The TeamHaven Blog

RSS choose TeamHaven as the right solution following 7 months due-diligence

2012-01-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

December 2011, UK - RSS is a leading UK field marketing agency who over the last 10 years has become one of the fastest growing agencies working with brands in the food and drinks sector.

Over the last 7 months RSS carried out a thorough process of due-diligence in order to understand the merits and cost structure of solutions that manage data collection, field management and reporting.
TeamHaven was selected as the preferred supplier based on it competitive per visit cost structure and its advanced functionality required for complex field marketing projects.

Gordon Houston of RSS confirmed that they had been impressed with TeamHaven in a number of ways in comparison to the system previously used. Enhanced workflow and a better user interface were helping users, more complex questions could now be handled, and immediate results were available when changes were made to questionnaires. The logic editor was seen as a particularly useful feature.

Our aim, added Steve Grimes CEO, is to provide field marketing companies with a cost effective solution that is both very powerful and easy and quick to use. In addition, we are the only supplier to offer all our new clients the opportunity to have a free trial in order to ensure that their business requirements are met without any financial cost.

TeamHaven is an international company providing a powerful and easy to use technology solution for data collection, field management and reporting.

For more information on TeamHaven, please contact:

Steve Grimes - Director

Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91

steve@teamhaven.com

For more information, visit www.compositedata.com

Reporting designer guide updated

2011-12-19T07:36:00.000-08:00

A new user guide has been published today showing the new reporting features within the quick chart and photo gallery designer.
To view or download a copy, please go to the document library of your account and click on the link with the TeamHaven Documentation section.

Activision engages TeamHaven across Europe to help monitor the launch of Call of Duty MW3

2011-12-19T03:35:00.000-08:00

Europe – Activision Blizzard Inc is the worlds leading publisher of entertainment software across all the major operating platforms. Call of Duty is its most successful franchise and Modern Warfare 3 is the latest title for 2011.

Call of Duty MW3 is forecasted to be the biggest game of the year and Activision were keen to ensure that all their retailers had adequate stock and that all its in store promotional activity was correctly setup.

Spanning across Europe and working with all the major retailers, Activision wanted to highlight any significant issues quickly during the launch of Call of Duty MW3. In order to achieve this, TeamHaven was engaged by Activision to be deployed across Europe. Working with their respective field teams, TeamHaven was set up and deployed in a few weeks and tracks and monitors stock and promotional activity across Europe. Following its success, Activision now plans to use TeamHaven throughout the year to track all its key titles across Europe.

Steve Grimes, CEO added “ Ensuring that products are in stock and that the right promotional activity is executed in the right store is vital to Activision, especially during the first 30 days of a product launch. TeamHaven is able to highlight the key issues to Activision so they can work with their retailers to correct any in store issues”.

TeamHaven has created a European reporting portal allowing management the ability to monitor its in store execution across all countries. The reporting portal provides dynamic interactive reports for both data and photo galleries.

For more information on TeamHaven, please contact:

Steve Grimes - Director

Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91

steve@teamhaven.com

For more information, visit www.compositedata.com

TeamHaven Mobile for Android - User Guide published

2011-09-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

A new version of TeamHaven Mobile that uses the Android platform for Tablets and Smart phones is soon to be released. Unlike many other suppliers, TeamHaven Mobile for Android works without the need of an Internet connection when field staff are entering their data during a visit.

TeamHaven Mobile is considered as one of the most powerful solutions for field staff activity and is applicable to all industries and countries around the world.

You can download the new User Guide by clicking on this link. It is also available in the TeamHaven Mobile section of the Document Library.

TeamHaven rapidly expands within the Middle East

2011-09-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

August 2011, Middle East - Thanks to Retail Performance Group (RPG), TeamHaven has been utilized to manage many major brands and their retail field operations in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for the past 3 years.

Due to their expansion and the implementation of TeamHaven by Hewlett Packard (HP), TeamHaven will now be used in all the major countries in the Middle East including Israel, Egypt, UAE, Kuwait and Turkey.

Steve Grimes CEO, added, “despite the recent unrest in the Middle East, the major brands are extending their implementation of TeamHaven, in order to help increase retail sales in this growing geographical region”.

In addition to providing a technology solution to help increase retail sales, TeamHaven provides unified reporting spanning multiple countries, whilst allowing individual countries the freedom and flexibility to develop specific reports to meet their local requirements.

TeamHaven is an international company providing a powerful and easy to use technology solution for data collection, field management and reporting.

For more information on TeamHaven, please contact:

Steve Grimes – Director

Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91

steve@teamhaven.com

For more information, visit www.compositedata.com

How to do quicker synchronisations with handheld devices

2011-08-12T04:43:00.000-07:00

TeamHaven can be set up so that during a synchronisation, only the completed calls are sent to the server. This greatly reduces the synchronisation time and skips any changes made to a project, such as new calls and revisions to the questionnaire.

The handheld devices can be configured so that over a determined time period, a full synchronisation will automatically take place, so that changes made by the project manager will be sent to the remote device.

To set this up on the handheld device, click "File" located in the bottom left hand corner of the call list page. Then choose "Options" and enter the period you wish to have a full synchronisation. For example, set this to 24 if you wish a full synchronisation to take place every day.

TeamHaven helps drives down operational costs for agencies

2011-08-12T04:12:00.000-07:00

May 2011 - TeamHaven is leading the way to help field agencies around the world lower their operational costs. With the current focus on costs, the field sales and marketing industry is under severe pressure from all manufacturers to lower their costs.

TeamHaven is used globally and all agencies using TeamHaven have significantly lowered their costs from their previous supplier. To help agencies evaluate TeamHaven, a free trial is offered to ensure that all their objectives are satisfied before any financial commitment.

Steve Grimes CEO added, “With the economic pressure to lower prices in our industry, TeamHaven has helped Agencies around the world not only lower their costs, but improve their field operations and most importantly, raise the value of their service to the Manufacturer”.

TeamHaven is an international company providing a powerful and easy to use technology solution for data collection, field management and reporting.

For more information on how you can reduce your operational costs, please contact:

Steve Grimes – Director

Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91

steve@teamhaven.com

For more information, visit www.compositedata.com

TeamHaven Mobile 11.6 now on AutoUpdate

2011-07-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

TeamHaven Mobile 11.6 build 4212 is now being pushed out to users via AutoUpdate. The upgrade process and screenshots documenting the upgrade experience for Windows Mobile users is available here.

TeamHaven Mobile for Android News

2011-07-13T02:38:00.001-07:00

We are progressing on our development of TeamHaven Mobile for Android and we plan to have a beta version available for testing at the end of August.

It is notoriously difficult to develop an Android application that displays consistently on multiple devices, especially when those devices have different screen sizes, pixel density and operating system versions. Therefore, TeamHaven Mobile for Android will initially only be supported and tested on the following hardware:

HTC Flyer 7" 1024 x 600 Tablet

HTC Desire HD 4.3" 480 x 800 Phone

HTC Desire Z 3.7" 480 x 800 Phone with keyboard

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1" 1280 x 800 Tablet

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" 1024 x 600 Tablet

While TeamHaven Mobile will probably operate on many other Android devices too, we recommend that you only purchase only from our list of supported devices.

TeamHaven 11.6 Released

2011-07-02T13:44:00.001-07:00

We're happy to announce that the next upgrade to TeamHaven has just been released. For more information about the release, please read the Release Notes.

Also, if you did not receive advance notice about the upgrade, please join our mailing list.

TeamHaven 11.4 Released

2011-04-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

TeamHaven 11.4 was released today, greatly improving Picture Galleries and adding new "Most Recent Visit Only" filtering to Quick Charts. For a full list of the changes, please read the Release Notes.

