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| Wednesday November 22, 2006 | |
Happy Thanksgiving! As we approach the start of the holiday season, I want to take the opportunity to express our sincere thanks and gratitude to all of our customers, industry and vendor partners for their patronage and steadfast support. I feel especially blessed by the terrific team that we have here at NHS. I have never worked with a more talented or dedicated staff in my life, and I'm excited to be back in "hiring mode" so we have the opportunity to grow our NHS family with more great people. As many of our customers know, running a small company oftentimes seems like both a blessing and a curse. Despite the many wonderful advantages of running your own company, there never seems to be enough time or resources to get everything done, and while it's exciting to hire new team members, it's also very difficult to say goodbye - especially when someone has been around for awhile. We recently said goodbye to Pete Peters of our support team. Pete leaves a big hole that will be difficult to fill, although I'm sure a number of our customers won't miss his often too-direct and sometimes acerbic "bedside manner". As gruff as Pete could be at times, he was always focused on the details and helped a lot of users every week. He will be greatly missed. Pete's departure marks the beginning of significant changes in the support department at NHS. Over the past year, we have been meeting with and talking to many of our customers about support and other services, and have been working on plans to completely revamp our service and support offerings to meet the needs of our diverse and growing customer base. The first of these changes began when we hired Bonnie Bryant as our implementation project manager a few months ago, followed by the return of Jean Fourie from her one-year adventure away at Microsoft. Bonnie and Jean are now managing all new CMS implementation projects and working on improved documentation, processes and procedures. Now that Bonnie and Jean are up to speed and actively managing several projects, we are beginning to make some of the planned changes in support. We are currently interviewing candidates for several new positions, and once these new team members are hired and trained we'll be able to fully implement all of the planned changes. We'll announce our new support plans for 2007 shortly. In the meantime, with Pete gone we are short-handed in support, so on busy days our response times are a bit longer than we would like them to be. Also, we'll be reducing our support hours temporarily (see below). We're asking all of our customers to please bear with us and be patient as we navigate our way through this transition. Once again - Happy Thanksgiving from the entire NewHaven team. Have a blessed holiday! --Tom Danner  New Payment Gateway Available We have completed testing and are now deploying our new Authorize.net payment gateway for CMS. Full details were sent via email last week to customers on record as currently using PCCharge as a payment gateway (you can view them here). We've also posted this Authorize.net FAQ on our website to provide more detail. For more information, or to get started with Authorize.net, please call Bonnie Bryant at (425) 861-7120 or send an email to go-live@newhavensoftware.com |
SIX YEARS! It seems almost impossible, but it really has been six years since NewHaven Software emerged from the ashes of Haven Corporation and The Mail Order Wizard. Back in November of 2000, NewHaven started business as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ecometry Corporation, led by former Wizard user Tom Danner and several of the former Haven employees in Rosemont, Illinois. A year later, Tom & Sharon Danner formed BrodieWare Limited, purchased NewHaven from Ecometry and moved the company to Redmond, Washington. (For more details on the NewHaven story, see the NHS Company History page.) Shortly thereafter, NewHaven released the beta versions of Commerce Management System software to dozens of eager - and patient - companies for early testing. Since that first beta release, a lot of things have changed at NHS. In fact, it seems the one defining constant has been change! As we enter our seventh year, we are grateful for the hundreds of companies and individuals we've had the opportunity to work with, and pledge to continually strive for constant improvement in our service, software and relationships with our customers and vendor partners. CMS Continues the Drive Upmarket Seven years ago, NewHaven began with a primary focus: Complete the work Haven had started and produce a Windows-based replacement for the Mail Order Wizard. The idea seemed simple enough, and with literally thousands of Wizard users waiting in the wings to make the move to Castle (Haven's original name for the Wizard replacement) it seemed to make good business sense. But wait - not so fast. As we began to look at the underlying code and concepts, it became clear that we could do much better. We began to evaluate various alternatives and opportunities to create a more robust solution - one that could scale beyond the original capacity envisioned for Castle. So we started with the underlying database and made the choice to build the new software on a SQL database engine. This was not an easy decision, as there were many SQL platforms available on the market at the time - but it turned out to be one of the smartest decisions we've ever made. We chose the Sybase iAnywhere SQL engine because of its affordability, great design flexibility and ability to scale for larger users without the need for expensive upgrades. Having chosen the foundation for our new solution, it was a much easier choice to continue development with Borland's Delphi programming environment. Staying wtih Delphi allowed us to leverage the good work that had been done previously, while using a powerful object-oriented programming language to create newer - and in many cases better - solutions for our customer's needs. While the first few years weren't easy for NewHaven or our customers, we did learn a lot from each other. Each new release brought new functionality, new challenges and new opportunities. We also discovered along the way that our original assumptions about converting thousands of Wizard users was a tad off the mark. Many had already converted to some other software package, and many of those