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Johannes Fritz
Chief Information Officer, BSG GmBH |
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n January of this year, Nico Spence, Herbert Schmitz (still a great expert on German BASIS customers), Sandrine Eustace, and I
set out on a journey from north to south Germany to present the newly released BASIS Partnership Program to our most valuable
customers.
For the initial presentation, we chose the favorite high-tech city of Hanover, well-known for hosting the annual CeBIT trade
show. Many excited customers arrived early so that they would not miss any of the interesting presentations and news that led
to a very relaxed but still intense conversation among Partnership customers and the BASIS team.
After the friendly warm-up, Herbert presented the cornerstones of the new BASIS Partnership Program, explaining how BASIS
intends to increase the successful partnership together with their customers for the future. The current model that evaluates
customers by their annual sales volume has become somewhat outdated.
In contrast to this, BASIS developed the new Partnership Program in cooperation with many customers and takes customer needs
into consideration to provide the following demand-oriented components:
This arrangement allows for a far more specific support of customer needs than currently possible, resulting in the new
classifications of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Partners.
The subsequent discussion showed that the long-term preparation of the new Partnership Program by the BASIS team in
conjunction with intensive talks with their customers was perfectly tailored to the needs of customers and was well received
by all customers.
After a short lunch break, Sandrine and I presented the new electronic b-commerce system based on BBj® that allows all
customers to order new licenses or acquire needed upgrades on demand 24x7. The positive feedback of customers pointed out that
BASIS has put the right focus on this client-oriented system, satisfying many customer wishes.
To give the enthusiastic partners some insight into the development roadmap of the upcoming BBj 6.0, I explained the new
features of this release such as triggers, stored procedures, custom objects, VKEYED files, and the new
IDE-integrated AppBuilder. The positive feedback from the partners showed that the continuous BASIS engineering and
development have implemented, once more, the needed extensions and improvements that have brought BBj to the point where it is
today: the most powerful and readily market-available BBx®.
Finally, Nico thanked all those present for coming and their lively and active participation in the event. He pointed out that
the Partnership Program and the continuous communication between BASIS and their customers are important steps towards a
common strategic market expansion.
The Partnership Program Launch Tour 2006 continued through the wintry white Germany to Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and finally
Munich, where the journey ended. During the trip, the business atmosphere among participants continuously improved due to the
positive customer feedback and enthusiastic partners we encountered in every city. After traveling almost 1200 miles across
Germany, our BASIS team found ourselves very confident and grateful that we could present the new Partnership Program to more
than 60 satisfied customers in a fruitful dialog.
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