A User's Perspective on Regional Meetings

Date: Friday, April 29, 2005

Dear Valued Customer:

Why are ECi ’s Executive Briefings and regional users meetings so important for your business? Pat Schmidt of Atlas Stationers attended the Executive Briefing and users meeting held earlier this month in Chicago. Afterward, she wrote us about the experience and what it meant for her company:

We are a small dealership and for me to leave it to attend a meeting, I have to believe there is a great value in attending. I was not disappointed. We were frustrated to say the least with DDMS and ECi after the "software packaging" and price increase. We no longer felt we were in partnership with DDMS and our needs were no longer being considered.

An even greater concern was that our software company (DDMS) "forced" us to upgrade our hardware and operating system (a large expenditure for us), then the "packaging", and now the price increase. What else was DDMS going to do? Would we be forced out because we were a small business? Did DDMS only want large dealerships?

We were afraid of the direction we thought DDMS was taking. The meeting with Traci and the other dealers put my mind at ease. The ECi corporate mentality seems to be gone. Open discussion on any concerns or issues was encouraged. DDMS seems to want to improve communication with the smaller dealer, which I greatly appreciate. The meeting was definitely a 2-way street.

I also met other dealers and exchanged ideas with them – things that will help my company operate more efficiently. The meeting motivated me to tackle some enhancements I was reluctant to start. I realized that my software package has so much to offer, I just had to make the time to implement these features.

I chose to stay for the users meeting. I attended the graphical classes, and we are now up and running with graphical and are starting to use the graphical system in our daily work. Our employees are excited for the change. The amount of information they are able to see is incredible, and we just started using it. I can see that in the near future we will wonder why we waited so long. …

Pat Schmidt
Atlas Stationers, Inc.
Chicago, IL

Pat’s experience echoes that of many DDMS customers attending these events. In addition to valuable software training, the Executive Briefings and regional users meetings offer direct communication with product developers and members of senior management. No other company serving the industry offers opportunities for this level of customer involvement in the software development process.

If you haven’t already received an invitation to one of the Executive Briefings, you will in the near future. I know that time is often the biggest obstacle for many dealers, especially smaller ones; you simply cannot afford to be out of the office. In spite of that, I want to encourage you to attend these events. The payback for your business will more than justify the investment of your time.

If you would like to attend an Executive Briefing, please contact Stacy Gill at (800) 959-3367 x3252 or to RSVP.

The Executive Briefings are free. You do not have to register for a regional users meeting to attend one of the Executive Briefings. However, I hope you will attend the users meeting as well and take advantage of the valuable training available there.

The next meeting is the Southeast Regional Users Meeting, which will be held May 20-21, 2005 in Atlanta, GA. For more information about this meeting, including a class schedule and online registration, go to: http://www.ecisolutions.com/customers/events/regmeetings.htm.

I look forward to seeing you in Atlanta, or at one of the future meetings.

Sincerely,

Traci Johnson
Senior Vice President, DDMS Operations