Whitesoft s.r.o.

Business Integrator

Business Integrator Activities

• central administration of letters, faxes, e-mails including mail merge using MS Office templates (Contact Management)
• mail merge using templates
• clients categorization etc. (Contact Management)
• company to-do list (Task Management)
• job records (Staff Management)
• document storage with fulltext search (Knowledge Management)
• client invoicing with many options – hourly prices, contracts, forfaits, discounts, multi-language invoices, currency conversions, export to book-keeping software (Fee Management)

Our software guarantees maximum level of data security. The system allows offline work (without connection to server). You can synchronize your local data with the server and vice versa with one single click.

Data are available either by using HCL Notes client (special application installed on your workstation), or via your standard internet browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera). Web access can be secured by SSL encryption (HTTPS protocol).

Basic Information

Business Integrator is developed on HCL Notes platform. It is a client-server type application. For more information on this platform click here.

Benefits of Business Integrator

• Data security
• All modules are linked mutually
• Easy maintenance
• Addition of own applications (incoming invoice monitoring, journey book etc.)
• Complex system composed of modules for administration and maintenance of companies from A to Z (integration of e-mails, tasks, job tickets, correspondence etc.)
• Off-line work without any limitations (at home, on journey)
• Data synchronization on Internet, telephone, GSM, local network
• Multi-platform software (Windows, Linux, Unix, Macintosh (with limitation))
• The highest security level - possibility of work via web browser (with limitation)
• The best solution of this type on European market
• Open system based on HCL Notes standards (from HCL company)
• Possibility of small changes according to customer requirements
• Software field tested in 6 European countries, developed in the Czech Republic
• Allocation of access rights up to entry item level
• Intuitive environment
• Easy implementation

Supported Platforms of HCL Domino Server
(server side of Business Integrator)

• Windows: Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows NT4 Intel
• Linux: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, UnitedLinux 1.0, Powered by UnitedLinux 1.0 Linux on zSeries: UnitedLinux 1.0 for IBM S/390
• AIX: AIX 5.1, AIX 5.2
• iSeries: OS/400 Version 5 Release 1 or later
• Solaris: Solaris 8, Solaris 9
• z/OS: z/OS Version 1 - Release 2 or later, z/OSe Version 1 - Release 3 or later

Supported Platforms of HCL Notes Client
(client side of Business Integrator)

• Windows: Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows XP Home/Professional, Windows 2000 workstation, Windows Vista

Modules

Currently, Business Integrator includes these modules:

• Contact Management
• Staff Management
• Fee Management
• Knowledge Management
• Task Management
• Social Evidence
• Incoming Invoices

Contact Management

As its name suggests, Contact Management is a module designed for managing contacts. It is the very heart of the system (Business Integrator). It deals not only with your customers but with your suppliers or any person in any way related to your company, too.

All necessary information is stored in a comprehensible form in a server database allowing all access to be user defined. Each individual record can be assigned a group of users with rights to read or edit the document. Similarly, a branch or contact persons can be attached to a company. The system works with three different types of addresses:

1. the address of company (client)
2. the address of residence
3. the address for e-mail delivery

The system automatically saves all correspondence (letters, facsimiles, e-mails, tasks, notes, etc.) under each record (company, branch or person). User can easily find all correspondence with each client. Contact Management is interconnected with all other modules, as well as with your mailbox or calendar. When making a phone call with the customer (whose number can be dialed with your computer via CM), you can immediately create a note, stating agreements or promises made.

This note is saved under contact and simultaneously a task is created in your Task Manager. This task can naturally be delegated and it is possible to control it’s progress. To create a letter for a customer, just look them up in the register (just type in the first few letters of the name). Continue by clicking the button for creating a Word document and choose a template from a list shared by the whole company (with a chance to state what template can be used by an user). The system then automatically starts MS Word and transfers all necessary data from Contact Management to proper places in the letter (name, address, phone number, date, title, etc.). When finished, simply print or fax the letter. Now close MS Word (no need to save the document!) and the document will be automatically stored under a person to whom it is addressed. You can store all documents under person in directories (letters, facsimiles, contracts, etc.). It is very easy to find any information by full-text search (within MS Word documents, too).