Delete Project button moved into the Project Settings page

2011-03-25T00:48:00.000-07:00

The Project Manager no longer displays a delete project icon next to each project. Instead, to delete or archive a project, please open the project's Project Settings page and then click the "Delete Project" or "Archive Project" button.

Plans for Android version for TeamHaven mobile

2011-02-01T03:04:00.000-08:00

TeamHaven announced that its planning to release its Android version for TeamHaven Mobile later this year. It will continue to support Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6, but will not be developing a version for the new Windows Phone 7 platform at this time.

The Android platform provides mobile users with a much wider range of devices from tablet formats to smart phones using hardware from many alternative manufacturers. The success of the Android platform has resulted in it now being the number one platform in many countries.

HP doubles its business with TeamHaven across 18 countries

2011-02-01T02:26:00.000-08:00

Geneva January 2011 – Following the initial launch of its Printer division, HP will now add its PC division to the TeamHaven platform across the EMEA region.

Last year HP confirmed that its Printer Division (IPG) had chosen TeamHaven as its preferred solution for their retail data collection, field management and reporting across 18 countries within EMEA. Following this successful launch, HP confirmes that their PC division (PSG) will now be added, with the possibility of other divisions joining later in the year.

TeamHaven now provides HP with direct transparency across all of its agencies across EMEA allowing them to work closer with all of their field teams. Steve Grimes CEO added "With the inclusion of our targeted reporting, we are able to highlight the key actionable issues and deliver these to the appropriate person within HP. This eliminates data overload and allows HP's sales and marketing teams to focus on the key issues to help increase sales"

For further information and a free trial contact.

Steve Grimes – Director
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

www.compositedata.com

TeamHaven launches its journey planning solution

2010-12-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

England December 2010 – TeamHaven launches its pay as you use journey planning and visit optimization solution for all types of field visits. As an easy to use web based solution, TeamHaven offers clients the ability to optimize their field teams in order to help save time and money.

Unlike most other providers, the TeamHaven Visit Manager requires no initial investment or long-term contractual commitment; instead, clients can simply use the visit optimization solution as often as they like.

The TeamHaven Visit Manager can be used on a stand-alone basis and clients do not need to be an existing user of the TeamHaven field management solution. Simply access the web and upload the visits requiring journey planning and users will be sent back an optimized file showing the planned date and time of all their visits in a single Excel file.

Steve Grimes CEO added, “we are delighted to launch our Visit Manager allowing clients to optimize their field execution. There is a need for Managers to benchmark against an optimised visit plan, in order to measure how their teams are operating. With increased fuel costs and downward pressure on margins, the TeamHaven Visit Manager offers a cost effective solution to help save money”.

With its unique pay as you go pricing, clients pay on the number of visits they plan on a monthly basis. Prices range from £0.75 to £0.20 per visit depending on the volume of visits planned and is currently only available in the UK.

TeamHaven will also offer new clients a free 2 week trial.

For further information on how to optimize your field team, please contact:

Steve Grimes – Director
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

www.compositedata.com

HP selects TeamHaven for 18 countries across EMEA

2010-12-04T11:32:00.000-08:00

Geneva October 2010 – TeamHaven has been selected as the technology provider for HP across 18 countries to manage their team of retail account managers and merchandisers.

Following an extensive review and procurement process lasting 18 months, TeamHaven was selected as the chosen platform. The TeamHaven platform is a technology platform for data collection, field management and reporting designed specifically for retail sales and merchandising. Unlike other solution providers, TeamHaven has built in wizards that allow clients to quickly create and manage their projects and includes some of the most complex functionality seen in retail sales and marketing.

TeamHaven demonstrated this fact by creating a free to use trial for HP and were able to go live within 24 hours. Steve Grimes CEO added “Most of our competitors have to invest a lot of time and effort in order create their initial offering, this leads to significant upfront costs and much higher ongoing costs to clients. Using our own past experience of managing field teams, TeamHaven is designed to be purpose built for this industry and provides huge amounts of flexibility not seen with other providers.

TeamHaven will also be offering HP strategic consultancy in order to help maximize the value and effectiveness of the field teams employed across EMEA.

TeamHaven works with many other brands at an EMEA level providing both group and local country reporting.

To learn more on how TeamHaven significantly reduce your technology costs please contact

Steve Grimes – Director
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

www.compositedata.com

TeamHaven Sponsors 2010 Field Marketing and Brand Awareness Awards

2010-10-28T07:09:00.000-07:00

London 2010 - TeamHaven are proud to sponsor this prestigious event held in London, which recognizes excellence within the retail environment. Hosted by celebrity actor Brian Blessed, TeamHaven were sponsors to the award that demonstrated the most effective sales or in-store demonstration.

TeamHaven is a data collection, field management and reporting solution used by many agencies and brands worldwide and is used for all field marketing and brand awareness campaigns.

Steve Grimes CEO announced “TeamHaven were proud to present this years award to FieldSmart for their instore demonstrations on behalf of Kodak. Thanks to FieldSmart, customers were able to easily understand the benefits of buying a Kodak product and experience a real life demonstration of their products.”

The Field Marketing and Brand Awareness awards for 2010 was the largest event in its history recognising the growth and success of this industry sector. TeamHaven plans to continue its sponsorship partnership in the future.

TeamHaven is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology and experience in directly employing large field teams. This allows clients to manage their data collection, field management and dynamic web-based reporting through the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit www.compositedata.com

Contact:
Steve Grimes – Director
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

TeamHaven Mobile synchronisation explained

2010-08-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

TeamHaven Mobile is designed to minimise the volume of data that is transferred during synchronisation in order to reduce battery drain and cell phone bills.

When a user hits the green "Synchronise" button, TeamHaven Mobile typically executes two steps:

Step 1: Completed calls are uploaded to the server.

Step 2: The local database cache is synchronised with the server.

Call Uploading

Calls shown in TeamHaven Mobile's "Completed and Ready To Send" category are sent to the server, and once the server has confirmed that the data has been successfully received, the PDA moves them to the "Completed" category, where they will remain until the local database is synchronised with the server, at which point they may be deleted (this depends on the settings of the project that the calls belong to).

Full Synchronisation

This only occurs when the user forces it using the "Rebuild Database" option or when a different user has logged into TeamHaven Mobile. The local database cache on the PDA is deleted, an empty one is created and then a normal "Partial" synchronisation is triggered. Because there is no data in the local database cache, this means that all necessary data will be downloaded from the server.

Partial Synchronisation

This is TeamHaven Mobile's default strategy. It sends a summary of what its local database currently contains to the server, when then sends back new and updated records along with a list of which records are no longer needed. TeamHaven Mobile then processes this data by inserting, updating and deleting information in the local database cache accordingly.

Options and conditions that affect this sequence

1. If the "Upload only on battery" option is ticked and the PDA is not connected to a power source, then only step 1 (Upload completed calls) is carried out. Database synchronisation will only occur when the PDA is plugged into a power source.

2. If the "Only synchronise every N hours" option is filled out, then only step 1 will be carried out unless it has been more than N hours since the last database synchronisation. If it has been more than N hours, then step 2 is also carried out.

3. If completed calls were not successfully uploaded to the server in step 1, then step 2 is not carried out.

Updated Project List Page

2010-06-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

We have improved the Project List page by splitting the projects across three different tabs: Active, Inactive and Archived. Inactive projects those where no new calls have been saved for more than two months. For busy accounts with lots of projects, this makes finding projects much easier.

Noble Foods Sign Up With TeamHaven After Recommendation

2010-05-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

United Kingdom – January 2010 – Noble Foods wanted to find an easy to use and flexible solution that could manage their newly-created field team. Having heard some of the nightmare stories from other companies, Noble Foods sought to obtain a recommendation from brands that had a good experience with their technology solution provider.

