Throughout the month of March, Blue Link ran a competition open to all of our customers called the A.R.M Contest. Automated Report Maintenance, or “A.R.M” for short, is a rules based automated data and email update tool found in Blue Link Software. We are particularly proud of this feature because of the time-saving applications it provides its users such as:
- Automatically generate daily, weekly, or monthly inventory reports on a specific date as chosen by the user
- Email invoices to customers after orders are placed without any human interaction needed
- Send website orders directly to the warehouse to be picked, packed, and shipped if they meet certain criteria
- Automatically change the status of an order based on criteria being met such as payment received or product shipped
Despite all of the useful applications, there still happens to be one aspect of the A.R.M that we are not too fond of here at Blue Link … its name. Automated Reports Maintenance is a bit of a mouthful and frankly doesn’t capture essence of its functionality. As a result, we opened the floor to our customers to come up with names that they thought were more appropriate for this component. We had no restrictions on name length and wanted customers to be as creative as possible. We also had an incentive of a $1,000 cash prize awarded to the best name selected by our judges, just to add to the excitement.
After a month of submissions, we could not have been more pleased with the response we received. After narrowing the submissions down to our top two, our judges voted on a winner:
- Automated Task Manager – Fred Pritchard, Golda’s Kitchen
As a long time user of Blue Link software and its A.R.M functionality, Fred sees it as an ATM more than anything else; “I think of ATM as a money maker. It automatically prints pick tickets in the warehouse all day without any management involvement. Orders are printed based on efficiency of pick walk, and labour costs are reduced. We also use ATM to automatically transfer inventory from one location to the other based on sales needs. Again, no one in management has to even look at what is happening, the computer does it all for you. A true ATM in our case.”
Once we got the ball rolling with this contest idea, Blue Link decided that we also wanted to understand the many different ways that our customers are utilizing this functionality. With the help of another cash prize of $1,000, Blue Link also invited customers to submit a video or written essay explaining how the A.R.M has changed their business. We were once again very pleased with the results, but we could only choose one winner:
- April Tobin – Qualifirst Foods
April had high praise for the sheer amount of time the A.R.M was able to save Qualifirst; “Thanks to Blue Link's A.R.M technology, we have now stepped into the future of business operations. Implementing their automation into our day to day has created a seamless, productive, confident system we rely on. This has provided us with the extra time to dedicate towards sales, company growth, and employee engagement.”
In her essay, April went on to explain how some of this was achieved; “Because of this automation we no longer have to busy ourselves with emailing order confirmations, sending invoices, and following up on payments as Blue Link now does all this for us! They work behind the scenes every day to ensure our clients are contacted, so that we don't have to.”
To Read April’s winning essay in its entirety, please visit our testimonial page.
We would like to thank all of our customers who participated in both contests, and congratulations to our winners Fred and April!
