Mint Management Technologies (Pty) Ltd was established in 1971 and has rendered market intelligence gathering and deployment solutions to South African corporate and multi-national companies for over 38 years.

Mint Research (traditional) provided a traditional print media advertising verification service to the South African advertising industry.  It includes checking of CI’s against newspaper and magazine tear sheets; surveys monitoring competition and ad hoc provision of current and historic tear sheets.

This division also provided a New Age service which provides ad spend and promotional pricing of products and companies that advertise their offerings in publications, TV and radio, via in-store promotions, direct-to-home distributions and the Internet.  Its in-store observation enables virtual real-time reading of what happens in-store in terms of pricing, promotional activity, product availability, assortment offered, merchandising technique, share of facings, consumer behaviour and a check on the distribution agent.

Clients of Mint Research included retail specialists such as Woolworths, Shoprite and Pick n Pay.  The division also assists leading brands such as Clover, Proctor and Gamble, Kelloggs to manage its advertising output and vehicle manufacturers Volkswagen and Nissan.

Mint Mobile’s locally developed Territory Management System is a real time intelligence gathering solution. It enables sales people to schedule appointments, manage a customer database, process sales orders and collect research information at customer and product level by means of a mobile device. In addition, the system enables sales representatives to manage all customer appointments via a Microsoft calendar. Vehicle information, expenses and mileage logging can be entered into the system. Red flag issues captured will distribute alerts to the line or product managers involved, and are kept open until closed or solved. The system allows for detailed drill down reporting and analysis. A bi-directional messaging system allows for communication between the sales force and head office.

A dedicated Website enables sales managers to view and track the sales force progress. Drill down graphing allows managers to evaluate the sales force individually. It provides sales managers with real time snap shots of a sales representative’s daily performance in terms of orders, planning and execution thereof, types of contracts signed and accurate sales statistics. It fosters improved communication, provides sales managers with the ability to analyse and institute coaching within a real time environment.  The Website also allows for electronic images and detailed product information to be sent to the device.  A powerful reporting engine generates the necessary reports for the various management levels and these reports are scheduled to be automatically distributed in the desired format when required. Examples of report types are: Call Rates, Strike Rates, Call Coverage, Planned vs Actual etcetera. This solution ensures that customers enjoy real time status updates with regards to orders and stock levels.

They are able to review previous order patterns immediately and make better informed decisions. Sales representatives will be able to solve red flag issues far quicker as a result of the real time reporting and information at hand on Mint Mobile’s system, as well as provide customers with new product information as soon as it is launched.

In 2007, Mint Management Technologies (Pty) Ltd expanded its offering with the acquisition of Mint Net (Pty) Ltd.  Mint Net was established in 2000 and designed, implemented and supported over 40 Enterprise Content Management solutions globally.  These include Sappi Limited’s Global Intranet (4 continents), Ford & Mazda corporate web presence in South Africa, Microsoft South Africa Intranet, Deloitte’s Intranet and various others.

Clients of Mint include the pharmaceutical industry such as Adcock Ingram Health Care, Aspen Pharmacare, Novartis Consumer Health, Novartis Pharma SA and Pharmaplan to name a few, as well as the telecommunications industry namely Vodacom and MTN, and the banking industry namely Standard Bank, Nedbank, Absa, Investec and National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia.

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Company Website URL: http://www.tamtam.nl

Company Blog:  http://www.tamtam.nl/blogs.aspx

Public Email:      info@tamtam.nl

Social Sphere:

Address:  Tam Tam Patrijsweg 80, Rijswijk, Zuid-Holland 2289 EX, Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0)15 750 2000
No. of employees: 50-250
Microsoft Partner Status: Gold
Capability

• Communications and Collaboration
• Enterprise Content Management
• Enterprise Search
• Unified Communications
• Other

Company History:

“In 1996, Tam Tam has been set up by Paul and Bart Manuel. Paul and Bart are linked as partners to Tam Tam and have an important role in daily business. Ever since, Tam Tam has been establishment profitable with a solvency of 40%. (Mainly hours) 8.4 millions euro convert were in 2008. For customers and employees all figures are public. Financial statements can be find at the KvK under the next number: 27239483. General director at TamTam is: Arjan Nataraj (06-55888776, arjan.nataraj@tamtam.nl). You can contact him for general questions concerning Tam Tam.”