who remained on the Wizard weren't really interested in changing to CMS, despite early indications of interest. In many ways, our failed assumptions turned out to be a blessing in disguise. As we sold CMS to a wider audience, we found that it really did scale beautifully to companies of all sizes. We began to convert many companies from other software packages and expanded CMS's capabilities to meet their needs. Early on, the majority of our customers were small "mom and pop" catalog companies with relatively small order volume and revenues. As each new version of CMS was released, we found that increasingly larger companies could use CMS to manage order volumes many times of what we had previously supported with our early customers. Today, NewHaven is proud to offer a wide range of software solutions that meet almost any company's needs, regardless of size. From a small company with a few hundred orders a year to a larger company that processes and ships thousands of packages a day, we have the solution: Commerce Management System. CMS can run on a desktop computer or on a multi-processor server; support one user or hundreds. Finally, compaies of any size can choose one software solution for their business that they will never outgrow. Always affordable, always flexible and always expandable. In addition to the hundreds of companies that have converted to CMS from the Mail Order Wizard, the CMS user community has grown to include previous users of many other software packages, including Mail Order Manager (MOM), StoneEdge, Sigma Micro, Net Suite, Order Motion, Ecometry and many more. In fact, one of the accomplishments we're most proud of is that of converting "lost" Wizard users - companies who had gone to another package after the Wizard - to CMS! When someone comes "home" after trying the competition, well...that is sweet indeed. Yet, with all this growth, all the new customers, all the improvement, we're far from perfect. We're still learning every day, as we see each new learning experience as an opportunity to improve our software and our service to customers. We strive to not only provide the best software available, but the best service as well. We're continually looking for better ways to provide the services, support and solutions our customers need. One of the fastest areas of growth for us is in the Professional Services area, which includes everything from custom report writing to custom programming, training, onsite consulting, implementation services and much more. This year alone we've helped dozens of companies increase their return on investment, run more efficiently and generate more profits as a result of the software and service solutions we've provided. We look forward to expanding our service offerings in 2007 and helping more companies grow and prosper. If you already use CMS and want to find out how you can get more out of it, give us a call. Together, we can leverage years of experience with hundreds of companies to find the right solutions for your company. If you are using another software package that doesn't quite "cut the mustard", do what many other companies have done and take a look at CMS. We'll spend the time with you to determine if CMS is the right fit for your business, and if so, demonstrate how your company can perform at a higher level with the right software, service and support. Latest CMS (3.3.1.19) Build Available We recently completed testing on the ".19" build of CMS 3.3 and have posted it for all supported users to download. If you would prefer to receive a CD in the mail, send us an email or give us a call at the number below. For a list of what's new in all versions of 3.3, look at What's New. NHS Offers Seasonal CMS Licenses Many of our customers have asked us in the past to provide temporary (seasonal) licenses for CMS Standard and Professional. We're happy to oblige! Now you can get enough licenses to cover your peak season demand for minimal cost. You can view all the details in a special edition of the NewHaven NEWS online here, send us an email or give us a call at the number below. Thanksgiving Holiday Hours The NHS offices will be closed Thursday and Friday, November 23rd & 24th, in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. We will re-open at 7 AM Monday, November 27th. Also, effective November 20th we will reduce NHS Support hours by 90 minutes per day as we make changes and add new team members. Support hours are now 7 AM to 5 PM, PST Monday through Friday until further notice. We regret any inconvenience this transition may cause our customers. NewHaven Software Investment Opportunities After successfully converting several mid-size companies this year, it's clear that we're ready to take things to the next level. To achieve our goals in 2007 and beyond, we will be seeking additional capital to finance our growth. We're currently working on preparations for a limited private investment offering, which will be made available early next year. |
 For many years, North American Credit Card Association (NACCA) has provided competitive rates and excellent service to companies using Wizard and CMS. They offer a free, no-obligation rate analysis for any CMS user, along with waived conversion and setup fees. Call Michael Baron at (800) 762-3782 to learn more. |
Our initial offering will be limited to a small number of investors, and will not only provide the foundation for significant growth, but future rounds of financing and capitalization. If you are interested in becoming an investor, please contact Tom Danner via email or at the phone number below for more information. Got NEWS? It seems like every time we send out a newsletter, someone asks why they didn't receive a copy. Do you know of anyone who would enjoy receiving a copy of the NewHaven NEWS? If so, send them to our website, where they can sign up for the NEWS on almost every page. Speaking of our website, we've been making a number of changes there, too. Slowly but surely we've been adding pages and updating a lot of content. Our goal is to make our site more useful not only for potential customers, but for existing users as well. We'll keep you posted on updates and changes in future editions of the NEWS, so stay tuned! If you have any ideas, suggestions or things you'd like to see in the NEWS or on our website, please let us know by sending an email to the address below. |
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