Frequently Asked Questions
Questions on Services
Yes, anyone on our support team can help you and start the process, but your question may have to be escalated to a specialist on that element depending on the issue. We want to provide the best support possible and so we want you to work with the most suited team member. Since our support and programming departments are co-located and have a close interaction, even program issues can be quickly addressed.
Our support team works hard to take calls as they are received. Sometimes a call back is needed and our metric for this is within 2 hours. Some calls can be resolved immediately. Others may take more information or more research … and possibly interaction with our programming team. We like to log onto your system whenever it is appropriate to review and resolve the issue with you.
Sure, service Requests can be entered over the web by you directly into our service management system. These are given the same priority as all new calls and you can expect action within 2 hours. It is also possible to email service requests to us. We encourage you to provide as much documentation as possible on your questions and/or issues and this is maintained as part of the detail on your service request.
Yes, training is available over the web, on-site or in our offices. For specific processes, web training works very well. For higher level training covering more aspects, particularly if multiple people are involved, on-site training tends to work best. In addition, our support web site contains a large number of webinars that are focused on specific aspects of the system. These are great tools for new and existing users of the system. Argos has an extensive ‘Knowledge Library’ that contains video training sessions and ‘how to’ documents on many key areas. This material is available to our subscription customers for refresher training and also contains many tips and tricks for working more efficiently with our software.
First, our network engineers work with you to specify your network requirements. We want to be sure that your infrastructure will properly support the software. Second, we will conduct an “implementation planning workshop” that will begin to configure the system to meet your business processes, to train the administrator on the system features of the system, to define your data conversion requirements, and to train the trainer. Then, we will work with your administrator and staff on implementing each of the functional areas. This is typically done on site in week long sessions, perhaps covering several areas. The implementation process is tailored to your requirements and your staff. Our goal is your success with the right balance of on-site and web training sessions.
Questions on Solutions
Yes, you can visit our YouTube channel where there are a number of videos on specific components of our solution. These videos are generic and are not intended to replace a demonstration of our capability to meet your specific requirements. Our preference is to have a “discovery” session where we learn about your business, your software requirements, and your business processes. However, sometimes after this discussion, it is appropriate to send a general presentation on the software that can serve as a basis for questions and dialog. Our presentation process is flexible and we will work with you to meet your needs.
Our solution is built on top of a core set of accounting modules as all business transactions have an accounting effect. Even if you are using an alternative system for your accounting, this is needed so that you can transfer the accounting records, either automatically or manually. Even when an alternative accounting system is being used, there are often benefits in reviewing the accounting information in our system, particularly if you have an interest in both accrual and cash basis GL reporting, or activity based costing details, or tax reporting, or customer sales analysis, and so on.
Yes, we can interface with other software you use by automatically exporting or importing data as required. There are a number of options for achieving this and the preferred method will usually be determined by the capabilities of your other applications. Once we understand your requirements, then we can propose how we would achieve this interfacing.
Our Subscription Service provides both on-going support by our technical team as well as updates to the software. A new version of our software is released about every 4 months and is available to all subscribers. You can see the Version number you are currently working with by clicking ‘about’ on your software’s menu. When a system is first installed and changes are required in the software during the implementation process, we generally provide our development version so that updates can be installed as needed. Our technical team works with you all the way!
Where additional functionality is required to meet your business requirements, we will define those requirements with you and add that functionality to our system. This is often done as another configuration choice, or it may become a new program that gets added to our menu, or it may just be a script that gets embedded into the system. All such modifications become part of the system that we then continue to maintain. This functionality is not left as an “orphan”. Ideally, we have been able to identify these requirements during our discovery and review processes so that this functionality can be built as part of the system that is first installed and implemented. However, it can happen as the need arises.