TeamHaven was recommended by Dairy Crest, who has been working with TeamHaven for 4 years. TeamHaven manages Dairy Crest’s own retail team exclusively throughout the UK.

Offering a free trial to Noble Foods, TeamHaven was able to demonstrate how easy it is to setup and manage their retail operation and quickly create real-time, dynamic reports. Since this was a new venture for Noble Foods, they needed a solution that was flexible enough to develop and implement an effective strategy.

Noble Foods is the UK’s biggest supplier of eggs and egg products, supplying millions of eggs from hen houses across the country to the shelves of the UK's leading supermarkets. Working closely with at least 250 egg farmers, Noble Foods collect, grade and package the most fragile of food products and distribute to all the major retailers in the UK.

Composite Data Solutions is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology and experience in directly employing large field teams. This allows clients to manage their data collection, field management and dynamic web-based reporting through the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit www.CompositeData.com

Contact:
Steve Grimes – Director
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

TeamHaven Opens its New Office in Italy

2010-04-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

Italy– February 2010 – TeamHaven opens its new office in Italy to service its expanding number of clients. This past year, TeamHaven has experienced a significant growth of retail field marketing business in Italy, where brands and agencies are seeking to maximize the impact of their in-store field marketing while increasing sales and operating efficiency.

Working with brands such as Samsung, TomTom, Packard Bell and Nintendo, a TeamHaven office enables a local support team that will be able to help our clients throughout Italy.

Companies wishing to obtain a free trial to experience how TeamHaven can help increase retail sales and improve operational efficiency please contact:

Andrea Ruggeri
TeamHaven Italy
Via Torri Bianche 10
20059 - Vimercate (MB)
Tel: +39 02 45559997
Email : andrea@teamhaven.com

Composite Data Solutions is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology and experience in directly employing large field teams. This allows clients to manage their data collection, field management and dynamic web-based reporting through the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit www.CompositeData.com

Contact:
Steve Grimes – Director
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

TeamHaven Mobile connection errors, causes and resolutions

2010-04-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

This post describes the Internet connection related error messages that might be displayed by TeamHaven during synchronisation and lists possible causes and resolutions.

Unable to connect to the Internet

Windows Mobile was unable to establish a network connection. Check that the device's method of connecting to the Internet has been correctly configured and is currently working. Try visiting a website using Internet Explorer to confirm that the connection is working. Contact your Internet Service Provider and/or IT Department for support.

Unable to resolve the TeamHaven server's address

Windows Mobile was unable to resolve the domain name "www.teamhaven.com". Check that the device has been properly configured with DNS server entries. This should happen automatically whenever the device connects to the Internet. Try visiting a website using Internet Explorer to check whether other domain names can be resolved. Make sure you press the "Refresh" button to force Internet Explorer to refresh the page from the website rather than it showing you a cached copy of the web page. If the problem persists, contact your Internet Service Provider, IT Department or whoever is providing you with your Internet connectivity for support.

Unable to contact the TeamHaven server

An error occurred when connecting to the TeamHaven server. Typically a problem with the device's TCP/IP connection to the Internet. If this problem persists, it is possible that there is a problem with the TeamHaven server. Visit http://www.teamhaven.com/cdsweb/webservices/TeamHavenMobileV12.asmx and see if you get a web page in response. If you do not, contact TeamHaven for support.

The TeamHaven Mobile web service could not be found on this server

Either you are using a beta version of TeamHaven Mobile while connected to the live server, or your version of TeamHaven Mobile is obsolete and no longer supported. Contact TeamHaven for support.

The Internet connection failed during transmission

Either the PDA was unable to successfully send a request to the TeamHaven server, or it was unable to successfully receive a response from the server. Typically this problem occurs in poor signal areas or on congested GRPS / 3G cellular networks. If this problem persists, consider changing to a different cellular network or changing the method you use to connect to the Internet (such as connecting via WiFi instead). Contact your Internet Service Provider and/or IT Department for support.

An unexpected transmission error occurred

Some other Internet connection error occurred while the PDA was exchanging data with the TeamHaven server. Contact your IT Department for support.

TeamHaven ran out of memory while trying to complete the synchronisation

Too much data is being downloaded to your Pocket PC. Ask the project manager to review the project's configuration and simplify it by reducing the number of calls / items / attribute / historic answers that are used. Alternatively, disable data compression (in the File, Options menu), which will reduce the amount of memory used while synchronising, but at the expense of much more data traffic.

Nestle Extends Use of TeamHaven Solution

2010-02-25T09:50:00.000-08:00

Greece – February 2010 - Nestle have been using TeamHaven for their retail field operations for the last four years and thought that it would be advantageous to consider introducing their own solution in which they would develop in-house.

The project’s scope in Greece covers between 17,000 - 20,000 visits per month and includes managing numerous retailers and products concurrently. Nestle considers TeamHaven as an efficient, low-cost solution, however; from a strategic point of view, Nestle wanted to explore the benefits of developing and managing this project internally.

Following a 3 month review, Nestle came to the conclusion to continue using TeamHaven for their retail activities due to the complexity and flexibility Nestle requires. When Nestle reviewed the costs, it was determined that it would be better to avoid the upfront development investment and risk. As a result of their analysis, Nestle continues to work with the TeamHaven solution that had worked so well for them for the past four years.

Steve Grimes, Chairman, noted that, “Through TeamHaven, Nestle can utilize a low-cost and flexible solution developed specifically for their complex retail market. With no setup costs and a low monthly “pay-as-you-go” approach, TeamHaven continues to add-value and continues to be a necessary and strategic element of Nestle’s operations.”

After six years of development, TeamHaven continues to extend its functionality through free quarterly upgrades to all its clients.

Composite Data Solutions is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology and experience in directly employing large field teams. This allows clients to manage their data collection, field management and dynamic web-based reporting through the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit www.CompositeData.com

Contact:
Steve Grimes – Director
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

Robert Wiseman declares TeamHaven a winner amongst competing automation solutions

2010-01-29T22:08:00.000-08:00

After an extensive evaluation of a number of field force automation solutions, Robert Wiseman has chosen TeamHaven to manage their retail field force across the UK. During the evaluation process, Composite Data Solutions (CDS) confidently offered to Robert Wiseman that they carry out a free no-obligation trial with TeamHaven in order to ensure that TeamHaven meets all of their requirements. Other providers do not normally offer a free trial, however; they were forced to follow Composite Data Solutions’ unique approach to its prospective clients.

Steve Grimes, Chairman of CDS added, “We always offer a free trial for all our new clients as standard practice because I believe prospective clients should be allowed to experience their future solution before making any financial commitment”. A free trial can reveal many things and TeamHaven was able to meet and exceed the expectations of Robert Wiseman, while the competitors’ products fell short on a number of features in addition to being more costly.

Robert Wiseman visited national retailers across the UK to ensure their products are merchandised and customer service issues were handled directly with the retailer. In addition to its automated hosted service, TeamHaven will also be set up to directly integrate with Robert Wiseman’s own database systems at East Kilbride allowing the automation of visits and automatic feedback of data. In addition to a suite of dynamic web reports, TeamHaven will also supply automated email reports highlighting key issues for Robert Wiseman account and production managers to act upon.

TeamHaven is being used to replace an existing solution used by Robert Wiseman, which lacked flexibility and did not offer a number of key features that come standard with TeamHaven. CDS is proud to be a business partner with Robert Wiseman and looks forward to helping them reach the next level.

