TeamPOINT 2.50

POINT Information Systems, Inc.
20 William Street, Suite 130
Wellesley, MA 02181
Ph: 800-816-9616; Fx: 781-416-2730
Web site: www.pointinfo.com

Price: $19,500/server; $1,250-$9,750 per user based on complexity and components. Contact POINT for complete pricing information.

From the initial advertising drive to the finalization of sales and customer service, the soundness of the customer relationship is largely dependent upon a strategically coordinated and structured communications effort. Regardless of the industry or market niche, equipping personnel with effective tools to manage customer interactions is critical to the stability of your company. The TeamPOINT product suite from POINT Information provides the technology to integrate a company's sales, marketing and customer care processes within one easy-to-use front-end interface: their open Customer Interaction Platform.

Installation
TeamPOINT 2.50 came installed as a turnkey system integrated with a database. We had our copy installed on a Pentium II, 266MHz processor with 64 Megs of RAM running Windows 95. For a database, we made use of a file that was supplied by TeamPOINT during the on-site demo they gave us. Depending upon the actual database development process needs of the company, the database portion of the installation can be extremely complicated or plain and simple.

Documentation
To put a put a fancy wrapper around an otherwise uninteresting statement, if we had a team of ten technology editors read the volumes that were given to us as documentation, it would take weeks, providing that they still allotted time to doing their work for the magazines. We received the TeamPOINT Installation Guide, the User's Guide, the System Administrator's Guide, the MobilePOINT Installation Guide, the Guide To WebPOINT, the POP (POINT Object Programming) Programmer's Guide, POP Programming Fundamentals and some Release Notes. For less organized people, it may be difficult to keep track of all these paperback manuals, which weighed-in at a hefty six pounds. However, we must POINT out this is a good problem, and in fact, not really a problem at all.

The most important of these manuals are the User's Guide and the System Administrator's Guide. These are really more like school textbooks than manuals as they provide instruction on the use of the database. Both manuals consist of seventeen chapters and cover everything from Accounts to Reporting and POP (POINT Object Programming). From what we can tell, if POINT Information knows something, you'll find it in the manual. In addition to these two tomes, the MobilePOINT Installation Guide and the WebPOINT Guide can be of significant importance to many remote users. Furthermore, the two manuals dealing with POP programming can add another layer of usefulness for advanced users by giving them access to TeamPOINT's object-oriented functionality. These manuals, also bordering on mammoth proportions, do not forego any topics. In toto, the manuals supplied form a real library (as opposed to a virtual library, to which many of us are becoming accustomed.)

Features
CenterPOINT, TeamPOINT's core application, consists of the following components: Contact Management, Account Management, Calendar Management, Activity Management, Literature Fulfillment, Correspondence, Desktop Utilities, Standard Reporting, Business Process Support, Dialogue/Scripting Support and Relational Database Support.

CenterPOINT is designed to: provide the means for swift implementation through POINT-and-click processes and script design tools; expedite the process of interacting with customers; produce a knowledge database to be shared by the entire organization; contain reminders, alarms, time management tools, pre-defined template documents and active workflow support to help increase productivity; and generate time savings through process automation and script execution.

MobilePOINT is an add-on that enables the full functionality of TeamPOINT to remote users. MobilePOINT: is database independent; offers a full range of communications options; provides Store and Forward synchronization; has intelligent file tracking and processing; and uses a flexible distribution rules engine.

WebPOINT is a Web Interaction package that comes as part of the TeamPOINT suite. WebPOINT: allows the full functionality of TeamPOINT; allows dialogues, scripts and business transactions to be processed over the Internet using the visual WebPOINT ScriptBuilder; has pre-defined modules that allow users to enter contact and account information, request literature and callbacks, and log, track and monitor service requests; provides interactive live scripting for customer interactions; and captures and combines Web data into the database.

