Technical White Paper

White Paper November 2005 v 1.10

Copyright 2005 Vanick Group LLC. All rights reserved. U.S. Patent Pending. This document is confidential, and is an unpublished work and trade secret of Vanick Group, LLC. This document is for internal use only and may not be distributed to third parties. Vanick Group, the Totus Logo, and the Totus name are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vanick Group LLC in the United States and other countries. All other company, product, and service names and brands are the trademark or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Table of Contents Table of Contents................................................................................................................ 2 Introduction......................................................................................................................... 3 Architecture......................................................................................................................... 4

Modular Design .......................................................................................................... 4 Powerful Document Processing.................................................................................. 5 Flexible Data Structure ............................................................................................... 6 Security and Authentication........................................................................................ 7 Reliable Communications........................................................................................... 8 Comprehensive Administrative Tools ........................................................................ 9

Integration ........................................................................................................................... 9 System Requirements................................................................................................ 10 Scalability and Performance ..................................................................................... 10

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 10

Totus Communications: Technical White paper

Introduction Totus Communications is a powerful Sales Force Automation tool that allows your sales force

and marketing department to quickly and effectively communicate with your prospects and

customers. Totus combines multiple communication mediums like E-mail, Print-on-Demand,

Electronic Greeting Cards, Premium Fulfillment, and Direct Mail Campaigns through one, easy-to-

use user interface. At the core is the Totus Application Engine, an engine that enables the

definition, creation, and sending of all communications - independent of communication channels.

Totus is designed from the ground up to easily integrate with existing systems and customer

relationship management (CRM) investments, including data warehouses, SFA systems, call

centers and Web sites. This technical white paper provides a condensed guide to the technology

behind Totus Communications, including a discussion around the following key topics:

I. Architecture

II. Integration Issues

III. Technical Specifications

Architecture

Modular Design Totus Communications modular design includes “plug and play” processors that provide

the functionality for defining, creating, and sending communications via specific

channels. For instance, the Print On Demand processor is tightly integrated with the

Document Library and Customer Data management applications which allows the user to

choose communications from the library, then select their customer/prospect from the

Customer Data Management application, and finally send the communication through the

Print on Demand processor. Figure 1 shows that regardless of this tight integration, the

Processors are truly modular. This modular design allows for upgrading or adding new

processors to the core applications without having to upgrade the entire product.

Customers can take advantage of new functionality in the processors with little or no

interruption to the availability of the application.

Application Engine

SendCreateDefine

DocumentLibrary

Custom

erP

rospect

Customer DataManagement

MarketingCampaignManagement

ManagementReporting

Print On Demand

HTML E-Mail

Premium Fulfillment

Electronic Greeting Cards

Download

Attach to E-Mail

Fax

Data Warehouse

Directory Systems CRM Campaign

ManagementCMS Enterprise Data

Interfaces Figure 1 – Modular Processors

Powerful Document Processing

The Totus Communication Document Library is a repository of all communications that

will eventually be sent to customers or prospects. These documents can consist of

different file types including HTML e-mails, PDFs, Presentations, Premium items, etc.

Any MIME file type is supported by the Document Library.

A comprehensive Version Management tool is included in the Document Library to

safely retain versions of documents as they are loaded and/or revised in the system.

Figure 2 shows how multiple versions of documents are stored with modification

tracking. Previous versions of documents can be retrieved directly from this screen.

Figure 2 – Document Properties including Version Management

The Document Library application also includes an optimized document “Index and

Search” tool that allows users to quickly find the appropriate communication. Search

metrics, provided to the user, actually search the entire content, description, and titles of

indexed documents. Figure 3 shows the advanced document search tool in Totus.

Documents can be searched by keyword or categories assigned during document creation.