Composite Data Solutions is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology and experience in directly employing large field teams. This allows clients to manage their data collection, field management and dynamic web-based reporting through the TeamHaven hosted site.
For more information, visit www.CompositeData.com

Contact:
Steve Grimes – Director
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

TeamHaven Beats All-Time Record (again) For 4 Consecutive Months

2009-12-07T15:47:00.000-08:00

December 2009 – Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is proud to announce their continued growth by consecutively exceeding their highest activity for 4 straight months between August and November 2009. In August 2009, the highest number of visits processed was 6.5% higher than July’s. By November, TeamHaven’s activity substantially increased to 32% higher than July.

As TeamHaven analyzes the source of this activity, the key driver of this growth can be attributed to the increased number of new clients. With a portfolio of global clients, TeamHaven is not easily affected by the economic climate of any single industry or country. Also, TeamHaven’s cost-effective and comprehensive solution is constantly evolving and improving which enables existing clients to focus and grow their business with TeamHaven.

Director of CDS, Steve Grimes, shared that, “We are delighted with the continued growth. With our easy to use innovative solution, it is becoming more of a vital tool for our clients. Many of our competitor’s products demand huge up-front costs, long lead times and lack intuitive interfaces. As a result, TeamHaven has become the superior choice in the Field Marketing industry.”

TeamHaven was recently awarded the Most Effective Use of Technology and Data by Marketing Channel. TeamHaven also provides strategic sales and field management consultancy services, which enable clients to increase their retail sales and improve the efficiency of their field operations. With new-client announcements just released, CDS is forecasting a strong upward trend in TeamHaven activity throughout 2010.

Composite Data Solutions is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology and experience in directly employing large field teams. This allows clients to manage their data collection, field management and dynamic web-based reporting through the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit www.CompositeData.com

Contact:

Steve Grimes – Director

Hartham Park, Corsham

Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND

Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91

Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616

steve@teamhaven.com

TeamHaven & FSS Receive Top Honors at Marketing Channel’s Annual Awards Banquet: Most Effective Use of Technology and Data

2009-11-04T20:55:00.000-08:00

November 2009 - United Kingdom – After going up against the best companies in the Field Marketing industry, TeamHaven and FSS’s case study on Cadbury UK was selected as the winner of the Most Effective Use of Technology and Data. Partnering up with TDRIVEN, a creative agency in Orange County, California, FSS and TDRIVEN prepared a winning product that truly displayed the power of TeamHaven’s technology.

Field Sales Solutions (FSS) have been working with Cadburys for over 17 years, offering a number of field marketing disciplines from sales and distribution drives through to merchandising and auditing activities.

With a cutting-edge, industry leading IT system, TeamHaven, FSS has created a bespoke platform for Cadbury – enabling them to provide a greener, paperless means of briefing the field team, collecting data (via PDA) and providing online reports back to Cadburys. This use of IT, coupled with FSS’ use of CACI’s Journey Planning system to ensure the Ambassadors spend the minimum number of hours possible on the road (and a significant reduction of vehicle emissions) has earned them the Field Marketing and Brand Experience “Green Award for Effective Use of Data and IT”.

“FSS firmly believe that the combination of real time reporting and management analysis that our partnership with TeamHaven enables us to provide to our clients gives Cadbury unbeatable insights that help to drive their business. We are delighted that this has been recognised through this award and we look forward to working with TeamHaven and our clients to further develop our service offering and remain at the cutting edge of reporting and technology,” says Kate Carr, Managing Director at FSS.

Steve Grimes, Chairman of TeamHaven, shared in the excitement of this great achievement. “We are absolutely delighted to be associated with Cadbury & FSS and winning this award identifies the importance of intelligent data reporting to help increase sales and retail presence.”

TeamHaven continues to set the bar with new features and updates that allow its clients to harness and utilize the collected data in the most effective way possible.

The Field Marketing and Brand Experience Awards were organized by the Field Marketing Magazine and were held at The Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, Mayfair on 8^th October 2009.

Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology with the previous experience of directly employing large field teams allowing Clients to manage all their data collection, field management and dynamic web based reporting through one solution on the TeamHaven hosted site. For more information, visit http://www.compositedata.com

Contact:
Steve Grimes – Chairman
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

TeamHaven Beats All-Time Record For 3 Consecutive Months

2009-11-04T00:51:00.000-08:00

October 2009 – TeamHaven is proud to announce their continued growth by consecutively exceeding their highest activity for 3 consecutive months between August and October 2009. In August 2009, the highest number of visits processed was 6.5% higher than July’s and in October 2009, this same figure had substantially increased to 25.4%.

Director of Composite Data Solutions, Steve Grimes added, “We are extremely pleased to see this significant growth during this difficult economic climate. Our clients see TeamHaven as an extremely cost-effective and powerful solution for field sales, experiential and merchandising activities.”

As companies focus on maximizing their operating profits, they are adopting business decisions that not only reduce their costs, but also increase sales revenue. With TeamHaven, these same companies are able to implement the ready-to-use solution and can instantly see the value-added benefits to their bottom line without any obligation or sales pressure.

“Many brands are finding other solution providers and field agencies that offer expensive and inflexible offerings. However, with our free trial, we are able to set up and demonstrate the client’s specified project upfront; ensuring their objectives are met and most importantly, before any financial commitment on their end,” says Grimes.

TeamHaven, recently awarded for the Most Effective Use of Technology and Data by Marketing Channel, also provides strategic sales and field management consultancy services which help clients increase their retail sales and improve the efficiency of their field operations. With major new-client announcements coming in Q4 of 2009, TeamHaven is forecasting a strong upward trend in activity throughout the rest of 2009 and into 2010.

For more information, visit www.CompositeData.com

Contact:

Steve Grimes – Director

Hartham Park, Corsham

Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND

Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91

Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616

steve@teamhaven.com

TeamHaven 9.10 Released

2009-10-31T08:27:00.000-07:00

Version 9.10 expands TeamHaven's category management capabilities by adding the ability to specify the dates that a product will be present in store, making it much easier ensure that exactly the right products are audited during product launches.

As with other category management features, using TeamHaven's innovative Variable Item Lists availability dates can vary from store group to store group or even from store to store.

Copying a project

2009-10-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

TeamHaven allows administrators to easily copy their projects and reproduce the questionniare and target attributes.
Clients sometimes use a default project and wish to create new copies from this template or simply want to save time creating a new project by copying a project that is similar.
In order to prepare an exisitng project to be copied, the first step is to disable any items lists that might currently used. To do this, simply change the item source to manual from any existing grid forms that use item lists. These can be added back once the project has been copied.
When logged in as an administrator, copy and paste this web page into the internet browser.

http://www.teamhaven.com/cdsweb/admin/copyproject.aspx.
To use the page:
1. Enter the login information of an administrator in the account that you are copying the project from (the source account).
2. Pick the project you want to copy.
3. Enter the login information of an administrator in the account you want to copy the project to. If you want to just copy the project within the account it's OK to use the same login information as you did in step 1. If you use more than one account, then please contact us in order to copy the project for you.
4. Enter a project name for the new project.
5. Hit the Copy button…
Caveats
Target schema information is copied, but NOT the targets themselves.

TomTom expand their use of TeamHaven to 20 countries

2009-10-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

Europe – September 2009 – TomTom continues to expand their use of TeamHaven across Europe by adding all their Nordic operations bringing the total countries to 20.

With the implementation of TeamHaven across all of Europe, TeamHaven now helps TomToms’ Field Account Managers manage all their retail clients and captures relevant and consistent data that ultimately influences decisions on the company’s overall retail sales and marketing strategy.
In addition to their own product information, TomTom also capture product placement and promotions of their leading competitors, allowing them to analyse and react to an ever changing retail environment.
Training records are also recorded allowing Field Account Managers to understand which retail staff have been trained, when they were trained and which training modules have been delivered on an individual level for all store staff. Field Account Managers can proactively assess the training needs for each store from their PDA.

