PROIV' s biggest Air Miles collector gives a roundup of customer activity in the EMEA region
Neil Holmes, PROIV's Technical Account Manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) works with customers to help them with the more technical aspects of the PROIV product suite. He advises customer on upgrades, projects and implementations. He has also been heavily involved with PROIV Version 6. This article gives a summary of some of his recent visits to customers throughout the EMEA region. He also gives some initial reaction to the launch of PROIV Version 6.
The launch of PROIV Version 6 has seen me back out on the road visiting many customers across the region to introduce, demonstrate and discuss the many new features of the product.
South Africa
This time I set off with Bryan James (PROIV EMEA Account Manager) on the long journey to South Africa. Ten days in Johannesburg kicked off with a visit to MTN. At MTN, South Africa's leading mobile phone network, the key challenge is of GUI-isation. The PROIV Version 6 features in this area were of keen interest, although much of the functionality available in PROIV Version 5 is likely to be at the focal point of this particular project. The new PROIV Gateway (formally called the Bus) was also of particular interest to MTN, who process huge volumes of data in this way for their PROIV-based billing system. In addition, the new opportunities to integrate PROIV into a Service Orientated Architecture were at the forefront of conversations, as ease of integration without applications within MTN is seen as essential to the future of the billing system.
Next was MaxiPrest Tyres who are coming out of a period of great change and this is likely to lead to investment in a PROIV-based financial application. "Look and Feel" will be important here and the new PROIV Client Session Manager was of interest.
Fleetpro are forging ahead with their Fleet Management System and have had great success with some significant customers in South Africa. The Fleetpro application demands a very rich user interface and Rob Collier, Managing Director of Business Unual, is very excited about the enhanced user experience that he is going to be able to provide with the PROIV Client Session Manager.
Impala Platinum is the largest Platinum mining company in the world and are a long-standing user of PROIV. Integration into other applications will be key here and so there was much interest in the PROIV features that enable integration into the Service Orientated Architecture.
I am already being given plenty of examples of just how important the PROIV strategy is for SOA. There are few customers that I visit where an involved discussion does not take place. MacSteel were no exception and they are going to be looking quite closely at how this may assist the deeper integration of the PROIV system into the companies overall IT strategy.
CICS Municipality (Local Authority) finance package Munsoft is taking a very sizable chunk of this particular market in South Africa. One PROIV Version 6 feature, in particular, is going to allow them to make even greater strides and I had a session with Peter Balt and his developers looking at the new PROIV Multilingual in great detail. This new component is essential for Munsoft since there are around thirteen languages spoken in South Africa. CICS are already working on their next major product release which will feature the PROIV Version 6 Multilingual capability.
Nando's is a name that is becoming more familiar across the world. In South Africa, the company's head office financial systems are run in PROIV. With restaurant systems needing to keep head office systems updated, it was apparent from the outset, that SOA and PROIV Version 6 was going to be of particular interest.
Imperial Trucks are another long standing PROIV customer in South Africa. After a period of uncertainty concerning IT strategy a commitment has now been made to the PROIV application and again SOA was at the head of the agenda as they look to enhance their customer service by exposing functionality via PROIV Web Services.
Scandinavia
The first trip was to Skatteetaten (SKD), the Norwegian Tax Office, a large customer based in Oslo but with users in tax offices throughout Norway. Manager Hans Petter Hagen and his team welcomed myself and Peter Lawson, (PROIV Sales Director) for a full day of presentations and demonstrations. SKD were particularly keen on the PROIV Control Panel and centralisation of the management of the product and were looking to move to PROIV Version 6 in the near future.
Then we headed off to visit Sweden and one of the most influential customers in the PROIV world - Telenor. The developers at Telenor are amongst the most experienced PROIV people I see. I was delighted to hear that the new PROIV Control Panel was very well received as were the prospects for the enhanced performance of the new PROIV Gateway. Clearly throughput is key for this Swedish mobile phone billing system as it is for MTN in South Africa.
So that brings you up to date. As you can see many customers are moving or thinking of moving to PROIV Version 6. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the customers I have seen on my recent travels for the hospitality extended towards us. I'll have another customer roundup from the EMEA region in a future issue of myproiv.