Nowadays, it is essential for every company to categorize their contacts. The system allows you to define unlimited number of categories and to assign them to particular companies or persons. You can also create Mail Merge (mass mailings) based on the categories (write a letter once and the system generates any amount of personal letters including salutations like “Dear Miss Novak”). You can use these categories for sorting records or creating groups for e-mail correspondence.

If you send an e-mail to a person or company from Contact Management, the system automatically saves it's header with a reference under the proper contact. The futility of mechanic sorting of e-mails is the main advantage of this action as the system can now do it alone. You are able to see not only your own correspondence but even the one sent by colleagues and received from customers. Safety, of course, remains one of the main objectives of our application.

Contact Management has many other advantages that make its usage as simple as possible. Call us for more details – you can even order a free on-the-spot presentation we’d be happy to provide either in Whitesoft or in your own office.

Staff Management

Staff Management is a module used most at the end of each month when invoicing is being made but is equally useful for tracking time and expenses and the overall control of work done by employees.

In Staff Management, all starts by defining working codes (internal codes used by staff members – employees). The number of codes is unlimited. The working code is associated with an invoice code shown on the invoice. Each invoice code may be attached to several working codes (if you don’t want to invoice a working code just do not bind it with any invoice code – thus it serves for mere monitoring of the work done). Flat rates with a specified flat amount and matching working codes can be created. The rest of codes are invoiced using a standard hourly rate.

The underlying principle of the application is to create a system where all work done can be fast and easily recorded (thus eliminating all the "cracks", where invoicable items can slip through and be forgotten) and invoice customer all the work done. Every single phone call related to a client and work should immediately be entered into the system and consequently invoiced.

Every day, Staff Management provides a number of reports (for every employee, client, working code, month, etc.). Every employee is obligated to fill in a given minimum of hours a day. All hours worked over the set limit are transferred and stored by the system in "a storage", which gives the possibility to use the amount of overtime hours later for time-off compensation or just have it paid out.

Holidays, health benefits, overtime, time for study, maternity leave – all is filed in the Social Evidence module.

Fee Management

Fee Management is an invoicing module that processes data from Staff Management according to all available settings.

The system works in two modes. Invoicing monthly or invoicing quarterly. After the approval of records by department manager, data are copied from Staff Management to Fee Management where they are processed to synoptical invoice details. Time worked, number of invoiced hours and number of hours still to invoice is shown in well-organised table of blanket rates. Here you can also see the differences from which you can tell the profitability of blanket rates. After necessary modifications, like writing off or bringing forward the amount to next month (or term), and approval the system generates invoices in the language set for every client in Contact Management. These can be printed or automatically exported to accounts.

For example: Company with 10 branches and 140 employees is able to issue invoices, including necessary adjustments and control of partners, in 2 working days using only one employee. It takes about 2 hours in a company with 15 employees!

When thinking about purchasing this product, ask yourself about how much time you spend on issuing invoices and whether you are sure you are invoicing everything you can.

Motto: Do not invoice less than you have worked!

Knowlege Management

Knowledge Management is designed for saving and storing information that is needed in a profession. Nobody is able to keep all data in their head, not to speak of its efficient sharing with colleagues. Knowledge Management has been developed with respect for this fact. It is a large database of all necessary knowledge, routines, rules, etc. Everything that is in paper or electronic form can be filed in a predefined structure.

Take for example a newspaper article containing valuable information about working processes. Now you can either make copies and distribute them among colleagues or scan and save it in a database so it is accessible to anybody at any time.

Knowledge Management is linked with other modules allowing colleagues to automatically receive an e-mail notification about a new or changed item. This e-mail contains only reference to newly added document. If clicked, a scanned newspaper article is opened. But we don’t speak just about articles for reading, rather about storing your knowledge. Full-text search is supported, even in scanned pictures! Documents are then displayed in order according to their relevance (searching hits). And security? Security is on the highest possible level just like in all other modules.

