These electronic editions use different media (from the diskette – the so-called »retired media«, CD-ROM to Internet), but the basic idea remains, that is the constant adaptation to changes in business environment. The consistent method of continuous data refreshment offers the most up-to-date information in PIRS on Internet (the address is http://www.pirs.si/), where the active role in simultaneous informing of the changes is more and more taken over by the advertisers themselves. For the majority of users CD-ROM, with its technical capabilities, represents the most suitable medium for the professional work with the large amount of data, the analysis of the Slovene purchase and sale markets, sending the messages by the regular post or through the electronic media (e-mail). Electronic and Internet address of the individual subject became as important as the regular address and/or the physical location of its head office. The community data are also included into the list of basic data. The list is dynamic (the reason are not unknown), so the communities can be added or deleted.

Both electronic versions further contain information on important business subjects from various public data collections. These collections, especially the official ones, are becoming a more and more reliable source of basic information; however they do not offer all options that can be provided by direct contact with business subjects. The majority of public database records were therefore expanded with information gathered in the field, which are otherwise not contained in public databases.

To make the program even user-friendlier, we have continued to renovate the tools for the definition part of the database, from which the relevant data are selected by the user. In this way the user may choose between two basic options:

a)      between the subjects upgraded with new information and all subjects

b)      between all subjects and the parent subjects (excluding business units)

which involves four composed variants. When toggling between all these options the program always warns us of any change in the main data selection.

All the messages from PIRS 2011 are sent by the default mail server in your computer. When creating e-mail messages and changes of information, you do not need to be connected to the Internet all the time. The program PIRS itself creates all the messages and sends them to the default mail server in your computer, where they can be checked again and sent to the recipient.   

In addition, PIRS provides a greatly enhanced overview of important telephone numbers, with numbers of health services, education, transport and some others, relevant to most users.

PIRS 2011 on CD-ROM contains all options that users are already accustomed to:

• Conforming to all standards in modern Windows environments, especially in multimedia;

• Custom searching by individual field values and excluding records with specific properties (use of logical NO / NOT operator)  - as well as “general search” option and limited searching in geographically restricted area, which users can specify with the mouse on the map;

• Approximate searching (ignores differences between c, s, z and č, š, ž characters);

• Using previous search parameters (search history)…

Additional goodies for users of the program:

• An option is provided to change language of menus, screen descriptions of search fields, activity and product indexes and installation procedures to English. This enables PIRS for international use.

• Inside individual activity and selected region we first find the business subjects with better multimedia presentations, logos, frames or other graphic elements. Users can then choose to sort displayed records alphabetically or by postal numbers (this can drastically reduce expenses when sending a larger number of business announcements).

• PIRS enables direct printing on envelopes as well as printing to labels of three well-known international companies (Avery, Herma, Zweckform). It is also possible to specify custom label formatting and dimensions.

• Using PIRS, e-mail messages can be sent with ease; here we rely not only on the user’s etiquette when simultaneously sending mails to a larger number of addresses, but also on consistently observing the Slovene legislation. In the section “Online help” you can find some additional information on “unwanted electronic mail”. We recommend you to read it carefully, as the penalties are not negligible. According to the provision of Article 109, paragraph 2 in the “Electronic Communication Act” (ECA - officially consolidated text, Official Gazette RS, No. 13/2007) natural persons or legal entities that obtain electronic mail addresses from the customers of their products or services may use such addresses for direct marketing of their similar products and services, but they shall be obliged to give their customers the possibility to, any time, free of charge and using simple means, prevent such use of their electronic address. Slovenska knjiga is not responsible for any possible infringement of the “Electronic Communication Act” (ECA – officially consolidated text, Official Gazette RS, No. 13/2007) by Pirs users, involving any usage of the published data on the subscriber’s electronic address contrary to the legal provisions.

• An interesting analytical option of this version of the program is product statistics (enabling users to browse selected set of subjects by the number of employees, capital assets, activity, legal status and region, and to display frequency distribution, which can be an important tool in considering the population of potential buyers).

• A form for sending changes of information is also available (this can be done directly through the Internet on the http://www.pirs.si/).

• Greatly simplified work with specific selections of subjects (adding and deleting records, transferring records from previous versions of the program).

• Information on subsidiaries / daughter’s companies is one click away from parent company’s information, regardless of its location in the database. And along with the record of the business unit we can always find the location of its parent business subject.

• Apart from Map of Slovenia, PIRS now contains 37 maps of individual towns and cities.

• Enhanced online help has been entirely conformed to modern computing standards in Windows environment. If online help does not give you the proper answer, you can enter the Internet site http://www.pirs.si, where you can find some answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ) about PIRS.  
   

Electronic messages with prior consent

This is not a this year’s novelty, but we still want to mentioned it - Pirs is the first business directory in Slovenia, offering the option of prior consent for electronic addresses of many companies according to the 1st paragraph of Article 109 of the Electronic Communication Act (Official Gazette RS, No. 43/2004) – (hereinafter referred to as »prior consent«). Prior consent is gained personally and is verified with the signature of the authorized person of a certain company. With this consent Pirs permits its users to use e-mail addresses, published in Pirs, for their first commercial message intended for direct marketing, and with this to agree that such messages are not regarded as unwanted communication according to Article 109 of the Electronic Communication Act (ECA - officially consolidated text, Official Gazette RS, No. 13/2007).

***

Do not forget that also PIRS 2011 is the program that has to be activated through electronic registration. Slovenska knjiga thus enables its buyers to have a more direct contact with its experts and further development of user-friendlier technical help, which will be available to all registered users through

• the electronic (info@pirs.si)

• or regular mail (Slovenska knjiga, d.o.o., PE PIRS, Stegne 3, 1000 Ljubljana).

• You can also use a toll-free telephone number 080 28 40 for any additional information.

In all these cases you will be asked to quote the registration number printed on the backside of the CD cover.

We have listened to our users who have warned us about a big gap between the data in their version of CD-Rom and the actual data; it turned out that the problem was almost always caused by using the older program version. In order to provide the data consistency and their conformity with the actual data, we decided to limit the validity of an individual Pirs program version to 14 months from the date of publication. In this way, at the end of February 2012 the Pirs 2011 will no longer be valid and from March 1 you will no longer be able to use it. Two months prior to the termination of validity (from January 1 till the end of February) the program will regularly inform you about termination and will remind you to procure the latest version in due time.  

The corresponding instruction file (Navodila.doc) can be opened and printed directly from CD-ROM with the word processor MS Word. 

Despite our sincere efforts to remove all “bugs” from the program and intensive testing with the different users, we apologize for any mistakes. We will be happy to hear from you on these issues, and even happier to hear suggestions for improvements you may have.
 

MSc Jože Andrej Čibej,
Chief Editor