Okay, so Edmonton can be snowy and a little cold sometimes. And when you look at a map, Edmonton looks really far north and may seem like a long distance to travel. But, I promise, it’s not cold all year round, and for those who do come in the winter, you can travel from your hotel to our office without ever setting foot outside—hard to believe but true thanks to Edmonton’s great downtown pedway system.
Now that you’re more comfortable with where we’re located, let’s focus on why you’d consider coming in the first place. Our Edmonton Training Sessions (ETS) are a great opportunity for you to get hands-on with Perspective. It can be so hard to focus on training when you are in the office and have multiple responsibilities and tasks on your plate, and while our Online Training Courses show you how to do things, they don’t give you the same focused, end-to-end learning opportunity that’s offered by an ETS.
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Most business analysts and end users know all the right questions to ask in order to find an application that matches their business requirements. However, sometimes lost or completely overlooked in the process are fundamental questions that should be asked about the companies that provide those applications. Industry experts tell us that due diligence of the vendor is equally, if not more, important than due diligence of the application.
“If you don’t do proper due diligence, you’re committing your company to a relationship that you don’t know you can rely on. You’re leading your company down a blind alley,” warns Jim Mulvaney, KPMG’s director of forensics and litigation, and manager of its investigative due diligence practice (CIO.com, 2001).
It’s not a complex vetting process to determine if the vendor is the right fit. In fact, there are three simple company-oriented questions you can pose that will get you the information you need to make a sound decision.
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Perspective Administrators are responsible for setting up, managing and maintaining the Perspective database—whether it be updating a forgotten user password, adding a new class or keeping an eye on auditing.
This is an important role in terms of how your organization uses Perspective, and there are some key things to take into consideration when determining who your Administrators are and how many you need:
- One Administrator is not enough. Why? Because you never know when they may be sick, on holidays or decide to move on from your company, leaving you with a hole in your use of the system. We recommend a minimum of two Administrators for small set-ups, and two per department for larger set-ups with multiple teams.
- Always make sure your Administrators have been trained. Administrators should know both how to administrate Perspective and how the users are utilizing the system. This way Administrators can help train and explain why things are set up the way they are. PPM offers online and recorded training, hands-on training and our Users’ Conference as options to help get your Administrators up to speed.
One is simply not enough. Multiple Perspective Administrators who understand how you have set up the program make a world of difference, by working together to provide maximum coverage and support your organization and its teams.
Interested in more information about the training PPM offers? Reach out to us at customer.service@ppm2000.com.
—Lenora Thomas, Director, Customer Service & Technical Support Services
Our primary focus with the release of Perspective Version 3.2 was on improving its ability to be used around the world. Whether dealing with a single site in Quebec, Canada where the primary language is French or a company headquartered in the United States with operations in Mexico and China where the users’ primary language is split between English, Spanish and Chinese, we wanted to ensure that Perspective could be set up to accommodate each and every user, including those that don’t know any English. This meant everything; not just data entry fields, but also system messages, help files and the titles at the top of each data entry form.
As a result, with Perspective V.3.2, you can now configure up to 21 languages (up from 5 in V.3.1) to be used in a single Perspective database, meaning that all field labels, form labels, button labels and user messages can be set up for each of those languages. Spell check dictionaries can be added and help links can be redirected to custom help guides for each language, giving each user a consistent experience. The development team took the approach, “If we can see a word in English, it must be configurable.”
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Competition can be fierce, yet companies within the same industry, reaching the same customers, often take different approaches to how they compete… to what they consider acceptable and, more importantly, what they don’t. Companies without competition rarely improve, and it’s the customer who suffers. It’s an essential part of business, yet how you compete tells a lot about who you are as a company and how far you’re willing to go to win the deal.
What I can share—without question or hesitation and as the President & Co-CEO of PPM—is how we choose to do business. We strive for honesty, integrity and a high degree of ethics. We aren’t perfect, and we make mistakes, but we strive to correct those mistakes. We believe in communication, and we are constantly working to increase transparency within PPM and with our clients. We approach our competition the same way. We focus more on what our clients need and how we can meet those needs than on what our competition has to offer.
Also… if you have a question about PPM or Perspective, we’re the experts… please ask us. If you’ve heard something and are wondering if it’s accurate, give us a call, and we’ll let you know. If you’re still struggling with what you’re hearing, please don’t hesitate to ask me. If I don’t know the answer off the top, I’ll get it, and I’ll make sure it’s a response we can stand by.
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