Company Description:

Tam Tam is a full-service internetbureau.We link concept, design and technique such way that online questions of our customers are filled in successfully. In this we are ambitious, but also simply complete Dutch. We are proud of our top position in the Netherlands, our employees AND customers.
Questions about the next topic, which we gladly fill in: cooperate, communication and e-business. We also give these solutions beautiful user experience.
With our online solutions we improve in connection with customers, employees and the world. With these we are able to improve and develop more rapidly than other organizations.
Solutions or Services *

• Online communication: ranging from marketing sites, corporate sites, and visual identities, to social networking solutions.
• Online marketing: search engine optimisation and marketing, email marketing, bannering, websurveys
• Customer Selfservice: eBusiness and eCommerce solutions, Selfservice, Custom made solutions
• Information Worker Solutions/collaboration: intranet portals, document management, knowledge sharing and customer specific applications
• Website optimization and site management: website statistics and analysis, application management, hosting and support

SharePoint Based Websites built:

• www.amphia.nl
• www.nucletron.com
• www.grontmij.nl
• www.cnb.nl
• www.loopbaantrajectbouw.nl
• www.watdoejijmorgen.nl
• www.evc-centra.nl
• www.isala.nl
• www.bsn.eu
• www.britishschool.nl
• www.caop.nl
• www.deltapsy.nl
• www.tebodin.com
• www.nibc.com
• www.gvb.nl
• www.woonbron.nl
• www.triant.nl
• www.huiskopenmetkorting.nl

Tags (Keywords) :
Tam Tam, full-service internetbureau, SharePoint, Online Communications, Selfservice, Search Engine Optimization, search engine advertising, collaboration, enterprise search, E-business, operational services, innovation lab, Microsoft, Smartsite, Umbraco

SharePoint Magazine Articles :

• SharePoint’s Branding Limitations, Part 1

• SharePoint’s Branding Limitations, Part 2

• SharePoint’s Branding Limitations, Part 3

SharePoint’s Branding Limitations, Part 4

If you would like to be featured on the SharePoint Magazine Partner Spotlight, please contact us

Visual Fusion, from IDV Solutions, a Microsoft Gold ISV Partner, provides a platform for managing many types of geospatial content and for creating applications that display enterprise data and Web feeds on a Virtual Earth map.  Visual Fusion brings location intelligence to SharePoint, creating a platform to build highly visual composite applications.

It solves the problem of uniting data from incompatible sources and systems, and it allows users without DBA or GIS expertise to quickly build mash-ups, while providing the tools for IT professionals to build robust applications.

Organizations in fields as diverse as border security and natural gas production currently use Visual Fusion to visualize their data in meaningful ways, so that users can make better informed decisions in less time.

Visual Fusion and SharePoint

Visual Fusion exploits SharePoint infrastructure for site building, user authentication, search, and content management.  On top of these, IDV has layered custom Web parts and the ability to geo-enable SharePoint content.

Visual Fusion Experience (VFX), the client component of Visual Fusion Suite, is a browser-based rich Internet application (RIA), implemented on a SharePoint site using Web parts. A JavaScript API allows developers to customize and extend this interface.

Visual Fusion Server (VFS) is implemented as a set of SharePoint Features and packaged as a SharePoint Solution. It includes data connectors, a styling engine, and tools for data filtering.

Together, VFS and VFX allow enterprises to:

• Manage and integrate content
• Build applications
• Deliver a feature-rich user experience.

Managing geospatial content

Geospatial data can come in many formats (.shp, GeoRSS, KML and more), from multiple sources (Web feeds, GIS departments, enterprise databases and workgroup spreadsheets). Many enterprises lack a convenient way to share these among work areas or to combine them with other data.

Using SharePoint to manage this diverse content makes it available throughout the enterprise. Visual Fusion Server supplies SharePoint templates for creating custom lists and libraries. These templates include Visual Fusion’s geocoding function; for items with a valid address but no latitude and longitude, VFS automatically retrieves the coordinates from Web services. Through MOSS Excel services, Visual Fusion extends this content management and geocoding functionality to data in Excel spreadsheets.

VFS automatically retrieves coordinates from Web services.

Custom libraries built from the Visual Fusion templates house GeoRSS, KML and .shp files; custom lists house links to GeoRSS, KML or WMS Web feeds. Users can apply the VFS templates and geocoding retroactively to existing SharePoint lists and libraries.

VFS libraries house GeoRSS, KML and Shapefiles.

VFS can also connect to data sources outside SharePoint. Connectors are available to access data through the Business Data Catalog, and to connect to SQL Server, Oracle, ArcSDE and MapPoint databases. Developers can also write their own connectors using the Visual Fusion SDK.

Building applications

Visual Fusion applications are built in SharePoint sites, using custom Web parts. One of these, the Composer, is a drag-and-drop interface for adding data layers to an application and styling them. The Composer discovers and lists all the available data layers, in SharePoint and outside it. A user can drag these layers into a hierarchy, creating groups that expand and collapse, and selecting colors, icons, line styles and other visual attributes.

