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press room For Immediate ReleaseContact: Linda O’Connor, Relatia New PR Consultancy Business Management Software Builds on State-of-the-Art FrontRange Solutions’ GoldMine®
Contact Management System Wilmington, DE – 15 June 2003 – A
long-time PR professional who served as the national head of the public
relations industry said that his mid-sized firm has enjoyed great advances in
productivity and management accountability because of a change in software. Sam Waltz, APR, Fellow PRSA, founded
Sam Waltz & Associates Business & Communications Counsel, Wilmington,
DE, in 1993, after he took an early out retirement as a senior PR exec for the
DuPont Company. Since then, he has
grown the firm’s national clientele from a MidAtlantic base just 20 minutes
from the Philadelphia airport, where his staff numbers 10 people. In addition, he served in 1999 as
the elected national CEO and Chairman, Board of Directors, of the Public
Relations Society of America (PRSA). In
addition, he has served the industry in a variety of senior elected and
appointed positions. “Like many firms, as we grew, we
faced a variety of technology, software and business management and systems
issues, including systems for contact management, business management and
financial management,” said Waltz, 55. “We used QuickBooks Pro® virtually
since our founding for financial management, but we still relied on Microsoft®
Outlook® for our data base management, with occasional special projects via Excel. Approaching mid-2002, our Managing Director
decided we needed to evaluate all our systems.” Her work in collaboration with the
SW&A team led her to GoldMine, a contact management system made by
FrontRange Solutions,
which offers businesses full-featured, yet affordable solutions to manage every
facet of business relationships. “We found FrontRange’s GoldMine software solution to be just right for a growing firm like us. We did not need to go as large as Seibel, and while other systems may have met our needs, GoldMine gave us the best mix to anticipate growth without overhauling our system, as well as access to a variety of other features,” said Managing Director Christine Waisanen, Esq. “In addition, as we started to
integrate it, we also found that a FrontRange Solutions Technical Partner,
Relatia, had developed a business management add on that essentially integrated
into GoldMine everything that we got from QuickBooks Pro, plus enhanced our
ability for time reporting and management, as well as project management,” she
said. Probably one of the most interesting
aspects was the ease of the change, Waltz said, as the firm worked with Relatia
principal Linda O’Connor who directs a variety of national installations from
the firm’s Atlanta headquarters. “The product, the service and the
quality of the insight into a mid-sized firm’s needs that we enjoyed from
Relatia, and from Linda O’Connor, was exceptional,” said Waltz. “We felt like we gained a ‘new best friend,’
as we worked to bring this online, although frankly it did not require much
effort from the band of technophobes at SW&A who handled it.” “Goldmine is a very
powerful client relations tool and has brilliantly allowed us to organize our
client work by projects and opportunities so that we can efficiently share
developing documents and incoming mails with each other in the office, “said
Waltz. “Relatia allows us to see where our account
manager’s time is being spent. Most track their time by using the appointment,
call and action scheduler on Goldmine,” said Waisanen. “When they complete and
activity, they make sure that Relatia will track this completion and record the
time spent on each client project. I can then run a report to see how much of
their work time is billable, and how much is not.” Relatia can be contacted at LindaO@Relatia.net or by phone at
770.472.7413. Sam Waltz & Associates Business
& Communications Counsel is a leader in Research & Strategic Planning,
Integrated Marketing Communications, and Public Affairs Reputation &
Relationship Management, and Waltz is one of just 350 professionals who have
been elected to PRSA’s College of Fellows.
The firm may be contacted at SamWaltz@SamWaltz.com,
or at 302.777.4774, and the firm’s sites may be viewed at www.SamWaltz.com and www.AtlanticLeadership.com. # # # Elaine Crosby The redd group ecrosby@thereddgroup.com t 404 350 9127 f 404 352 8747 |
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