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November 2005 - InsideDomino

Alliance Resource Ltd. Partners (ARLP)
Deploys Calendaring and Alert Notification System

Abstract
While ARLP’s employees work diligently to take advantage of key market opportunities, they recognize that without a reliable tracking and notification tool unforeseen events could result in significant missed opportunities. In response to this need, they purchased Department Calendar and DC Alerts Notification System to automate the process of alerting marketing personnel of major RFP opportunities. Department Calendar enables the organization to distribute messages to marketing personnel and key stakeholders using the communications vehicle of their choice – pager, cell phone, email, and personal digital assistant. While Department Calendar and DC Alerts were initially being used to support the marketing department’s activities, they soon were used by other departments.

For ARLP, their need was two-fold: An Easy to Use Group Calendar and A Reliable Tracking and Notification tool. As Richard Armstrong, Senior Systems Analyst at ARLP, describes, “We needed a calendaring system that would allow users in a department to easily share a group calendar. Lotus Notes calendaring was very limited and hard to work with. We found that in various departments, things were falling through the cracks without a group calendar. Our employees were uninformed and important reminders were missed . We were looking for a calendar system that would help various departments keep on track of upcoming events, meetings and project deadlines.”

Challenge
The Marketing department needed a way to stay on top of key RFP dates and to automatically notify constituents quickly and efficiently of deadlines. Notifications should employ pager, blackberry, and email.

“The original requirement came from the Marketing Department. They needed a way to stay on top of key dates. As other departments and locations found out about Department Calendar and all the functionality that it offered, they began requesting their own Department Calendars.” Richard states, “We even use one for our Data Center for scheduling appointments. They really use the Direct Entry feature which provides the ability to create appointments and meetings within the Department Calendar and have them push out to the personal calendars. Thus forcing users to stay on top of events and deadlines. Another popular feature is the time off request system which is heavily used and provides a simple automated time off approval workflow for managers and employees.”

Approach
Department Calendar with DC Alerts:

• Creates, sends and receives alert notifications via pager, blackberry, and email
• Disseminates alerts to recipients according to their personalized communication priorities (i.e. pager first, then cell, then email, etc.)
• Tracks alert notification status and detailed alert statistics, including the notification history for a given recipient on a given alert
• Dramatically reduces the incidence of overlooked meetings, appointments, and To Dos missed due to changes in schedules or lack of accessible and up to date calendaring information
• Is easy to deploy
• Extends the reach of calendaring management to mobile and remote field workers
• Takes advantage of existing mobile wireless investment in order to deliver important calendaring information, thus ensuring that important company events and deadlines are not missed
• Supports multiple mobile devices, including cell phones, PDAs, and pagers from a single application
• Reduces administration cost by allowing users to maintain their own profile information
• Helps move calendaring information throughout the organization more efficiently

Value Created
Alliance Resource Partners finds Department Calendar to be a critical tool for tracking important bid renewal dates translating into thousands of dollars saved! The Calendaring and Alert Notification System enables the organization to immediately send important messages and alerts of deadlines to the marketing group throughout the country.

“Department Calendar has more than met our expectations. The amount of features this product offers, the well laid-out design coupled with the easy installation has sold us on this product”, says Richard. “It has saved us from not allowing important bid renewal dates from expiring potentially losing customers to our competitors. It has become a critical tool that notifies us of important filing dates, which if missed, would mean thousands of dollars in fines.”

Using Department Calendar and DC Alerts provides a variety of benefits

• Enables distribution of event status updates
• Facilitates verification of information receipt by key personnel
• Improves overall coordination of communication and action
• Improves speed in which staff in the field receive alert notifications

Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. (ARLP) is a diversified producer and marketer of coal to major United States utilities and industrial users. ARLP's predecessor companies began mining operations in 1971 and has since grown to become the sixth-largest coal producer in the eastern United States.