FAQ's

Is my data secure?

• Absolutely.  We take the security of your information very, very seriously.  Crik-IT is housed in a world-class data center, a secure hardened facility designed utilizing N+1 philosophy, ensuring that every part of the facility is not only redundant, but has a hot spare on standby in case of an emergency.  The data center is audited on a regular basis to ensure that it meets SAS70 and Department of Defense security requirements.  In addition to meeting these stringent security thresholds, our data center meets Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), HIPAA, and Payment Card Industry (PCI) security requirements.
• Crik-IT utilizes some of the most advanced technology for Internet security available. When you access Crik-IT, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology protects your information using both server authentication and data encryption, ensuring that your data is safe, secure, and available only to registered users that you have authorized to view your data.

What must be installed on the dealer's computer to allow accessing Crik-IT?

• Nothing!  All the user needs is a web browser.  Crik-IT is designed to work with Internet Explorer 7 or newer.

How does all the information (i.e. items, order confirmations, etc.) get from the vendor to Crik-IT?

• The vendor's information must be put into a format that Crik-IT can work with.  This can be a series of text files, Excel spreadsheets, SQL Server tables, or any number of different options.  The number of files required depends on which Crik-IT options the vendor chooses to use, but can be as few as 6 files. 
• This information can be produced in a variety of ways.  For example, a custom report writer, such as Crystal Reports, could be used to create the files needed by Crik-IT.  Or, SQL Server queries or views could be created.  There are other options as well.  We will work closely with the vendor to determine the best option for them.
• The files will be produced by the vendor's system on a regularly scheduled basis.  This will happen at least on a nightly basis, and some information can be created much more frequently than that (for example, inventory availability information may be produced as often as every half hour).
• Once produced, the files will be transmitted via encrypted file transfer methods from the vendor's system to the Crik-IT servers.  Once there, Crik-IT sees the new information and makes it available via the Crik-IT web service for dealers and reps to access.

Who pays for the Crik-IT service?

• The vendor pays for the Crik-IT service. 
• Crik-Link is made available at no charge to dealers for 3 months.  Beyond that, dealers pay a small annual fee to use Crik-Link.

How does Crik-IT pricing work?

• We have a couple of different pricing models.  With either model, pricing is based on the value received, as determined either by the number of times a dealer, rep, or in-house user accesses a vendor's data in Crik-IT, or by the number of users a vendor sets up to use Crik-IT. 
• Pricing has been designed to enable smaller vendors to be able to provide the Crik-IT service to their dealer channel when it would be cost-prohibitive for them to provide such a service any other way.  It allows the littler guys to compete more effectively with the bigger guys.

I'm a dealer.  Why would I want to enter POs via Crik-IT instead of into my own PO system?  And does that mean I have to enter the purchase order twice.... once into Crik-IT and once into my own PO system?

• Crik-IT offers several advantages when it comes to entering POs:
  • Many email alerts are designed to notify the dealer if there are issues with the vendor's order confirmation for a particular PO.  To make use of these email alerts, the dealer's POs must be in Crik-IT.
  • If the vendor uses the matching accessories option in Crik-IT, when the dealer enters a purchase order for an item with matching accessories, Crik-IT walks them through ordering only those accessories that go along with that item.  This dramatically reduces ordering errors, as well as the customer frustrations, shipping costs, installation delays, and other headaches that accompany such errors.
  • Purchase orders that are in Crik-IT can be emailed to your account manager (customer service rep) with a simple click of the mouse.  The purchase order is emailed as a professional-looking, easy-to-read PDF attachment directly to the account manager, with a copy going to you, the dealer.
• If you use the QuickBooks system, you can use the Crik-Link to QuickBooks program which lets you import purchase orders directly from Crik-IT into your QuickBooks system.  You simply enter the PO number that you want to import, and the system does the rest... it goes out to the Crik-IT website, finds that PO number, then automatically puts it into your QuickBooks system as a purchase order!  It's that easy... and it eliminates errors that can happen when entering a purchase order twice (once into Crik-IT and again into your QuickBooks system).
• If you use a different purchase order system, as long as your system allows for importing purchase orders, the Crik-Link to QuickBooks program can easily be tailored to meet your system's requirements.  Just talk to us about what you are using.  We'll make it work!

Well, I really like my own PO system and I don't want to enter POs directly into Crik-IT... but, I also want to take advantage of the Crik-IT email alerts and other benefits... is there anything we can do without having to do double-entry?

• Yes.  Just as we have built a way to take purchase order out of Crik-IT to put them into the dealer's system, we can easily take a purchase order from the dealer's system and put it into Crik-IT!  We need to understand more about your purchase order system, so if this is something you want to know more about... contact us!