Now imagine how many times you search for a necessary information and how much time it takes. Knowledge Management makes it much easier and faster.

Task Management

The modul of the Business Integrator that allows you to distribute tasks among employees and control their status.
 
You can:

• assign tasks to employees
• mark tasks complete when finished
• get notified by e-mail message when the status changes, deadline draws near or is over
• interconnect the database with HCL Notes ToDo/Calendar
• categorize by customers (via optional link to CRM software)

Social Evidence

Social evidence is a complementary module of Business Integrator. It represents one central point where you can, in a comprehensive form, find all information on hours worked by individual employees, the overtime, holidays, sickness, unpaid leave and furloughs. It also allows easy submitting, editing, approving and monitoring of all staff vacations.
 
Social Evidence uses three basic sources of data:

• internal module for the evidence of vacations
• Staff Management database (a Business Integrator module)
• internal table of bank holidays

 
Vacation module covers a complete workflow from request submission, through its approval or rejection by a responsible person, to a synoptic survey of all vacations in a calendar view. Similarly, in the same module you can file and display the employees' absence at their workplace.

This gives you a continuous control over staff availability on any given day. It can suggest on what days no further vacation should be approved etc. The record can be easily completed at the end of a month or week. When a particular date is selected from the required week range and a button pressed, the module automatically fills in data from data sources.

The system automatically completes approved vacations, fills in public holidays and imports the data on hours worked from Staff Management database. All data are analyzed with regard to the respective employee, overtime hours are recorded into overtime bank, or, reversely, missing hours are filled in from the overtime bank. The system also allows to manually enter a sick leave or a furlough leave without pay.
All the data from these documents can be viewed by year, month and employee, or by employee, year and month. Totals for each category are implied.

Download product flyer in PDF format here.

Usage

Probably the first question that everyone can think of is:

“What new functions will this software bring?” or “Is a crossover to a different system worth investing into rather than keeping the one I use?”

Let’s take a closer look at what we could expect from such a software. Business Integrator is a very extensive application. It deals with a large scale of tasks, from correspondence to issuing an invoice. The biggest advantage of a whole package of applications is complexity. There is no need for heterogeneous environments for managing the company and communicating with clients. Mainly, let’s think about the security of your data. This is not only about backing-up or proper protection against an attack from the Internet. The question is whether we are well-secured when using the Internet to access our own data or against the misuse of data inside the company. Surely it is not suitable for employees to know their (not speaking of their colleagues’) hourly rates. Similarly, it is rather improper for them to know what fee does the company charge for their activity and activity of others. In Business Integrator the main focus has been placed on security and the fastest and simplest usage of the whole application.

It is useless to deny that the implementation of the whole system is a front-pager in life of every company. This can be hardly done without changes, either internal or in relation with the customers. The mechanisms used in Business Integrator stem from the years of experience of the biggest Belgium accounting and auditing company. The implementation of such a system is not a work for a couple of days, not even weeks (do not mix up implementation with installation). But after several months you will benefit from it, as you will save time filing the work done, the communication with client and even when issuing an invoice or searching for a misplaced information. The purpose of this product is to make the internal processes of a company more efficient and an effort to invoice every single minute of time worked that has been spent on customer’s account.  
 
We would like to point out some important details from every module.

Contact Management collects and stores data about companies, mainly our clients. It is not a static database though, rather an interactive application. In Contact Management the templates for letters are saved in a central database, therefore there is no need to copy them over to all computers. Created documents (where data about company and customers, e.g. address, phone number etc., are automatically transferred) does not have to be saved anywhere on the server. Mere closing of the document provides an automatic save under contact, where it can be found later on. Each client can be assigned to a category, e-mail or fax groups according to profile and we can create tasks and delegate them to other people.

Staff Management is an application which registers company’s activities. Time worked can be reported the easiest way possible in accordance with mouse moves and button pressing. Staff Management is a unique application for monitoring employees and issuing for them invoices. Naturally, only authorised employees have permission to see the output.