TeamHaven is used to trigger out relevant information to help increase retail sales and automatically alert Retail Account Managers of key retail activity providing both data and photo’s. During their store visit, Field Account Managers highlight product lines that are out of stock and have no back order. This data is automatically sent on a daily basis to the Distributors and Retail Account Managers who use this information to proactively contact their retail stores to obtain additional sales orders.

Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is an international company with a combined background of
developing leading edge mobile technology with the experience of directly employing large field teams allowing Clients to manage all their data collection, field management and dynamic web based reporting through one solution on the TeamHaven hosted site.
For more information, visit http://www.CompositeData.com.
Contact:
Steve Grimes – Chairman
Hartham Park, Hartham Lane, Corsham, Wiltshire, ENGLAND SN13 0RP
Tel: +44 (0) 870 7447453 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

Setting up the Category Manager for Item Lists

2009-09-10T03:42:00.000-07:00

When you are using an item list it is possible to use a Catagory Manager so that only pre-set items are shown during a store visit.
For example when doing a product audit, you may wish only certain products to only show in visits for certain store groups.

In order to engage the catagory manager you will need to add a special attribute in the item list schema called "Present". This attribute must be spelt exactly as shown.

After creating this, tick the Varies By option. When you go to use the catagory manager, you can select by any target attribute and then select which products should be displayed.

FSS and TeamHaven’s Partnership with Cadbury UK, Recognized by Industry Leaders

2009-09-10T03:38:00.000-07:00

United Kingdom – August 2009 – Field Sales Solutions (FSS) and CDS TeamHaven are proud to announce that their Cadbury Case Study has been selected as a finalist in the category of “Most Effective Use of Technology and Data” at the prestigious 2009 Field Marketing & Brand Awareness Awards (FMBE).

FSS is a leading Field Marketing agency, and CDS TeamHaven, a provider of data collection, field management and reporting solutions, have successfully documented their long-term partnership with Cadbury UK that comprehensively depicted the value-added services from both the consulting and retail execution expertise of FSS and the versatile technology of TeamHaven’s data and reporting systems.

For the development of the case study, FSS & CDS partnered with TDRIVEN, a creative marketing agency located in Orange County, California.

The overall winner will be announced in October at Marketing Channel’s annual awards ceremony.
.
Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology with the previous experience of directly employing large field teams allowing Clients to manage all their data collection, field management and dynamic web based reporting through one solution on the TeamHaven hosted site.For more information, visit http://www.compositedata.com/

Contact:
Steve Grimes – Chairman
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

TeamHaven 9.6 Released

2009-07-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

TeamHaven continues to deliver new features and improve on existing features. The major feature of TeamHaven 9.6 is a powerful visit scoring system which will be of interest to anybody running Mystery Shopping projects or other types of project where it is useful to rank store visits.

In keeping with TeamHaven's flexible approach, the new Scoreboard Designer allows users to select as few or as many questions as they like, assigning rules on how much specific responses should be worth. Scores can be grouped into multiple categories and charted in a variety of ways using the improved Quick Chart Designer from where they can be published into a client-branded portal with a few simple clicks of the mouse.

This release also allows users to export the results from a Quick Chart into Microsoft Excel and export the pictures from picture galleries in bulk.

TeamHaven Builds Strategic Partnership With Retail Performance Group (RPG) In Saudi Arabia

2009-06-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

Saudi Arabia—June 2009--- Retail Performance Group (RPG) is a retail management and merchandising company that provides field marketing strategies across the Middle East. Their retail program network stretches from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain employing a field force of 305 full time employees. They are a retail business and integrated merchandising company that offer excellent solutions to increase and expand the sales market for your company.

In order to help increase their client’s sales they focused on improvement areas such as promotional events and out of stock products. This became quite a challenge when managing clients of significant scales such as Proctor & Gamble (P&G is the world’s largest multinational consumer goods company). RPG needed to manage nearly 600+ products of P&G’s brand name products. This became quite a challenging and time consuming task.

RPG found assurance through TeamHaven which provided an important bridge between the field agency, distributor, and the client. Key issues are automatically highlighted and triggering to the relevant party using Out of Stock alerts (OOS) and promotional compliance reports. With TeamHaven’s flexible and user-friendly web and mobile provider for field management, data collection, and reporting, RPG was presented with a wide-array of tools to improve their overall operations. Soon after engaging with Composite Data Solution, RPG found that by utilizing TeamHaven, they can manage their large field team and have complete transparency over their employees. As an added bonus, RPG was immediately able to begin working with TeamHaven’s services in the Arabic language. TeamHaven is proud to be able to support all world languages.

RPG has established close relations with P&G’s distributor, IATCO, who distribute P&G’s products all across Saudi Arabia’s and Bahrain’s retail outlets. TeamHaven provides Out of Stock alerts (OOS) and sends out this information not only to RPG and P&G, but also to IATCO on a daily basis, who then uses this information to ensure a purchase order is in place for that store. This atomization makes RPG a more competitive and efficient company eliminating the waiting lag time for purchase orders made over the phone.

In addition to the OOS reports, RPG must build and maintain P&G’s promotions. TeamHaven eases the stress of P&G’s promotional requirements by recording the implementation of all their promotions and highlights any issues raised at the store level or at the implementation stage during the course of the promotion. Any issues raise more than once is immediately escalated to senior management.

TeamHaven also provides RPF with dynamic and interactive web-based reports, allowing them to analyze and critique the data as required, providing competitive analysis, company direction and market trends.

With innovative improvements through free upgrades, Team Haven continues to target and contribute to their client’s overall productivity through the development of a more efficient TeamHaven solution.

Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology with the previous experience of directly employing large field teams allowing Clients to manage all their data collection, field management and dynamic web based reporting through one solution on the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit http://www.CompositeData.com

Contact:
Steve Grimes – Chairman
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP ENGLAND
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

Quick Chart speed boost

2009-05-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

We have spent a considerable amount of time analyzing the performance of the TeamHaven Quick Charts and have made a number of optimisations which we hope will be apparent to all users of our reporting system.

Security and user roles

2009-05-06T07:26:00.001-07:00

This is a summary of what actions each user role is able to perform within TeamHaven:

Primary Account Holder
Users:
- Can create, modify and delete users of any role.

Projects:
- Full access to all projects.

Administrator
Users:
- Can create, modify and delete Project Managers, Field Managers, Collectors and Clients.

Projects:
- Full access to all projects.

Project Manager
Users:
- Can create, modify and delete Field Managers, Collectors and Clients.

Projects:
- Full access to the projects that they have been assigned to.

Field Manager
Users:
- Can only access users with Calls / Targets in projects that the Field Manager has been assigned to.
- Can modify users, but can not create or delete them.
- Can only access Collectors.

Projects:
- Can only access the projects that they have been assigned to.
- Can not modify the questionnaire.
- Can modify targets, but can not create or delete them.
- Can modify calls, but can not create or delete them.
- Can not create, modify, delete or publish Quick Charts (The Quick Chart designer can still be used for ad-hoc queries)

Collector
- Can only access projects in which they have been assigned to Calls or Targets.
- Can only create calls in projects that are marked "Users can create new calls".
- Can only update the answers to completed calls in projects that are marked "Users can update calls".
- Can only delete calls that they created themselves and only in projects marked "Users can create new calls".
- Restricted to the "Data Entry" and "Document Library" portions of the TeamHaven website.

Client
- Restricted to the "Portal" and "Document Library" portions of the TeamHaven website.

TeamHaven 9.3 Released

2009-04-06T22:29:00.000-07:00

Thanks to its excellent language and regional support, TeamHaven continues to spread around the world. This quarter, we are delighted to welcome new customers from Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

TeamHaven is upgraded with new and improved functions and features every quarter, free of charge and with no upgrade hassle.

