As Promised, CRM 8.4.2 from Creative Manager

As promised a few weeks ago Creative Manager Inc., provider of Creative Manager Pro software, has released version 8.4.2 of its flagship product, Creative Manager Pro.

After last month's integration with Apple's Mac OS X iCal and Microsoft's (News - Alert) Outlook, Creative Manager Pro turned it attention inward to allow the user to see a graphical representation of the project schedule across the entire firm.

"For the past few months, we've been focused on integration with outside systems, because those were important features that our clients asked for," said Ron Ause, Creative Manager's director of marketing.

Creative Manager announced version 8.4.2 last month, saying it was "expected in early May," and that "the focus this month is on graphical calendaring."

After March's integration with Apple's (News - Alert) Mac OS X iCal and Microsoft's Outlook, Creative Manager Pro said last month it would turns it attention "inward to allow the user to see a graphical representation of the project schedule across the entire firm," according to company officials.

The new graphical calendar does, in fact, allow users of Creative Manager Pro to see all projects on one calendar view, and give users the ability to color-code projects for presentation and review. The product adds features that work with Apple's latest Tiger Mac OS X and future Leopard Unix-based Operating System and Microsoft Windows.

Creative Manager Pro "goes beyond costing to offer full Project Management, CRM, Digital Asset Management, billing and accounting, and Extranet capabilities," company officials say.

Creative Manager Pro is created for ad agencies and other creative design and service firms. It's basically a Web-based integrated project management software and job tracking tool "streamlining the entire firm, from developing new business, to staffing, managing, and executing projects through to accounting and financial reporting," company officials say.

Last November Creative Manager released version 8.37 of Creative Manager Pro with what company officials characterize as "full-featured CRM capability."

Saying the release 8.37 includes "specific enhancements that our large agency clients asked for," Ron Ause, Creative Manager's director of marketing said the product had "more powerful features."

Among the variety of enhancements available to all Creative Manager Pro users with 8.37 was the ability to automatically mass e-mail AR invoices to customers with an option for the client to pay via credit card directly from the invoice.

Media enhancements were included in the previous version 8.35, and improvements to the Transaction Preference function here give users the option to sync vendor invoices from Strata and SmartPlus as "approved" or "not approved."

Additional upgrades in the product company officials claim is "the only Ad Agency software and Project Management Software for the Creative Design industry" offer logic to determine the outstanding open amount on a vendor invoice being applied to pre-billed orders when importing form Strata or SmartPlus.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) Net.  For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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Access to extranets for suppliers and customers may also be on different circuits than for internet access as well as different circuits for sending and receiving (source and destination addressing) I...more

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