Empowerment Tools
“This revolutionary technology is a key component to your success.”
Have you ever happened upon an idea that redefined your thought process? Afterward you might have looked back and thought, “What if I hadn’t listened?” This is one of those ideas. There is no perfect software solution for your business. The closest fit is always a compromise. You may bend less rigid business practices to fit product limitations. In areas where the product fit is unacceptable, you must compromise the total integration you want and find external solutions.
Now you can take a giant step closer to that perfect solution. Our Empowerment Tools can help you meet your exact business specifications. These tools take our Core product far beyond the typical software solution into the realm of possibilities. You may not have considered the value of such a tool in your software search. Until now, the only possibility for this level of business conformity was very time consuming and expensive custom software design. But our RAMS Users will tell you that the value added by Empowerment Tools is significant, and should be a key consideration in your evaluation process.
Why did we create Empowerment Tools? In 1984, Alpine Technology introduced the first user friendly report writer to this industry. The response was overwhelming. Users could now design their own reports exactly the way they wanted. The RAMS design team caught this vision, and began to develop other tools that could give the users exactly what they wanted. At first our new toolset was clumsy and hard for novice users to understand. But the team knew what they wanted and every development technology chosen after that had to conform to the new philosophy; “Empower the User”. This fundamental design approach is what distinguishes Alpine from the competition.
After many years of research and development, Empowerment Tools is now a refined product being used by RAMS Users throughout the world. Where other products provide features based on general industry standard operating practices, Empowerment Tools give you the power to hit the target’s bulls-eye in every business process. Empowerment Tools provide you with that competitive edge you’ve been looking for.
Not sure if you need Empowerment Tools? CLICK HERE to see if you are a candidate.
Tool Components
How is this possible?
Empowerment Tools are designed so that a user with basic spreadsheet expertise can easily be trained to understand tool usage. Most of the work is done behind the scenes by our automatic builders. Here is a quick synopsis of each tools function.
Tools |
Function |
---|---|
Data Manager |
Empowerment Tools provide superior Data Driven design, meaning every data specification is contained in a table where it can be maintained on-the-fly rather than embedded in a program where it is unchangeable. Data Manger provides several validation methods to insure data entry conforms to exact business requirements. |
Form Builder |
Automatically builds the data entry display forms for your personalized data. |
List Builder |
Automatically creates incremental find lists for fast efficient access to your data. |
Menu Builder |
Creates menu items and fast access Hot-Keys to your entry forms and processes. |
Event Expressions |
Expressions that are executed by form Add, Save and Delete buttons (events). |
Work Flow |
Creates the proper scheduling by sequencing personalized data to the different departments. |
In / Out Trays |
Creates Date/Time action items by User/Department that appear in the In/Out Trays. |
Data Exchange |
Exchanges (imports and exports) your data with external data sources. |
Upgrader |
When upgrading RAMS, this utility ensures all Empowerment settings are retained. |
Practical Solutions
It’s like having a programmer on staff that you don’t have to pay for.
Here are just a few examples of how every client uses some feature of Empowerment Tools to personalize RAMS to their unique business requirements. No changes to the RAMS Core were required in any of these examples. Most of these examples were solved quickly, within a few hours of the client realizing the need!
Sales Tracking |
Commercial Customers are assigned to Salesman and all sales contact tracked. “Next Contact Date” triggers a reminder in the salesman’s “In Tray”. Quotes and correspondence are automatically linked and tracked. |
Plastic Bag Delivery |
This hauler offers Plastic Garbage bag sales to attract new customers. The special service is tracked on a separate form. Deliveries appear on the Route list. |
Liquid Treatment |
Takes liquid service and transport data from RAMS and tracks storage locations, treatment processes and transport to waste receiver. |
On-Board Scales |
Captures the on-board computer weights from the scales. |
Zip Code Validation |
City and State are automatically populated and validated by entering the Zip Code. |
Bulk Price Increases |
Export contracts due for review to an Excel spreadsheet for forecasting. Price increases are automatically updated in RAMS. |
Phone Call Log |
Logs every customer phone call and status for follow-up. Reports the types of calls. |
Barcode Payments |
Automatically posts payments from scanning the Invoice barcode. |
Postal Carrier Route Validation |
Uses the Data Exchange utility to export Customer Addresses to ZP4 which updates the carrier route information back to RAMS. |
Electronic Funds Transfer |
Automatically exports the billing information and amounts due to the bank and updates the payments to the A/R System. |
Business Rules |
This user wanted to prohibit roll-off services within certain suburbs in the city. |
New Service Triggers Action |
Automatically creates a container delivery Work Order when a specific type of service is added to a customer account. |
Special City Reporting |
Automatically triggers an email to the city if a certain type of customer complaint is entered in the comment system by the customer service rep. |
Frequently Asked Questions
The big question is why don’t other products provide these tools?
Do Empowerment Tool personalizations look or act differently from the core product?
No. Personalized solutions are seamlessly integrated into the total RAMS environment. Entry forms look and operate with the same functionality as a Core form. Your data becomes part of the total data available to all process and reporting functions.
Your competition claims to have flexible configurability that considers everything I would ever need. What’s the difference between Configurability and Empowerment Tools?
“Flexible Configurations” are not the same. Our RAMS Core product has over 1000+ configuration options which simply means we have designed RAMS to consider the most common industry operating scenarios. On the other hand, Empowerment Tools go far beyond configurability into your unique business requirements where other products have no solution.
Do I need to hire a programmer to use these tools?
No. Most of our clients use the simplified tools to create rather sophisticated solutions with a little guidance.