In addition, MarketPOINT automates marketing strategies through scripted market research, customer satisfaction polls, lead tracking, literature fulfillment, teleservicing, customer service support, account management, credit and collection, fund-raising support and workflow support; SalesPOINT helps the sales process through opportunity and proposal management, product configuration, sales forecasting and escalation management through workflow support; and CarePOINT aids customer service with call tracking and case management, contract and quality management, problem resolution and escalation management.

Operational Testing
We inspected TeamPOINT 2.50 by testing its functionality with the demo database that came supplied with our installation. One of the first things we tried, which we suggest should be everyone's first action in a new work environment, was to browse the menus, the toolbar and the right-click pop-up menus. We found that the menu options were particularly extensive and appropriately thought out. A single right click in accounts list provided access to the filter and sort options as well as the ability to schedule appointments, callbacks, send out leads and access schedules.

We tried the filter and sort process to delve into the performance of the system. The filter and sort screen proved to be very intuitive and easy to use, despite the inevitable surplus of fields in use by the database. It took single and multiple criteria and quickly returned the sublisting of the database. We then examined the SQL Generated tab at the bottom of the Filter window. This allowed us to actually enter SQL code in case we needed to perform some sort of complicated, nonroutine filter.

We also examined the abilities to create actions such as callbacks and appointments. We could do this either by right clicking on a particular account, or through the menu bar at the top of the page. We found these to be intelligible in that they were not overly crowded or extremely primitive. The fields were well spaced and adequately sized. One other interesting thing we noticed as we were perusing the system was an interesting property of the field sizes. Apparently, the size of the field is not fixed, and upon being accessed, the drop-down menu actually resizes itself to the longest item within. This obviously eliminates the problem of not being able to read the long entries in their entirety.

One final thing that we would like to discuss in this review is the object-oriented programming abilities of TeamPOINT 2.50. A SYMEX unit (Symmetric Multilingual Execution unit) allows both POP and C++ code to reference each other. Objects in POP are the following:

• Items whose information needs to be maintained. Examples of this type of object are Accounts, Contacts, Addresses and so on;
• User interface items that allow the user to update and retrieve information;
• Document based items for automating processes;
• File-based items that allow the import and export of information; and
• Abstract items that allow the user to customize an assortment of different objects.

The POP language itself is not very different from other object-oriented programming languages.

POINT spent some time organizing some objects, which has made it specialized for the needs of the POINT system (hence the name of the language). However, most people do not want to learn a new language, so if they get stuck, they can always fall back upon programming in C++.

Room For Improvement
One place where we found a need for improvement was the manner in which files are loaded through the configuration option. We had to type in the filenames for each file to be loaded through the configuration window. This can prove to be time consuming and highly inaccurate. We felt that the addition of a browse option in this situation would clear up any problems the user may have with unusual file names or files that are hardly ever used. Since the configuration window allows for the insertion of multiple files, this browse option should be able to select one or many files.

Another situation that seemed unorthodox was the color scheme of the systems. First, the two-color scheme, very reminiscent of the old green-and-white daisy-printer paper can be strenuous on the eye, at least with the default configuration. However, what is more awkward is the fact that all the fields for a record and in many of the submenus seem "grayed-out." At least in our experience, a grayed-out field denotes that the field is inaccessible. However, when the field is clicked on, it turns white, indicating that this field will accept input. There is nothing functionally unsuitable in this design, only that the user may be unaccustomed to this particular arrangement due to the years of repetitive ingraining upon the brain of a contrary meaning of "grayed-out."

Conclusion
TMC Labs has reviewed a number of database solutions for the call center, many of which have been successful. This is another one of the successful ones. Many of the programming projects throughout the years have been privately sanctioned solutions, which means that there have been many systems produced. This is especially the case in regards to database solutions. The TeamPOINT system is a generalized database, which should work for an entire family of companies with customer interactions. This product is targeted at mid- to large-sized companies, but will work praiseworthily in smaller companies as well.