The user can also enter a URL directly into the Composer to create a layer for a GeoRSS or WMS feed. Using the Composer, the layer hierarchy for a new application can be composed from existing data sources in as little as 20 minutes.

The Composer lets users build applications by dragging layers into a hierarchy.

Site administrators and similar users can customize applications further by editing configuration files. Options that they can configure include filters, data transformations, and style rules.

If an enterprise has needs beyond the out-of-the box VFS features, developers can use the SDK to write custom data connectors, request handlers, filters, style rules, and geocoders.

This application, created with the Visual Fusion SDK, generates contour lines on the fly
from a set of points where the elevation was measured.

The RIA interface

The end user interface, Visual Fusion Experience, is a rich internet application composed of two Web parts, a map viewer and a layer control.

Visual Fusion Experience is a rich internet application composed of Web parts.

Map Viewer

The map viewer provides users with a set of tools that include:

• pan and zoom
• location search
• time zone viewer
• distance measure
• latitude and longitude display for the cursor position
• inset map for overviews and close-ups
• timeline viewer
• spatial query tool
• drawing tools

The timeline tool filters databases and Web feeds based on time and date. It’s an interactive filter that lets users step through days, months or other time periods, watching the data on the map change over time.

The interactive timeline filters data based on date and time.

The spatial query tool lets end users draw an area on the map, and send all the data points within that area to a form or other Web part. Using the drawing tools, end users can annotate the map with points, lines, and polygons, include metadata for each item, and then save this annotation in SharePoint.

The map viewer is configured through the SharePoint user interface, and any of these tools can be disabled at any time through the Web part configuration.

Layer Control

End users turn map layers off and on using the layer control. Like the map viewer, this Web part includes a set of tools that are configurable through the SharePoint UI:

• The Enterprise Search tool uses a custom search scope, and displays search results as data points on the map.
• A configurable set of buttons lets the end user enter URLs directly into the layer control to display GeoRSS, KML or WMS feeds along with the existing data layers.

The layer control also incorporates a details panel, which can be configured to display more information about any data point, line, or polygon that a user selects on the map. The content and formatting of this details panel can be stored in a calculated column in SharePoint.

The Details Panel can be configured to display more information about items on the map.

Extending the interface

Developers can extend this user interface further. Through the JavaScript API, the map viewer and layer control can be configured to communicate with third-party Web parts. For example, a developer can configure the interface so that clicking on a map item causes data or charts associated with the item to display in a third Web part. Or an application can be set up so that, when the end user selects a map region with the spatial query tool, the map viewer launches a request and sends the query results to a data grid or form Web part.

Leveraging SharePoint Capabilities

The underlying SharePoint infrastructure makes it possible to create new Visual Fusion applications quickly. It also makes it easy to create multiple applications that leverage the same data sources. SharePoint features that Visual Fusion uses include:

• Excel Services, for creating map layers from spreadsheets
• Search, including enterprise search scopes
• BDC, for connecting to data sources
• Role-based authentication for security down to the list item level
• List and library templates for content management
• Web parts for a flexible user interface

For more information about Visual Fusion, go to www.idvsolutions.com

ISPA’s first offering to the community is support to user groups around the world through free WSS v3 web sites for any group that becomes ISPA-affiliated. In addition, one of the goals of ISPA is to facilitate an exchange of ideas between user group leaders that helps increase the likelihood of their group’s success. Therefore, ISPA is providing leaders of user groups with access to collaborative spaces where they can interact with other user group leaders, sharing ideas, resources, best practices, guidance, and most importantly – support for one another.

ISPA has also established Regional Evangelists – existing community leaders who have previously exhibited a strong commitment to the promotion of the SharePoint community, and who have pledged to carry the ISPA message throughout their particular region. These evangelists are key local contacts who are available to work with local SharePoint professionals and user groups throughout their region to help promote the community and SharePoint. If you are interested in starting a user group, have an existing one, or need guidance – the ISPA Regional Evangelists are great resources who are available immediately to assist you.

Finally, as everyone knows, no community is complete without a web site, and ISPA is proud to announce the launch of its official site, http://www.sharepointpros.org. While the web site is still in the early stages of development, plans for multilingual support and exciting functionality that will assist anyone involved with SharePoint are on the horizon.

If you have ideas for ISPA, would like to start a user group, or are looking for assistance, visit the new ISPA web site or contact ISPA at contactus@sharepointpros.org. Together, as the community we can achieve what was impossible as individuals – become a part of ISPA today!