanagh’s new timber branch (powered by bisTrack), and the use of Web Track at timber giant James Latham.

>> Read more here (PDF, 888k).

Cutting edge e-commerce at Arnold Laver

A leading national timber merchant is combating the difficult economic climate with its cutting edge approach to electronic commerce (e-commerce) using bisTrack’s eBusiness module.

Arnold Laver Timber World, based in Sheffield, has made major developments to its modern communications and information technology over the last two years, with state-of-the-art computer systems and the integration of modern web based facilities. [Read more on Arnold Laver]

Laver takes a smarter view

bisTrack’s recently launched Smart Views are proving a hit with Sheffield-based Arnold Laver Timber World. The company has created about 500 smart views since they were introduced earlier in the year.

Read more on our website

A quick overview of bisTrack

bisTrack gives you Windows-based cash and credit sales, stock control, pricing and discount management, for delivered and direct sales from multiple locations. bisTrack is so easy to use, making the transition from another system smooth and immediately productive. A few of the basics:

• full sales order processing
• simple to use at the counter
• powerful search — find anything, fast
• cash, credit and cards… [bisTrack on the Progressive  website]

ECC invests in lumberTrack

Irish-based sawmill ECC, the largest exporter of timber from Ireland to the UK, is investing for the future with the lumberTrack stock control and production management system from Progressive Solutions (reports the Timber Trades Journal).

The Irish construction sector has been hit hard by the downturn, but ECC has made the bold move of investing heavily to improve customer service and increase its export capacity. Their new software solution is a powerful allie in the battle for overseas sales.

Managing director PJ Fahy said: “This [new software] will benefit customers in the UK and Ireland.” He added, “Even when times are good in Ireland we keep exporting. It’s very gratifying for us to see the loyalty shown to our company by our UK customers over the past two years – they know that we will consistently be there in the future.”