Table of Contents

(click on any article title to move directly to that article)

The Podium--A Quick Overview of this issue

Tech Flash – – TRAC$: Delinquency Prevention or Tracking?

Making the Most of Your Cemetery Mapping System -- The best way to make the most of your investment

Fall 2002 Calendar of Events - Where will MBS be this next Quarter?

Did you know? - The Revised IMAP User's Guide is Available Today!

Hints and Tips - Helpful Suggestions and other items of interest

TechFAQs – Tying secondary purchases to the original contract

Sites Unseen – Interesting Web Sites

Some thoughts from the CEO - Are You Wasting Money on Technology? by Fred Miller

From articles on some of our products, to the address of a Web site authored by a wacky British cyclist. Yep, it’s just another issue of The MBS Quarterly.

In our TechFlash column, on page two, we discuss TRAC$, our delinquency prevention and tracking product. On the same page we write about maximizing the use of your IMAP mapping system. Because of discussions we have had with IMAP clients in the past, we suspect that many of our customers do not use IMAP to its fullest capabilities. And that’s quite sad, because training on the product is only a phone call away.

On page three, as is usual, we offer some very useful hints and tips in, well, our Hints & Tips column. Also on page four, we tell you how to tie purchases together in Nexus XP, as well as providing a list of useful and amusing Web sites in Sites Unseen. On page four Fred Miller discusses software technology especially in relation to your wallet. You’re cleared for take off, Fred!

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For Article Suggestions, Copies or Requests, please email Tom Balducci at tbalducci@mbs-intl.com.

For Site Corrections or Suggestions, please email jmcquiston@mbs-intl.com.

Thank you.

You can learn from Nexus XP what your delinquency rate is running. You can also learn what percentage of your receivables is at risk because customers are delinquent with their payments. These can be very scary numbers.

Wouldn’t it nice to prevent some of those delinquencies? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an organized, less time consuming way to stay on top of the delinquencies? You can with TRAC$, MBS' delinquency prevention AND tracking module.

TRAC$ draws information from Nexus XP that allow you to automatically print your pre-programmed reminder notices to send out in advance of the first three payments. Hopefully this will put your customers in the mode to make their regular payments.

Of course, this doesn’t always work and we need an efficient way of dealing with those who become delinquent. This is when TRAC$ gets into high gear.

The built-in word processor holds all of the dunning letters. The content of contacts with accounts can be recorded, as are follow-up items for a specific date. Dunning letters are selected and printed. Daily "to do" and "to call" tickle lists are generated for timely follow up on each customer.

And all of the activity; contact attempts, notes from contacts made, letters sent, etc. are recorded and saved on one screen. That screen also contains all of the pertinent payment and delinquency information. This allows the collector to instantaneously know the status of each case prior to making a call and have it on-screen when talking to the customer. He/she can immediately set up a letter, another call, or any other necessary activity.

If you need to increase your cash flow and income by reducing delinquencies, you can with TRAC$. There is no data input to get started, just Nexus XP. Just call Fred Miller at MBS.

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Ever wonder if you are really making the very most out of your cemetery mapping system?

Your cemetery is fully mapped and it looks really great. You know your maps are preserved and your data is linked into them completely, but are you really using the system to its fullest capabilities?

Are you making custom SQL selections to extract data from the map for use in reports or custom maps? Can you make a map that shows the location of veterans in your cemetery? Can you use your system to search for family members of a visiting genealogist? How about thematic maps? Do you take your maps beyond the property status map to shade on other elements of your data? Or what about editing your maps? Did you know that you are able to create and add your own layers to IMAP, change the data structures and add spaces to your maps?

The reality is, MBS’s IMAP users have a very powerful tool installed on their computer. A tool that will give them what they originally expected from a cemetery mapping system: instant locator maps, information access and safe preservation of the cemetery’s maps. At the same time, IMAP can also provide them additional features such as thematic mapping and SQL selections, as well as things they deserve such as advanced map and data editing. The question is though, are you getting what you can from the system?

If your answer is "not quite", then it might be time to think about having your staff trained or to receive additional training on IMAP. Whether you have new users because of staff turnover, or your staff hasn’t had a chance to really ever use the system, IMAP training could be just what you are looking for.

IMAP training is now one and one-half days in length and can be given either in your offices or our training facility here in Nashville. Onsite training also offers the important option of having more than just your day-to-day users attend the class, so that interest and knowledge of the system can spread throughout the organization. Onsite training works with the logic that having more people aware of what the system can do increases the value of it.

If the sales team realizes that they no longer have to hand color their availability maps each quarter since that information could be saved as a separate map, what is to stop them from utilizing what you own now that much more often? When your customer service team learns what they can accomplish with locator maps and SQL selections, their work becomes that much faster and their focus on clients more precise. Alternatively, training here at our offices here in Nashville offers your staff uninterrupted time to concentrate in a learning environment complete with individual training computers and hands on instruction.

As you consider having your staff trained or to receive additional training on IMAP, consider who is getting trained also. With the enhanced analysis and editing capabilities built into IMAP, great candidates for IMAP training are the sales managers, customer service staff and cemetery managers. Choose your IMAP users with and eye for innovative staff members who are looking towards the improvement of your cemetery and a better approach to customer service and sales. IMAP isn’t only for one department anymore.

