PIANZ

PIANZ used 2 databases for their data needs. The Act! database needed to be redesigned to meet the needs of grouping Contacts based on types of farms, size of farms, location areas of the farms, individuals’ roles in the industry, etc. These Groups need to be easily accessible or created to allow PIANZ the ability to supply information within the poultry industry quickly and efficiently as needed, especially during times of emergencies. Another important need was to be able to communicate with all Act! Contacts sending then their current Contact information in Act! in a systemized way that would allow the Contact to reply to the email sent with the email reply upgrading the data in Act!. This is important to allow the system to continually have updated data for future communications. Another need was redesigning the Contact layout that organized the data in an easy-to-read format for all Users. Once modifications were made, the Users of Act! needed training and support on how the system worked going forward along with having their Act! Consultant (Mitch Weimer) be available for other modifications as they became more experienced with the system, learning it’s capabilities.

As there were many areas of change needed, we took the approach to make the changes incrementally. We started by having an onsite meeting at PIANZ with Act Today NZ and those at PIANZ involved in the project. From there Act Today NZ went away and created an action plan based on the priority of what was needed first. Act Today NZ worked with those at PIANZ concerning their individual areas of need from the system with Tipi (the Executive Assistant for Michael) spearheading the project on the PIANZ side.

Once the action plan was created and the priorities were made concerning the needs of the PIANZ Act! database, Act Today NZ upgraded Act!, modified and cleaned up the database fields and layouts. Recreated fields when needed and moved data as need to the appropriate fields. Once the cleanup was completed, Act Today NZ implemented Act! Marketing Automation to be able to send the emails to the Act! Contacts with their data that needed to be confirmed or changed by the Contacts in Act!. Act Today NZ implemented Link2Forms for the Users to reply and upgrade their Contact information in Act!. Act Today NZ also created and implemented a solution for sending multiple emails for Contacts in the system that had the same email address that was being used by different Contacts in the system (which isn’t a feature in Link2Forms). This allowed for all Contacts in Act! to be automatically upgraded by the Contacts responding to the email request sent out.

Concerning training, Act Today NZ created individual training videos when implementing Act! Marketing Automation on how to create a template, send the campaign and report on the campaign. When training a User in the office, Act Today would video the training and the videos were placed in a folder making them accessible to all Users for future trainings or for new Users of Act! or for any User of Act! to go back to if needed. This allowed for a video library of their Act! database.

The Act! database that the office uses is not only for PIANZ but the other trade associations that the office services, i.e., EPFNZ and NZFMA. The increasing threat of Avian Influenza and the importance of a database that was effective as possible meant that Mitch and his team were contracted to upgrade and increase the capabilities of the Act! database. That outcome has been achieve and we believe we now have a database and options for farmer contact that is the equal of anything in the NZ agriculture sector.