TeamHaven 9.3 delivers new capabilities for Web and Windows Mobile users alike and makes further enhancements to its already excellent reporting capabilities.

Paging Grid Forms

One of TeamHaven's unique strengths is the freedom that it provides our customers when it comes to designing the questionnaires used to collect data from the field. In order to ensure our customers are able to use our system as efficiently as possible, TeamHaven has developed an easier and more user-friendly way to display complex forms. With a Paging Grid Form, users can group their products by category and display a list of questions for each product individually. Utilizing the improved user-interface, TeamHaven allows field representatives to navigate extremely large product lists with ease while still retaining a clear and easy to read layout.

Messaging on TeamHaven Mobile

As an expansion of the TeamHaven messaging, TeamHaven Mobile will now support messaging that will push messages out from Project Managers to field representatives while operating TeamHaven Mobile. Within TeamHaven Mobile, there is a new “Messages” tab that will display the user’s inbox and any messages that have not been responded to will be highlighted in red.

Additional Chart Type in Quick Charts

Our point-and-click report designer is now capable of producing line charts in addition to the existing bar and pie charts, allowing further flexibility when presenting complex sets of data.

Product Hierarchies

Expanding on the Filtering and Grouping capabilities released in December, TeamHaven 9.3 adds Product Hierarchies, which allow customers to dynamically filter and group data according to product information such as Brand, Manufacturer, Category or by any other information available in the product list.

Synchronization Speed Improvements

Here at TeamHaven, we are constantly looking at new and innovative ways to increase the overall synchronization speed and we are happy to announce that TeamHaven Mobile will show a noticeable improvement of up to 40%.

Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 Support

TeamHaven now supports the importing and exporting of files directly with the two most commonly used versions of Microsoft Excel.

Questions?

For more information, please feel free to contact us anytime.

Composite Data Solutions
UK: +44 870 744-7453
USA: +1 949 608-9640
Web: www.compositedata.com
Email: info@teamhaven.com

DevRew Selects TeamHaven For Features and Flexibility

2009-02-24T08:39:00.000-08:00

Brampton, Ontario— Devrew Merchandising Inc. is a full service, national field sales, merchandising company that conducts servicing programs for a great number of high profile companies throughout Canada. Devrew is a Canadian company focused upon the unique characteristics of retailing in Canada.

Like so many companies in the merchandising industry, Devrew made it a priority to stay on the forefront of technology. This included the desire to transition into handheld technology. Going mobile would allow Devrew to become more efficient in providing a better and higher level of service to their clients. With so many different solutions out there, Devrew spent a great deal of time and effort into evaluating providers and vendors. Devrew wanted a system that had already been tested and proven in the field. The results of Devrew’s search and evaluation concluded that TeamHaven was the solution for their business needs. TeamHaven was the only system which was proficient and effective enough to meet their needs. In fact, TeamHaven not only effectively met their needs but also was the most accommodating and flexible product available.

Greg Shepherd, a Project Manager, along with Russell Willmott, Managing Partner of Devrew, made the executive decision to bring TeamHaven on board. According to Greg and Russ’ evaluation, the advantages TeamHaven had over other vendors was their outstanding ability to understand both Devrew’s company and the type of information they collected. Due to TeamHaven’s robust and flexible system, Devrew was up and running with TeamHaven almost instantly, requiring minimal customization and downtime.

When asked how TeamHaven addressed Devrew’s major challenges, Greg Shepherd stated that, “[TeamHaven] was the company best-suited to extract the data quickly and accurately,” adding that, “Devrew needed specific information fast and TeamHaven was the only provider that had the flexibility to accomplish those goals.”

Since the implementation of TeamHaven, Composite Data Solutions’ support and services have far exceeded Devrew’s expectations. With the ability to commit changes on the go, Devrew’s team of representatives are allowed unsurpassed flexibility. As part of TeamHaven’s system, Devrew is capable of making changes to their questionnaire and re-download it on the spot saving them a significant amount of time and resources. Additionally, due to the comprehensive nature of TeamHaven, Devrew never had any issues with the level of data collection. Shepherd goes on to say that,”TeamHaven’s solution allows us to gather the information we need to get our job done efficiently.”

It is apparent that TeamHaven understands what a merchandising company desires and is always ahead of their competitors. TeamHaven is constantly on the cutting edge of mobile technology, providing new and updated solutions to ensure their clients are given every competitive advantage to operate in the most proficient and precise way possible.

Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology with the experience of directly employing large field teams allowing Clients to manage all their data collection, field management and dynamic web based reporting through one solution on the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit http://www.CompositeData.com.

Contact:
Steve Grimes – Chairman
steve@teamhaven.com

NORTH AMERICA
26895 Aliso Creek Road B153
Aliso Viejo, CA 92656-5301
Tel: (949) 608-9640
Fax: (949) 608-9640

EUROPE
Hartham Park, Corsham
Wiltshire. SN13 0RP England
Tel: +44 1249 470420 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616

User and target export changes

2008-12-17T22:17:00.000-08:00

The User Export and Target Export pages have been updated to allow the user to select which attributes that they wish to include in the export.

TeamHaven 8.12 Released

2008-12-08T18:19:00.000-08:00

Released in December 2008, this version includes updated display settings, improved user messaging, user notes, attribute locks, and an all-new Field Manager role.

Building upon last quarter's improvements of the Reporting Portal, TeamHaven has enabled the ability to have a customized look and feel not only within the Reporting Portal, but also across the entire TeamHaven website. The result is a single, unified aesthetic appeal throughout the TeamHaven system.

User Messaging

Given that user messaging is such a vital part of the manager's role, Composite Data Solutions has given priority to improving the TeamHaven messaging capabilities. Managers now have access to an inbox and a sent items folder which enables them to keep track of all messages sent and received. Another great feature is the ability for the managers to place a set of customized response options for the recipients to select, therefore giving managers the capability to view the status of expected responses.

User Manager

In order to increase the flexibility for administrators, TeamHaven now features a more organized interface for the User Manager. Rather than one large list of menus and options, the improved layout includes tabs at the top to quickly and easily switch between user fields. Now available to managers in the message log section is the capability to append or review a specific User's notes as well as any messages sent/received by that user.

Attribute Locks

As part of TeamHaven's commitment to pioneering new, value-added functionality, TeamHaven is excited to introduce Attribute Locks. Attribute Locks are a new function that allows the Managers to limit the accessibility of collaborators to specific targets and users. As a result, Managers can clearly define exactly who the collaborators are able to view throughout the TeamHaven system.

New Field Manager Role

Furthermore, TeamHaven has created a new Field Manager role whose permissions are defined by the given attributes/resources of their assigned project(s). The Field Manager is also limited in their ability to make significant project-related changes.

As always, TeamHaven's primary goal is to enhance our client's business processes through innovative and significant system improvements. We understand that your time is valuable and that is why we continue to develop new and efficient functionality within the TeamHaven system.

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about TeamHaven.

Questions? For more information, please feel free to contact us anytime.

Composite Data Solutions
UK: +44 870 744-7453
USA: +1 949 608-9640
Web: www.compositedata.com
Email: info@teamhaven.com

TeamHaven rolls out in India

2008-11-15T04:52:00.000-08:00

CDS has recently won a major contract with PP Merchandising Services to implement TeamHaven nationally across India. Working for Imperial Tobacco Company (ITC), TeamHaven will collect data from 30,000 retail outlets nationwide.

India is a rapidly growing emerging market on a huge scale embracing multiple languages across the country. ITC supplies the retail channel throughout India with a wide range of FMCG products in addition to tobacco products and is keen to increase its retail sales operations. To help achieve this, TeamHaven is used to instantly track its promotions and product placement across all of their retail accounts.

