Inside ASI-AP

Following on from our recent results of making the top 50 great places to work in Australia (previous posts here, here and here), this article is the first in a series on the actual results for the survey questions that everyone completed towards the end of 2008.

The questions were divided into 5 major areas - credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. For each article I am going to cover off one of these areas, and then over the remainder of the year there will be continued discussion on individual points as we work to make ASI an even better place to work.

We held our very first boardroom luncheon in Sydney yesterday. We have run these in our Melbourne boardroom for over a year now and they have been well regarded, and with the growth of our Sydney business it was time to run them in Sydney as well. Of course we don't have the same boardroom in Sydney as we do Melbourne, so we booked into Prime restaurant in the basement of the GPO building in Martin Place and enjoyed a nice 2 course lunch.

We had a combination of existing iMIS customers and prospective iMIS customers attend, including a few of our 10+ year customers from the earliest days we were in Sydney. The invited group were membership managers and executives and there was plenty of discussion around membership performance in the GFC.

The annual iBEF Executive Forum for our top 10 or so customers was held last Wednesday and Thursday at the Peppers Torquay Sands Resort, south west of Melbourne.

We held the June boardroom luncheon in the Melbourne office today Tuesday 23 June. For the last 2 years these have been called the "Managing Director's Boardroom Luncheon Series" and they ran only in Melbourne. For 2009, we have refined the format and renamed them to the "iMIS Business Excellence Luncheon Series"; and for the format, we are introducing other speakers besides just me, and will be running them in both Melbourne and Sydney, with the first Sydney lunch coming up later this week.

For today's lunch Mick Varga was the featured speaker, and the audience was marketing and development managers / executives from both customers and prospective customers. I spoke for the first 10 minutes to provide the introduction and overview, then Mick spoke for 10 minutes between main course and dessert, and again for 10 minutes after dessert.

The first week of June marked the beginning of Customer Briefings - the topic: iMIS 15.1 Maximise your Potential. So far we have presented in Perth and Wellington. Other capitals are being scheduled for the coming month.

The purpose of the briefing is to show a lot of the great new features of 15.1. Customers will see a lot of benefit in Site Designer, Content Designer, IQA Improvements and also SSRS support (SQL Server Reporting Services). There is real potential in 15.1 for every customer.

As part of the briefing we also recommend every customer review their iMIS usage regularly - get back to basics and make sure you are making the most of your current investment. We provide each attendee with a personalised iMIS Value Cycle profile for their organisation to help them have meaningful discussions with their Customer Sales Executive or other ASI Staff.

I have added a Twitter block to the left hand side of the insideasiap.com web site taking feeds from staff Twitter accounts on an hourly basis. So far myself, Jay and Kelly are being aggregated and displayed. If you would like yours added, just let me know.

You may also be interested in following Twitter search feeds for "iMIS" and "NiUG". Try these:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=imis

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=niug

If you are using a Twitter client such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic it is easy to add in search views for these automatically. They also let you monitor specific user accounts and create groups like "work" and "home".

View photos from the ASI Sydney staff GPTW Celebratory dinner Thurs night 28 May. Unfortunately Amanda S was ill. We made the best 50 companies to work for in Australia for 2009! See the media release.

We held the first boardroom luncheon in Melbourne office last week on Thursday 21 May. For the last 2 years these have been called the "Managing Director's Boardroom Luncheon Series" and they ran only in Melbourne. For 2009, we have refined the format and renamed them to the "iMIS Business Excellence Luncheon Series"; and for the format, we are introducing other speakers besides just me, and will be running them in both Melbourne and Sydney.

For the lunch last week Mick Varga was the featured speaker, and the audience was IT managers and IT executives from both customers and prospective customers. We also changed the format and made the presentation style a little more hard hitting, less high level and giving more practical advice that can be put into action right away. I spoke for the first 10 minutes to provide the introduction and overview, then Mick spoke for 10 minutes between main course and dessert, and again for 10 minutes after dessert.

ASI Customer Sales staff are hitting the road in June to host a series of face to face Customer Briefings that will coincide with the release of iMIS 15.1.

