Still waiting for access - or even a timetable to be given access - to the new system a month after training, despite being a key seat. Disappointing that some of the new features it was "sold" on (texting/email etc) either aren't ready or will cost extra. There is no built in mailmerge and no facility to run off mailings with polling station data on, only poll numbers.

From speaking to someone who has used the live version, data entry is quite slow.

Having said all that, once we have it and when it works it will make life a lot easier having updates and data entry online.

I am very impressed. This is a much more user friendly system...

It seems this has been implemented tolerably quickly, as it was only press released last April. Contact Creator is based on Experian Integrated Marketing's Elements software. Parent Experian is a credit checking agency. They won the pitch against six other suppliers.

Looks like Alicia Kennedy (deputy general secretary) was the main driver of this purchase. I wonder how much this cost, given the party was about £20 million in debt at the time. 

 

My party is not at all happy that they have basically been operating for almost 2 months now without a Contact system in place.  Last week I had to convince them that their proposal to just 'not use' Contact Creator and stick with Labour.Contact with it's year-old electoral roll might not be the best idea.  I hope I'm not proved spectactularly wrong when we finally do get the system!

 (I'm from Southampton if anyone on the CC team reads this and decides to prioritise based on which CLPs are freaking out the most)

Actually for a new system its very responsive. I've been very impressed with it so far. A much better start than Labour.Contact had. I can understand some people's frustration at not having it. Elections are coming up and valuable voter id opportunities are going to waste.

But this is a one off situation, once the system is in place worrying each year about the download will be a thing of the past. It will also give us a tactical advantage over the other parties as to when to call an election as we will always be working with an up-to-date register.

Alex,
this is the video
that was on the CD
that was in the red pack
that was called "Your Essential Labour Party Campaign Toolkit"
that was given out at Conference 2007.

I have two copies and I wasn't even there.

Been on the training. The system crashed at every opportunity; we were told NOT to click "Go" simultaneously because it could not cope with multiple users running reports at the same time on the training server; it was not intuitive; it was not consistent; it was slow; and no doubt - having been provided by Accenture, formerly of Andersen Consulting, formerly of Enron fame - it is very, very expensive. It is simply a list of names and addresses to which you may add events e.g. contacts, leaflet drops, canvass... blah, blah, blah - how hard can it be. If it cost more than £5,000 it is too much.