TeamHaven is utilized by both ITC’s Key Account Managers as well as their Trade Marketing Managers and allows total visibility and management oversight of their agency’s activity. Sales related staff are automatically notified of compliance issues and out of stock products lines. Products and promotions that continue to fail on subsequent visits, are automatically esculated to the sales management of ITC.

TeamHaven’s integrated reporting tools also allow ITC’s Trade Marketing Managers to analyze and view their dynamic web reporting portal in order to filter and group data sets based on their individual requirements. Utilizing data and specific photo images in TeamHaven, ITC can analyze their product placement, promotions and be alerted of competitor’s activities.

TeamHaven continues to be the industry leader in delivering value-added services for their clients in order to help increase sales and lower operational costs.

Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology with the experience of directly employing large field teams allowing Clients to manage all their data collection, field management and dynamic web based reporting through one solution on the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit http://www.compositedata.com/ or contact Steve Grimes, Composite Data Solutions, Hartham Park, Hartham Lane, Corsham, Wiltshire, ENGLAND. SN13 0RP
Tel: +44 (0) 1249 470420 x91 Email: steve@teamhaven.com

Numeric question maximum limit

2008-10-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

Numeric questions are intended to be used for actual numeric values rather than things like telephone numbers, serial numbers or tracking numbers. To help enforce this, Numeric Questions now have a maximum value limit of 1,000,000.

Kodak expands its Pan European activity with TeamHaven

2008-10-27T03:36:00.000-07:00

For the past two years, Kodak has utilized TeamHaven to provide their EAMER and local country reporting for their retail activity and are proud to announce the extended use of TeamHaven to support Poland and Greece; both strong and emerging consumer retail markets.

Kodak utilizes TeamHaven to track their total range of products including Cameras, Printers, Picture Frames and Kiosks. Kodak has recently introduced their new line of inkjet printers in Europe and TeamHaven was chosen to manage this significant new venture.

TeamHaven is utilized by both Kodak’s Key Account Managers as well as their Trade Marketing Managers and allows total visibility and management oversight of their agency’s activity. Sales-related staff members are automatically notified of compliance issues and out of stock product SKUs which allows the managers to focus their time on the more critical retail issues.

Part of TeamHaven’s set of comprehensive tools is the ability to allow Kodak’s Trade Marketing Managers to analyze and view their dynamic web reporting portal in order to filter and group data sets based on their individual requirements. Utilizing data and specific photo images in TeamHaven, Kodak can monitor their product placement, promotions and be alerted of competitor’s activities.

TeamHaven continues to be the industry leader in delivering value-added services for their clients. This allows their clients to focus and adapt the TeamHaven solution to solve all their unique challenges.

Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology with the experience of directly employing large field teams allowing Clients to manage all their data collection, field management and dynamic web based reporting through one solution on the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit http://www.compositedata.com or contact Steve Grimes - Chairman Hartham Park, Hartham Lane, Corsham, Wiltshire, ENGLAND. SN13 0RP Tel: +44 (0) 1249 470420 x91
Email: steve@teamhaven.com

Change: Visit schedule enhancements

2008-10-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

Visit schedules can now be used to create more than one call per cycle. Two new properties, "Calls per cycle" and "Days between calls" can be used to control exactly how many calls are created for each cycle, and how many days apart they should be.

This means that schedules can now be used to create more complicated call patterns. For example, visiting a store Monday - Friday for 10 weeks would look like this:

Starts on: 20th October 2008 (Make sure the date is a Monday)
Repeats every: 1 Week
Ends after: 10 Cycles
Days to complete: 1
Calls per cycle: 5
Days between calls: 1

When more than one call is created in a cycle, each successive call's Earliest Date is calculated by adding "Days Between Calls" to the previous call's Latest Date.

In addition, Visit Schedules are only considered to be "In use" when there are Active calls using the schedule. This means it's easy to create and modify schedules while still planning calls. Once the calls are activated, the schedule is marked as "In use" and from then on it can only be extended until all active calls are either completed or put back into "Being Planned" status.

Change: Quick chart Yes/No questions

2008-10-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

TeamHaven 8.9 introduced a new behaviour when reporting on Yes/No questions. Previous versions only displayed the "Yes" answers, whereas version 8.9 displayed both the "Yes" and the "No" answers.

This change returns TeamHaven to the original behaviour of displaying only the "Yes" answers, and also adds "Display Yes answers" and "Display No answers" checkboxes to the Quick Chart Designer so that the default behaviour can be overridden if desired.

New Quick Chart feature: Data point labels

2008-09-27T17:37:00.001-07:00

The Quick Chart Designer has been enhanced to allow the addition of labels to bars and pie chart segments.

The new options are in the "Display Settings" section and any combination of the options can be selected.

Title
Displays the name associated with the bar / segment.

Value
Displays the value associated with the bar / segment.

Percentage
Displays the percentage that this bar / segment's value represents as a total of the entire data series.

TeamHaven 8.9 released

2008-09-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

Composite Data Solutions is proud to announce the latest release of TeamHaven, its flagship field management, data collection and reporting suite. This release enhances the already excellent reporting system with the addition of a versatile Reporting Portal and powerful new Filtering & Grouping capabilities.

Immediately available, this software update was designed specifically with our customers in mind.

"We took into account our customer's most frequent reporting requirements while designing this upgrade." said Richard Thombs, CDS' Chief Architect. "Now any Project Manager can create reports with powerful filtering and grouping options and make them available to their customers through a branded reporting portal - all without any programming or third party support."

As always, this update is a free upgrade, with the new features appearing automatically on the TeamHaven website for all customers.

TeamHaven's new Reporting Portal allows customers to quickly create and customize an attractive website with its company logo and colors. Customers can then use this website to make reports available to downstream clients and know that the entire portal is protected by TeamHaven's existing security mechanisms.

TeamHaven's Reporting Portal

The two most common requirements of reporting, filtering and grouping, have been streamlined into a single, intuitive control. Combined with TeamHaven's existing reporting hierarchies, Filtering & Grouping controls now allow the end user to navigate large volumes of data in an easy, controlled fashion, starting with higher level summaries and branching down to more detailed information using simple drop-down lists.

Filtering & Grouping Sample Screenshots

(Click above for an animated sequence)

These new additions to the already robust solution have significantly raised TeamHaven's standard capabilities and our customers can continue to rely on TeamHaven to be their central resource for reporting without the need for programming or technical skills.

With these value-added enhancements, TeamHaven has even more features that reduce costs and improve the overall efficiency of its users. By listening to its customers' requests, Composite Data Solutions is able to continually improve TeamHaven, saving them time and money and helping them to deliver ever more valuable services to their own customers.

UK business moves to new offices

2008-09-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

England - 8th September 2008. Composite Data Solutions Ltd announces that it has moved to its new offices in Hartham Park, Corsham today in order to accommodate its expanding business.

Steve Grimes Chairman explained, "I'm delighted to be moving to Hartham Park where they offer the highest quality of offices located only 20 minutes from the M4".

Hartham Park is set in 50 acres of parkland and is a grade 2 listed mansion tastefully converted into offices whilst retaining all of its original features.

Grimes added, "CDS is rapidly growing and I feel it is important to be located in a high standard office for both our staff and our clients who visit us."

The new UK office address is: Hartham Park, Hartham Lane, Corsham, Wiltshire, SN13 0RP ENGLAND

Full details are available at http://www.compositedata.com/contact-uk.php

Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology with the experience of directly employing large field teams allowing Clients to manage all their data collection, field management and dynamic web based reporting through one solution on the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit http://www.CompositeData.com.