Perth - Thursday 4 June
Wellington - Thursday 11 June
Melbourne, Brisbane & Sydney dates to be confirmed

The briefings will offer customers the opportunity to catch up with the local iMIS Community and meet with ASI staff.

Presented will be valuable information on:
• New features of iMIS 15.1 - the latest release of iMIS
• The iMIS Get Smart initiative - a roadmap for navigating the economic downturn
• Recession-Buster discounts available to iMIS customers.

Following on from the success of the Software Selection Luncheons held in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore in March we are hitting the road and taking these events to Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Wellington during June.

The Software Selection Executive Luncheons are currently being run very successfully by ASI around the globe.

The events are specifically targeted to CXO staff at NFPS (prospective customers) to learn how to make sure they have the technology to see their organisation through the next decade.

Hosted by ASI's New Business Managers, attendees will discover:
• How to keep their entire management team accountable for the success of their project

View photos from the ASI Melbourne staff GPTW Celebratory dinner Wed night 13 May. Missing were Nissi (sick baby boy), Colin (leave) and Ross (flying home from Europe). We made the best 50 companies to work for in Australia for 2009! See the media release.

Yesterday I attended a Fireside Chat that was brought together by Hootville Communications (http://www.hootville.com/events.shtml) - the topic was Web 2.0 for NFPs. A topic that is obviously hot for many of the Gen Y working at NFPs - there was a great turnout of maybe 100 people or so - young professionals working in NFPs in Comms/Marketing/Fundraising areas. There was a smattering of iMIS customers in attendance. I noted Diabetes Vic, Plan, NESA, Environment Vic, Carers Vic, Berry Street, Marie Stopes, CCV amongst the attendees.

The fireside chat was held in the delightful (ok..kitch) surrounds of the Greek Orthodox Church Hall in Prahran.

Jay, Amanda and I manned our stand at the Connecting Up 2009 Conference which was held in Brighton le Sands, Sydney on Monday 10 & Tuesday 11 May. The conference was focused on "how technology, social media and networking is changing the way nonprofit orgtanisations operate, communicate and connect with their supporters, members and beneficiaries."

The conference was mainly attended by Social Services organisations who have few supporters (donors) as the majority were fully funded by the government. While the budget was handed down last night, many of these organisations were thinking about how it was going to affect their services, and how they would have to consider cutting some services they offer. Very little consideration seemed to be given to raising funds through the community to continue delivering their services.

The inaugural ArtezInterAction was held in Sydney last Thursday 30th April. It was attended by 69 delegates (inc staff and speakers), with 12 no-shows/cancellations (many of these were freebies).

The opening presentations was given by Martin Gill who was full of energy and very engaging. He's a great speaker. The presentation he gave on the implications of new technology is available here: http://www.artez.com/martin-gill-new-tech (filmed at ArtezInterAction 2008).

Other speakers included Brian Pendleton from CauseForce who provided examples of some of the events they've developed, including raising $13m for cancer research; Sara Mansfield from Pareto Fundraising and Rod Jacka from Panalysis. Three Artez/iMIS Friendraising customers were involved in the master panel on Analyzing Event & Campaign Success Factors. Dave Simms from Leukeamia Foundation explained how they rebranded Worlds Greatest Shave and the idea behind Light the Night which was first tested in SA and WA to "test the system wouldnt crash", then rolled out nationally after being deemed a success.

MEDIA RELEASE: You don't have to be Google to be great

Embargoed until 30 April 2009

It’s not every day that a company with around 30 employees gets to be mentioned in the same breath as corporate heavyweights like Google, Coca-Cola, Yahoo!7 and Deloitte.

But that’s what Advanced Solutions International (Asia-Pacific), a software provider to the non-profit community, has achieved after today being named one of Australia’s 50 best companies to work for – despite having one of the smallest workforces on the list.

The list is compiled by the Great Place to Work (GPTW) Institute Australia, part of a US-based research and management consultancy that works with organisations in more than 40 countries and has been releasing the list in the United States for 10 years.