Even so, Buhl made collecting customer data a priority. By December2001, reps had collected data on 80 percent of AMF's customers, heestimates. Through a series of pull-down menus on their Palm, theremaining 21 North American sales reps could easily fill out or updatea customer's equipment profile "on their way from entering the bowlingcenter to the front desk," says Buhl. "It's less than a five-minuteevent." Syncing data with headquarters proved to be a breeze: Whenreps dial into headquarters, they just put their Palm in the cradleattached to their laptop and push the Hot Sync button. Thatsynchronizes data on their Palm with the SQL server inRichmond - aprocess that takes 10 minutes tops, according to Nagaraj.

Although Cykoski still hasn't thrown out his Daytimer, he gives theApplix system a B grade (he admits that if he devoted more time toexploring what it can do, he might give it an A).

No More Gutter Balls

Now that AMF has a central repository of updated customer data, thecompany can send targeted promotions to customers most likely torespond to them. Buhl reports that two out of three promotions runthis year using data gathered through Applix have boosted sales.Following a January promotion on pinspotters, AMF's year-to-datepinspotter revenue reached $403,300 in April, up from just $9,000 forthe same time period in 2001. Likewise a February promotion onautomatic scoring equipment yielded $601,000 in revenue for thatcategory through April, up from $252,000 last year.

The ability to target promotional mailings saves the company money andmakes customers feel like AMF understands them. In the past, allpromotions went to each one of the 6,000 U.S. bowling centers. SinceAMF can now send a mailing to just the 500 or 1,000 accounts for whomit would be appropriate, the cost savings per promotion isapproximately 60 percent, according to Buhl. Perhaps more important,AMF is no longer annoying customers by sending them irrelevantoffers - or alienating those who'd just purchased the product in questiona week or two before.