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July 8-10 Cemetery Association of Tennessee 50th Annual Convention, Franklin, Tennessee - Look for MBS at this Event

July 29-31 Southern Cemetery and Funeral Association (in conjunction with the Georgia Cemetery Assoc.) Lake Lanier, GA- Look for MBS at this Event

August

August 22-24 ICFA Small Cemetery & Funeral Management Conference, Greeley CO- Look for MBS at this Event

Sept 11-14 National Catholic Cemetery Conference, Annual Convention, Ottawa, Ontario Canada- Look for MBS at this Event

Sept 19-21 Central States Cemetery Assoc. (AR, IL, IA, KS, MO, NE, OK), Kansas City, MO- Look for MBS at this Event

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Did

...that the newly revised IMAP user’s guide is available on CD?

Call or e-mail Jennifer McQuiston for a free copy of the CD.

800-844-4447 or

jmcquiston@mbs-intl.com

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Tip: Get Rid Of Them FloppiesYou know that teetering stack of floppies you have that contain your backed up data? Why not burn them all to a CD? Floppy disk manufacturers claim that floppies are designed to last a lifetime, under normal conditions, whatever that means. That’s fine, until you can’t find a computer with the drive or operating system that can read it. In the process you’ll be able to confirm if the floppy can still be read and that you actually want to save the data it contains to a CD.

Hint:

Jump The Print Queue (All Windows)

Just realized that you’ve sent several documents to your print queue, but the last one you sent is the one you want printed first? Double-click the printer icon in your system tray and drag the last document to the top of the list of files in the queue. It will print immediately after the file currently printing.

Tip:

To Trash or Not To Trash?

Do you have a pile of ancient computer hardware that contains things like an unmarked modem or video card? The stuff looks useful, but if you can’t determine the make or model number you won’t be able to find the correct drivers, so therefore you should trash ‘em, right? Maybe not. Most computer hardware has an FCC identification number. Go to the FCC Web site’s database at www.fcc.gov/oet/fccid and you might be able to match the number to a name and rescue the device from the trash bin.

Hint:

What Was the Question?

Some help systems (such as in Microsoft Word) tell you to enter your search as a question. Don’t. It won’t help and might return an inaccurate answer. Instead, simply enter keywords related to your problem.

Tip:

Who Goes There?

If you are informed that there are other users in the Nexus XP program when starting the period close, there is an easy way to find out who those users are. The administrator can go to the Admin-Security-Users menu and check the Login Status of each user. If there is a check mark by "Status", then that user is currently logged on to Nexus XP. You can use the "Next" tool (right arrow) to cycle through all the users that are logged in.

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TechFAQs 

Q: After property has been purchased, we often have secondary purchases (markers, O&C etc.) by persons other than the original purchaser. In Nexus XP, is there a way that we can tie these purchases together?

A: Yes. By using the "Maintenance-Groups" menu option, groups can be created for specific property purchases and then as purchases are made for these pieces of property, the purchasers can be added to the group by using the "Add to Group" button on the Personal Data tab during personal information entry.

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Sites Unseen

Sites Unseen is a list of interesting, informative and helpful Web sites we thought might be useful to you.  If your cemetery or cemetery-related business has a Web site, e-mail the address to us at tbalducci@mbs-intl.com.

I don't know if any of you saw it, but USA Today had a front page cover story pointing out that "companies squander billions on tech". Morgan Stanley estimated that U.S. companies had thrown away $130 billion on "unneeded software" and such in the last two years alone.

The experts gave three reasons for this: 1) stampeding into the wrong technology, 2) purchasing piecemeal and/or incompatible systems with the expectation of compatibility, 3) paying for costly and unneeded software features that were added to products.

We have thought a great deal about this at MBS…deciding if we were guilty of any of this toward our customers. Our goal is to provide the independent cemeterian with a business management system that is thorough without being excessively complex, provides the intuitive flow that cemeterians are comfortable with, is easy for the customer to learn and maintain, and is reasonably priced. We think we alone in the market do that.

The balance is in providing what the independent cemeterian needs and keeping the price at an affordable level. The question for you, the cemeterian is, "What system will do what my business needs for the lowest price." That defines value.

MBS has successfully kept our clients up with the pace of change, i.e. Y2K, conversion to Windows, hardware advances, and we certainly have an integrated system that has the above-mentioned compatibility built in. Indeed

we are the only complete cemetery management system integrated into the most modern and capable mapping system available today.

MBS is always looking for ways to make this marvelous technological tool work faster and more efficiently for you. This is where our years of experience in this industry really differentiate us in our market. Having owned and managed cemeteries, we design programs that are in direct response to the challenges you face daily. MBS stays abreast of regulatory change and industry trends focusing on delivering programs that put technology to work for you. We spend time and resources in measuring our ability to provide software that saves time, money and supports quality customer service.

Think of it. Every day our staff is on the job focused 100% on making our programs more useful to you and our development work has always been driven by your peers. All Windows, always easy to use, easy to learn and easy to look at. Never adding unnecessary and unavoidable features that clutter screens. Nothing is more intimidating than starting a program and having the screen look like the inside of a cockpit.

Our price to you has been reasonable since we have no reliance on third party products and our development costs, as high as they may be, are lower because our system is not burdened by unnecessary complexity. This also makes MBS' support costs lower, too. Do your operators really need a cockpit?

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