Service Manager is a complete solution for ANY ORGANIZATION looking for a cost effective way to handle and track service requests, inventory management, and inventory tracking on the pocket PC. It’s a very easy to deploy and use solution for any organization.

Service Manager is setup by you to follow your existing way of doing business, every drop down is created by you, and assets and requests are searchable by your criteria. That’s why Service Manager really fits so many different types of organizations and departments such as IT, Maintenance, and transportation just to name a few. GLS provides you with a comprehensive install and setup guide. Service Manager has what we call “focus Help” what it does is provide you with help only on the page in service manager that your looking at or focused on. No keyword search, or alphabetical lookups. Just the help you need for what you are looking at. There are numerous mouse over functionality as well.

How long has the application been used in the market place?

Certain elements of Service Manager have been deployed for close to two years, such as service request side of Service Manager. The latest functionality, the consumables/parts transactional tracking and management is about 2 months old. All code developed for Service Manager is beta tested by GLS for errors and then tested by a client willing to evaluate it for us for ease of use. That functionality is then released for download to all clients in the form of an update, or a general new version release.

What’s new and coming for your 3.0.0 release?

Service Manager is, and will always be client driven, we strongly believe that this is one of the reasons that separates Great Lakes Software from the competition, and is a big reason why we receive inquiries from companies all over the world. For fall 2005 the new release will have a knowledge base, a new and updated look and a few surprises.

How do I populate all my assets into service manager?

There are some different ways to accomplish this. The first is that GLS is working closely with a company that polls the network and creates a excel file of assets that GLS can import into Service Manager. At this time, the file needs to be sent to us and populated into your SM by us. The next way is to send us your current excel, access, SQL file to us (our current policy is that excel, access and SQL are at no cost to merge into Service Manager, that can change in the future). Any other type of database or file will be reviewed and priced for importation accordingly. You can also enter assets into Service Manager utilizing multiple add button which saves all information on screen except for your unique fields such as asset tag number serial number, and MAC address (if using Service Manager for IT) this is especially useful for adding like assets quickly and accurately into the system.

How much does Service Manager cost, and why don’t you post your pricing on the website?

Service Manager is priced by department license with unlimited requesters and departmental employees responsible for assets and to service the people who use those assets. It is a fixed price and is not based on assets, people, or buildings, there are too many software packages on the market with confusing pricing structures, and GLS chooses not to add to that confusion. There is a price discount for multiple departments using Service Manager. It is one price and includes upgrades and support for the first year, then 20% of the purchase price after the first year.

We don’t post the price on our website for the same reason you would not purchase a car, computer, watch, house, etc. without seeing what it looks like or how it works. We are confident our cost is the lowest in the software market and back it with a 90 day price guarantee (see the grey price guarantee bar on our main page for details). We are more then happy to provide you with a demo of Service manager to see the program run in your own environment and then provide you with the cost.

How does support work after we purchase Service Manager?

Support is free and included for the first year after the initial license of service manager. There are three primary ways to contact us, phone, Service Manager on the Great Lakes Software website under the support link, or email. We will provide you with a special support number to call 24 hours a day seven days a week, we always have a GLS support member on call nights and weekends. We feel strongly that our service and support separates us from all other software development companies.

What separates Great Lakes Software from the competition?

There are four things that separate us from our competition.

Client driven software - Service Manager changes are not based on our whims, but on the feed back of our clients, they are the true developers of our product. We take the functionality they need and create ease of use and on point code to enhance Service Manager. It’s typical of us to say to our clients that “Service Manager is not our product but yours, we just write the code.”

Service - We listen to what you have to say and always follow up after any service work is completed. We work for you, the client, you’re our boss, and we never take that for granted. It’s not unusual for our clients to get a call from an employee of Great Lakes Software, just to see how Service Manager or any software we have developed is running or any network support we have provided.

Software Code made in the USA - We take great pride in creating software in the United States and not off shore. It seems cheaper to have people in other countries write code, but we know in the long run it’s more expensive in many ways not to develop code in the United States.

Cost - Service Manager is the lowest cost to feature ratio period. Its not subscription based, it runs locally on the network, the data entered in is the clients data. Subscription based software is expensive and leaves a client no recourse to get that data back when the company is sold or bought out or ceases to exist.

Great Lakes Software believes in a fixed bid philosophy. We don’t waste our time and more importantly our client’s money. Our software is delivered on time and on budget. Our costs are comparable to other software companies that send their software development work overseas.