Lois Johnson in charge of U.S. office
We are proud to introduce to you our new U.S. director, Ms. Lois Johnson. Ms. Johnson is a results-driven professional with twenty years of executive experience in directing public and non-profit workforce development programs. As of January 2009, Ms. Johnson will be leading the U.S. office. Her focus lies in managing and further developing the existing network of both partners and customers.

ASK Emergency Response at TAOS County
Taos, New Mexico's electricity, telecommunications and propane provider Kit Carson Electric signed a deal with ASK distributor New Mexico Technet in January 2009. For this project, the JustASK service will be used to notify people living in the Taos county about electricity outage repairs and to determine if its subscribers are having any problems with their service. Kit Carson is in the process of building an emergency management center for Taos County and the current plan is to upgrade to a full ASK installation to handle the emergency communication needs of the area.

Please contact Lois Johnson for additional details.

Staffing agency fights economic downturn with ASK
It is common knowledge that staffing agencies are the first to perceive the effects of economic downturn. A lot of companies have ceased hiring temporary staff. Therefore, staffing agencies now have many qualified people to choose from.
Before, Start People, a Dutch staffing agency, mainly made use of ASK for the quick identification of flexworkers willing to work for them (see the according factsheet). Given the current market situation, the focus has now shifted towards a more customer oriented operating procedure. Oscar Leurs, involved with Start People project management, explains:
"There are plenty of flexworkers looking for a job now. The new challenge is to obtain the highest level of satisfaction among customers. ASK does not only speed up deployment matching services, but the time saved allows for intensifying existing customer relationships and acquiring new customers as well. While ASK already takes care of a large amount of repetitive communications, I believe the future is in a virtual employment agency in which the staff will merely focus on the activities that require human contribution and ASK will take care of the rest".

Flexible Resource Allocation and -monitoring
Since June 2007, Global Mail and Express company TNT makes use of ASK in all sorting offices in the Netherlands. Each of the employees fills in their availability for work. Based on the aggregated input ASK matches supply and demand and thus provides the most efficient human resource planning. At TNT, we offer some unique possibilities in order to flexibly organize their staff:

• Easy anticipation on required job flexibility;
• In case of illness or omission ASK immediately looks for replacement;
• Staff members can themselves ensure a proper balance between work and social life by entering their own preferences;
• ASK saves planners a lot of work.

ASK is the key component in the project that has thus far saved TNT almost 7.5 million dollars. ASK has recently been introduced at two subsidiaries of TNT. The first to sign a contract was Redmail in Austria. In The Netherlands, Netwerk VSP has recently started to use ASK as well.

At Netwerk VSP, ASK safeguards the delivery process quality by continuously monitoring the delivery workforce. For instance, whenever a mailman has finished his job, he calls the ASK system to confirm delivery. In the meanwhile, status information is visible for the planners and ASK can automatically initiate alternative communication actions.

Please contact Lois Johnson for more information about Flexible Resource Allocation.

Additional JustASK features and Migration to Blade
JustASK is the generic name for a new range of ASK applications, available through an easy to use web interface and offering a quick return on investment. The possibilities are numerous. An example customer case is given below:

Client Health Monitoring at a Dutch Hospital
At the UMC St Radboud, a prominent Hospital located in The Netherlands, JustASK is used to monitor client health for research or preventative purposes. By using any telephone the condition of clients can be measured in terms of weight, blood pressure, blood sugar level, body balance and others at the desired frequency. The service is location independent and does not require the use of expensive equipment. Furthermore, the collected feedback is instantly available to specialists through a table in the web interface. The application has recently been introduced to the first GP office as well, which saves time on appointments, increases diagnosis speed and accuracy, and enables family doctors to serve more patients.

Another activity involves the migration of our clients´ installations to virtual dedicated and, if required, redundant servers in a VMWare Environment running on IBM hardware. The practical implication is that even when the primary datacenter would fail, another one will take over automatically. The chosen environment ensures a maximum level of reliability, scalability and performance, with 24/7 Service Levels up to 99.95% and bring energy savings up to 80%.

Please contact Thijs van As for additional information on virtualized and redundant infrastructures.

Debt Management at Housing Corporations
The ASK system is being used in an innovative way to improve debt collection. The process is used to take care of time-consuming debt-related communications at Vestia, the largest Housing Corporation in the Netherlands. Its basic functionalities include reminding customers and requesting feedback on timeliness and method of debt payment. This results in:

• An indication of the expected term and desired method of payments;
• Possibility to offer customers a settlement in order to get quaranteed money in sooner;
• Retrieve missing contact information to increase operation effectiveness;
• Obtain productivity gains by saving both time and money.

This application has already attracted the attention of other companies. The first results look really promising. For more information on Debt Management via ASK or a demo please contact Lois Johnson.

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