Figure 3 – Advanced Indexing and Search

Flexible Data Structure

Totus provides the system administrator an easy-to-use tool to extend any data structure

on the fly. The administrator can extend any data object in the system, including

customers, prospects, documents, users, etc. These custom properties can then be used

within the processors and applications. A common scenario:

The application is being utilized by a large organization with multiple locations. The

standard “User” object delivered with Totus does NOT contain a field that will segment

Users by location. Within minutes, the administrator can add a custom property to the

“User” object that designates the user's location. That location data on the “user” object

can then be consumed by Print on Demand documents to populate variable data fields to

include the sender’s location. Figure 4 shows how the custom field can be added to

support the previously described scenario. Additionally, the administrator can determine

whether this is a global or local field, and to which objects to associate the new

field.

Figure 4 – Adding custom fields

Security and Authentication

Totus allows for extremely flexible user security management based on Role definitions.

Predefined permissions are authenticated throughout the application to allow or disallow

users the ability to perform particular functions within the application. These

permissions are then associated into user-defined groups. Individual users in the system

are ultimately assigned to these groups, which determines their access levels in the

application. This hierarchical security structure allows for flexible definition of security

schemes with minimal administrative effort.

Totus can be configured to utilize multiple authentication schemes including simple local

authentication (with local userids), or using LDAP authentication such as Microsoft

Active Directory Services.

Totus also supports HTTPS/SSL for secure transactions.

Reliable Communications

The sales force and customer service personnel will use Totus as their single application

for communicating with customers and prospects. Therefore, these salespeople must

have confidence that their communications are reaching their target – every time. Each

of the Totus processors utilizes a robust Store-and-Forward mechanism which ensures that

communications are actually sent to their recipient. In the event that an external

receiving system is unavailable, Totus will continue trying to send that communication

until it is successfully received. Figure 5 shows a typical queue for managing

communications. This queue is visible to the end user and can be monitored globally by

an administrator.

Figure 5 – Store and Forward queue

Comprehensive Administrative Tools

Enterprise software solutions require functional administrative tools to maintain reliable

applications. Totus provides the administrator tools to manage the application:

Error handling: Operational Errors are trapped in the system with e-mail notification.

Application Settings: Configurable application settings allow the administrator to

quickly and easily change the behavior of the system.

Comprehensive Error Logging: These application logs provide the Administrator the

information required to maintain the health of the system and to troubleshoot problems.

Administrator Communication: This feature allows the administrator to quickly

communicate changes, outages, announcements to a selected group of users in the system

Authentication Options.

Integration Totus needs access to information about customers/prospects and sales rep data to enable

personalized, on-demand communications. In many cases, this information exists in a

variety of data sources within the enterprise. Totus provides the ability to easily extend

and modify the delivered data structure, enabling quick integration with a variety of data

sources.

Technical Specifications System Requirements Totus Communications is written in ASP/VB.NET and utilizes the latest advances in the Microsoft

.NET Framework. It uses the .NET Framework 1.1, used for building and running all kinds of

software, including Web-based applications, smart client applications, and XML Web services -

components that facilitate integration by sharing data and functionality over a network through

standard, platform-independent protocols such as XML (Extensible Markup Language), SOAP,

and HTTP. The Totus Communications software runs on Windows 2000 or 2003 Server.

The User Interface is a completely Web-based client, with business users only requiring Internet

Explorer 4.0 or higher to access the application. Totus Communications requires a database,

which can be either Oracle 9i,10g or Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

Scalability and Performance

Totus Communication’s advanced architecture was designed and developed with scalability in

mind. It can also take advantage of the unique clustering functions of either Oracle or SQL

Server, which provide increased database performance and capacity without introducing complex

data synchronization issues.

Conclusion Totus Communications is uniquely designed, engineered and optimized to automate sales and

marketing communication processes. These processes manage the customer or prospect

experience and communicate over multiple channels. Totus can leverage existing customer

relationship management (CRM) investments including data warehouses, SFA systems, call

centers and Web sites. It is designed from the ground up to integrate with existing systems

through open APIs for extensibility and the use of Web-centric, open standards such as SOAP,

XML, HTTP, and JDBC.