End-Of-Year Bandwagon

By Barry Cohen

Now that we’re approaching the end of 2009, I thought it would be a good time to go over the accomplishments of BCL Soft and it’s flagship product Barter21.

Since its release in March of this year, Barter21 has 33 barter exchanges using the software to fully manage their operation. Another half-dozen or so are using our Trading Floor to move their products and inventory through other avenues. Not bad for a company less than a year old.

While our feature set is still not 100% where we want it to be, some of the things we have already done set us far ahead of the competition. If you are a barter exchange using a hosted, networked solution such as Barter21, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I have access to a full, complete, and ACCURATE backup of my data anytime I want?
2. What happens if my software provider has its email server blacklisted by AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. due to too many email blasts being sent?
3. Can you get in touch with one of the owners of the company after hours? on weekends? the middle of the night?
4. Does your software provider give excessive lines of credit to some exchanges just to make an extra buck?

By now you must be wondering how a Barter21 customer would answer those questions.  Go ahead. Admit it. You’re dying to know. OK, I’ll tell you:

1. Barter21 automatically generates a full backup for you once a month. You also have the opportunity to go in at any time and get an up-to-the-minute backup. These backups are kept securely on our server until you decide you want to download them. They do not go away after one month. They are not just the previous month’s data. It is a FULL and ACCURATE backup. Every bit of information relating to your barter exchange is there for you. We are not even informed that you downloaded it. It is YOUR DATA. Why in the world would we want to keep it from you?
2. When a relatively small number of people click the button in their email program that says “Mark as Spam” or something similar, the email provider can blacklist, or block, the server that is sending the email.  That means that if another exchange is sending a lot of email blasts to their members, and they are blacklisted, that essentially cuts off all email from all exchanges using that software.  Barter21 has opted to go another route. We have teamed up with a company that specializes in email marketing and keeps their servers clean and spam free. Heck, in most cases Barter21 even pays you back their monthly fee.
3. Sleep is so overrated. Call us. Email us. Ring the doorbell. We’ll answer.
4. Barter21 gives very small lines of credit. The only time it will be increased is if we know it can be paid back in a short period of time. Then it is brought back down to the original level. This keeps the value of the network, which in turn keeps the exchanges trading.

There’s loads of other features we have ready and waiting for you. Plus we are constantly developing new ones.  If there is a feature that we didn’t think of, but our members have, we go ahead and implement it. Its amazing what happens when you actually listen to your customers.