TeamHaven Mobile build 8.3.3086

2008-08-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

We have released an update to TeamHaven Mobile that improves the reliability of taking pictures in low memory conditions. This update was pushed to AutoUpdate on the 8th of August and should be installed by all users who use picture questions.

Leading bank in Europe impressed by security of TeamHaven software

2008-07-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

A Major Financial Institution Puts TeamHaven Software Through Comprehensive Security Checks

Europe July 22nd 2008 Composite Data Solutions (CDS), a leader in data collection, field management and reporting solutions, announced today that after a series of demanding security assessments, a leading global bank will be utilizing its TeamHaven software across its operations in Europe.

The security analysis involved putting CDS' TeamHaven software through a Vulnerability Scanner from Qualys, which specializes in on-demand Vulnerability Management. In addition to passing the Qualys test, TeamHaven software was also submitted to comply with the in-depth Web Scanner from Cenzic, which is well known for its ability to comprehensively scan enterprise applications remotely. As a result, both companies deemed TeamHaven secure enough to protect the highly-sensitive and classified information within the banking industry.

In a recent statement, Composite Data Solutions' Chairman, Steve Grimes emphasized that, "We hold a lot of sensitive information for many blue chip clients and it's critical that TeamHaven can securely protect this information and that outsiders cannot hack into our system."

Composite Data Solutions (CDS) is an international company with a combined background of developing leading edge mobile technology with the experience of directly employing large field teams allowing Clients to manage all their data collection, field management and dynamic web based reporting through one solution on the TeamHaven hosted site.

For more information, visit http://www.CompositeData.com.

Contact:
Steve Grimes - Chairman
Manor Field House, High Street
Seend, Wiltshire. SN12 6NU
Tel: +44 (0) 870 7447453 x91
Fax: +44 (0)7092 387616
steve@teamhaven.com

SMS message telephone number changed

2008-07-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

Please note that due to a change at our SMS service provider, text messages sent via TeamHaven will now come from a different telephone number.

The new number is +44 7624 810359.

HTC Advantage X7510

2008-05-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

HTC have released a new version of their notebook-like PDA.

The new HTC Advantage X7510 comes with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, a 5" screen and a large keyboard.

We have not had the opportunity to test one, but it looks like it would make an excellent TeamHaven Mobile platform for those who require a lot of text data-entry. It also has an updated web browser made by Opera for improved web-surfing.

TeamHaven Mobile encrypted communications

2008-05-21T04:02:00.000-07:00

Normally TeamHaven Mobile uses normal, unencrypted HTTP communications to talk to the TeamHaven server because it requires less bandwidth and therefore saves on cellular transmission costs.

However, it can be configured to use HTTPS (aka SSL) by editing the config.txt file and changing the line that says.

add key="protocol" value="http"

to

add key="protocol" value="https"

The TeamHaven account must also have the "HTTPS access" optional module enabled by the Primary Account Holder.

Numeric questions on TeamHaven Mobile 8.3

2008-05-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

To try and save on screen space, TeamHaven Mobile resizes the input fields for numeric questions according to the question's maximum value and the number of decimal places. When there is no maximum value set, input fields are sized to hold 4 digits.

TeamHaven Mobile 8.3 further restricted this so that you can't actually type more than the number of digits that fit in the input field, because just limiting the size of the input field meant that the digits scrolled inside the field making it really hard to see what had been entered.

So, if you have a question that needs the user to input a 5 digit number, make sure that you set the maximum value to '99999'.

File upload limit increased

2008-05-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

We have increased the maximum file size that can be uploaded to 16Mb.

It seems that many questionnaires require users to upload so many digital photos in a single questionnaire that the previous limit of 8Mb was being exceeded.

We recommend that digital camera users set their camera's resolution to approximately 1280x1024 - images larger than this will automatically resized by TeamHaven. Uploading extremely high resolution pictures takes longer and will not improve the final result.

The 16Mb limit means that approximately 40 pictures of the recommended size can be included in a single questionnaire, or about 16 pictures taken at high quality by a 7 megapixel camera.

This also means that larger files can be imported into TeamHaven for call, target and user imports.

Deleting projects

2008-05-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

The next maintenance update to TeamHaven includes a change to who can delete projects.

Previously any administrator was able to delete a project. With this change, only the user listed as the Project Contact and the TeamHaven Primary Account Holder will be able to delete a project.

TeamHaven Mobile build 8.3.3038

2008-04-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

We have released a non-critical update to TeamHaven Mobile that works around certain device-specific inconsistencies that occur when automatically activating the camera.

This update adds a new "Automatically activate camera" option into the Options screen. By default this option will be enabled, but if TeamHaven Mobile detects that the camera has failed to open, it will be automatically disabled, meaning that when a Picture question is clicked on, the Picture Selection dialog window will be displayed.

This version is available at http://www.teamhaven.com/teamhaven.cab and will also be automatically installed on any new devices configured using AutoUpdate.

TeamHaven 8.3 released

2008-04-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

We're pleased to announce the next major upgrade to TeamHaven. This version includes many improvements to TeamHaven Mobile, our Pocket PC client and also adds signature capture and a web service interface to TeamHaven.

TeamHaven Mobile improvements
On devices with a built-in camera, clicking on a picture question will automatically open the camera. On devices without a camera, an improved picture selection dialog makes it easier to identify the appropriate picture to upload. Pictures are automatically resized prior to being uploaded, reducing data transfer costs and increasing the number of pictures that can be uploaded.

The layout of survey forms has been improved, making even better use of the available screen space.

TeamHaven Mobile now consists of a single executable, making it much easier to install on Windows Mobile devices that ask whether you trust 3rd party applications when you install / run them for the first time.

Signature capture
A new "Signature" question type allows you to include one or more signable areas in a questionnaire.

Web services
TeamHaven 8.3 provides the first installment of a new web service that allows third parties to tightly integrate TeamHaven into their existing systems. Currently the service allows you to add, modify and delete users, and will be expanded in subsequent releases to cover store list management, call file management and report querying as well. For more information about the TeamHaven Web Service, please contact support@teamhaven.com.

Deleting unused questionnaires

2008-04-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

To help keep a project's questionnaire version list clean, TeamHaven's next maintenance update will allow project managers to delete versions that have not been used.

Microsoft announces Windows Mobile 6.1

2008-04-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

Windows Mobile 6.1 was recently announced and will soon be available in new devices. Some manufacturers may also provide upgrades for their existing devices.

For us, the most exciting feature is the easier Wi-Fi connectivity, which will hopefully make it easier for field reps to connect to hotspots.

TeamHaven Mobile is already fully compatible with this update.

For more information about Windows Mobile 6.1, see Microsoft's WM 6.1 web page.

CDS on NARMS technology panel

2007-04-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

CDS advises NARMS members on using technology to lower costs, improve efficiency and increase sales.

At the NARMS Spring conference the Technology Panel held a Town Hall meeting giving members the opportunity to ask a variety of questions on how technology can help benefit its members.

"We are absolutely delighted to stand on this panel" says Steve Grimes, Chairman of CDS. "Having previously owned a MSO (Field Marketing Agency) we understand the detailed requirements that are required. The chosen technology needs to achieve many objectives in one rolled up solution."

"My strongest recommendation to any MSO wishing to acquire new technology is to obtain a free trial first from a number of providers". Steve Grimes also advised "MSOs need to ensure that all their objectives are satisfied during the free trial period before making any financial commitment."

CDS is the provider of TeamHaven, the preferred technology solution for data collection, field management and reporting nominated by NARMS in 2007.

TeamHaven is a global solution working for brands and agencies in USA, Europe and Asia executing more than 2.5 million retail visits worldwide and is available to work in any local language.