marketing-assistant.com

Hi Stan,
I know I have brought this up a few times in the past but cannot access the old forum.
Have you looked into having the people who enter the descriptions, enter them differently?  I know I wrote a detailed explanation in the old forum as to why it is not working good as it is now.  Maybe you can go back and look at the old posts and see the suggestion I made.  I would REALLY help make things less confusing. 

When I enter my own products into MBA I don't use all those extra fields such as color or size, but put all the needed info into the description field only. 
Below is a list of a few items from my last order.  One thing AVON's site does do is lists each item with abreviated descriptions so all the needed information for each product is within that one field.
You can check all the products online to see how they list them.
You don't need any additional space to enter the detailed description, you just need to choose the information more descriptively and abbreviate so it can all be in one field.  For example, rather than just say Nail Enamel, which does no good, The item, brand and color can be put into one description as shown below.


MBA                      AVON
Nail Enamel                     Glass Refl N/E Spice 
Be Spontaneous      Be.Spont Edt 1.7 
True Color Blush      Tru/Clr Blsh Earth Rs
Speed Dry Nai Enamel      Speed Dry N/E Bronze
Speed Dry Nai Enamel      Speed Dry N/E Plum
Speed Dry Nai Enamel      Speed Dry N/E Copper 
Advance Techniques       Adv Tech 2/1 Shmp/Cond
Advance Techniques      Adv Tech Protectn Shmp
Advance Techniques      Adv Tech Protectn Cond 
Advance Techniques      Adv Tech Anti-Dandruff
Advance Techniques      Adv Tech Smooth Shmp
Advance Techniques      Adv Tech Smooth Cndtnr

Most of the products in MBA are confusing because of the way it is broken out on the entry form.
By making the "decription field" more descriptive and eliminating the color/size fields, all the information we need to see will show up on the purchase order and other reports we run, as well as the look ups.  Going to the customer look up to see what they ordered in the past so we can place a reorder, does no good when all it says is Nail enamel...we need to see the rest of the information as well. 

Sorry, I did not mean the descriptions should appear exactly as they do on Avon.
Are these gals just looking at each brochure and entering the information directly from there?  They could still put the information into the one field, by just abbreviating it so that is can be more descriptive.  Maybe I am the only one that finds this to be a problem. 

Yes, the USA info is from the books (already in page number order, note - AUS comes from the PO form). I created a program that copies the previous campaign in as a starting point (cust way down on the data entry) so they just have to enter the Page # and maybe change price. If the description is wrong it just keeps getting copied.

If you find one with incorrect description (say for example wrong Shade) please email me about it so I can change it for next campaign.

Cheers,
Stan

Glad to see I am not alone....was starting to feel like a nag! hehehe!
I really think you can do away with all the fields for the size, color, etc and just abreviate in the description field.

Hey Mary,
You have every right to state your opinion....don't feel bad about it..glad you did.  I have a question for you, cuz maybe I am missing something.  If you use all the description fields, how do you know what specific product you are ordering.  For example, if you look at the purchase order, you cannot see what the product actually is.  Usually all you see is the name brand...for instance it may just say Beyond Color.  No other information is shown there since the color, which is what I really need to see, is in one of those other fields that does not show on the purchase order and many of the needed areas.  And because of this, I have had wrong products uploaded to Avon. 

Also when I look at the customer record and see what they previously ordered. I will have a custmer call and ask what color of lip stick did I order last?  Well I check in the customer record under the previous products purchased tab.  All it shows there is the brand as well, so I have to backtrack to find out what actual color it was.

I don't have a problem at all if they don't abbreviate, but then it would just be nice if the crutial information would show in some of those areas where they are really needed.  Maybe there is another way of doing this that I am missing.
Thanks for your help.

Thanks for the reply Mary!  I was hoping you had some trick that would make it work for me!  There are so many features that you just don't realize are there since we probably never use all of them.
Thanks again!

Stan,
  Would it be possible to include the color field and/or size on the PO printout.  You might have to reduce how much of the description is printed.

Tina