Knowledge Management  is a module that provides the archiving of newspaper articles in a usual structure defined by user. This structure has four levels. Full-text searching in text is of course possible throughout the whole database as well as in other modules. To search the scanned texts requires the usage of OCR (Optical Character Recognition). The purchased database is empty and it is only up to you how you treat it. You probably won’t profit from it from the very beginning, but later, especially when sharing information with colleagues, you will find this product essential.
Fee Management serves for issuing invoices and other interesting forms of output. Load needed data from Staff Management by pressing a button – generating invoice details is a matter of pressing another! This is done according to settings, which can differ for every employee, customer or working code, not forgetting payments, kilometres or external costs. After approving, hit one more button and the system will finally generate an invoice ready for press.

Social Evidence is a module for monitoring employees’ hours worked, overtimes, holidays or sickness compensations. Thanks to the close connection with Staff Management, cheating is impossible. This module is crucial for the motivation of employees.

Task Management is a module designed for generating internal tasks which represent all customers. When creating a task that serves more than one client or when it is possible to repeat the task, an assignee can be bound. They than receive an e-mail and the task is entered in their calendar.

Incoming Invoices is a database used by a secretary to scan all incoming invoices and to fill in headers. All relevant persons are notified by an e-mail and must approve or deny the invoice, copy of which is attached. Naturally, even when they are not present or work in another branch. After approving, accounting department receives an info about payment along with the connection to some home-banking application. The data about posting, payment and other events are at your disposal at any time.

The main advantage of the system is the complexity, uniform environment and last but not least the possibility to work off-line. With the connection to the internet or phone network, synchronising all available data is as simple as pressing one button. This allows work when disconnected from server as good and fast as in office. After reconnecting, option replicate transfers everything to server.

Business Integrator can be used every time you are selling your time. Whether accounting, auditing or software company, Business Integrator has certain contributions.

Licencing and Prices

Business Integrator can be licensed for:

• single user
• server

A license includes a 3-month e-mail and phone support. User licensing includes HCL Notes license and HCL Domino Server license (HCL Notes Express license).

User Licensing

Prod. code	Description	Price without VAT
LN001-1001	Contact Management	189 EUR
LN001-1002	Staff Management	95 EUR
LN001-1003	Fee Management	112 EUR
LN001-1004	Knowlege Management	58 EUR

We offer a discount of up to 20 % in case of purchase of more than 5 licenses.

Server Licensing

Prod. code	Description	Price without VAT
LN001-2010	Contact Management	2.270 EUR
LN001-2020	Contact Management + Staff Management	3.040 EUR
LN001-2030	Contact Management + Staff Management + Fee Management	3.730 EUR
LN001-2040	Contact Management + Staff Management + Fee Management + Knowlege Management	3.807 EUR
LN001-2013	Knowlege Management	500 EUR

Give It a Try

The information on webpages, however detailed, can never show the application’s possibilities in full and replace personal experience. If you would like to see Business Integrator "live-in-action", do not hesitate and make a date for a presentation.

According to your wish,  Business Integrator can be demonstrated either remotely by WebEx on-line presentation service or in person at your work-place.
If you prefer to make a call by yourself please call our phone line.

If you are going to order a presentation by e-mail, please don’t forget to provide your contact information.

Support

After the license purchase you have the right to a 3-month e-mail support automatically (also phone support in some cases). The support is provided by a team of specialists who will contact you the second working day following your call at the latest.

After this 3-month free-of-charge term expires, you can still get support – as a subscribed service. It may be paid monthly, quarterly or yearly. Please see the prices in our products and services pricelist.

Customers who don’t have a prepaid support may call the helpdesk, too – however in this case we cannot guarantee the response time and a hourly rate is slightly higher.

Support subscription covers:

• Problem solving in one working day following the day of call;
• 2 cost-free hours of problem solving and consultancy;
• Had a problem been caused by a bug found in Business Integrator, you of course would NOT be charged for time spent by solving the problem.

Images

Main view by name and New company form	Category view and New category form
Staff view and New Job Report form	Invoice and Invoice view by Clients
Publication view by Flats and Open document	Task view and New task form

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