Inside ASI-AP

Sunday I flew Brisbane to LA – a 14 hour flight with me only getting about 1-2 hours sleep. Not to be encouraged. I arrived in LA at 7am with almost 8 hours between flights. I was happy that David Riffle and Marilyn were coming to meet me at the airport so we could get breakfast on the Sunset Strip. It was funny going to a restaurant with Marilyn, David and Greg and feeling that Marilyn and I would be treated as Aussies – but then Marilyn does have a US accent so she was treated as a local again and I was the only foreigner. Pancakes as big as manholes were on the menu. Hmm, I am so glad that the waitress suggested Marilyn and I share a stack since we were both ordering plain stacks. HUGE. I have attached a picture of David’s.

Sept 10 – 16, 2007
Location - Alexandria VA USA

I will be in the US offices for 4 weeks until Oct 6. So the blog is started again!

Monday I started the long trip to the east coast of USA. Started at 10.20 am Melbourne time and finally got to sleep at 1.15am Tuesday Alexandria time (3.15pm Tuesday Melbourne time).

The flight was my first opportunity to really try out my new noise cancelling headphones. Well I don’t think you realise how noisy a 747 is until you put on these type of headphones. I think they cut out about 70-80% of the noise, but you can still hear a hum of the a/c or engines. It definitely helped in not having to have the volume of the movies up so loud.

Shortcuts to Applications
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Windows provides keyboard shortcut options to easily access preferred applications – this is similar to the quicklauch toolbar except that you can launch without the mouse. The shortcuts are CTRL+ALT+X = where X is a specific key for that application.

For example I use CTRL+ALT+W to open Word, CTRL+ALT+E to open Excel and CTRL+ALT+Q for Query Analyzer, CTRL+ALT+T for Terminal Server.

To create a shortcut of X for internet explorer:
1. Find the Internet Explorer on the Start>>Programs menu
2. Right Click (instead of Left Click) the application name on the start menu

I have been back in the Melbourne office for 2 weeks and some people have jokingly said they missed my weekly updates. Yes jokingly. However last week I accidentally started giving out daily Windows and Excel tips to some staff.

Well I don't know everything but it is like our customers - "you don't know what you don't know". If you already know all the following that is great!So here are some Windows tips I shared -

Windows Key (Win) shortcuts are enabled by holding the Win key while pressing another key. Some of the ones I know are below :)

Win+BREAK = Display the System Properties dialog box.

Week 13 – last week!

This was quiet week. Monday was travelling from Chicago (missed flight on weekend) and Wednesday was July 4th public holiday!

I met with John Benda to review what we had achieved in Customer Care setup in the previous 3 months, as well as going forward. Generally other items were just tidying up loose ends, and packing for the return home on Friday.

On Tuesday I went to the July 4 concert rehearsal with Carol and Randy and some of Carol’s friends – pictures attached. I spent most of July 4 packing up everything for the return trip. I did intend to ride the bike to the river and watch the fireworks, but it started raining and was windy just as I was about to leave. So I chickened out and watched the fireworks from the condo building roof (sundeck) – it was pretty amazing to see fireworks on a 360 degree view. Normally in Australia – fireworks are central thing – normally in the city area. In the case of July 4 – there are so many fireworks happening and from the building roof I was able see fireworks on the horizon everywhere!

Week 12

This week I was interstate visiting staff – Linda in Toronto and Fernando in Austin.

Visited three customers with Linda – Toronto Board of Trade, Purchasing Management Association of Canada and Deborah Hannah of NiUG & The Association of Municipalities of Ontario. Due to flight cancellations, I only managed to visit one customer with Fernando – The State Bar of Texas. All meetings were productive with the customers future direction the discussion topic, and mini Customer Care roadmaps to be produced by Linda for her meetings. I also had dinner with Linda and Andy Sherwin (Canada Country Manager) on Monday night (picture attached).

Week 11

This week there was a lot more iMIS 15 tasks including, attending the pricing committee meeting and working with Carol/Marty/Edward on the process for distribution and announcement.

Our current plan is to provide customers with an information sheet with their upgrade information. This information sheet will detail their iMIS10 licence, their proposed iMIS15 licence and any payment required to migrate this licence to Named Users. It is also proposed that we should develop a web page that the primary contact can view and also find out pricing for upgrading users. This would not be an invoice. A factor that will complicate this is the international currencies/pricing.

Week 10

More time this week with iMIS 15 pricing. We are now also reviewing the approach to deploy iMIS 15 and new Named User licences. This is important to ensure that customers are able to change to a Named User licence easily and make the most of iMIS15 as soon as possible. Customers will require a new code in the licence key in order for iMIS 15 GA to work – so it means distribution of new licenses to all active customers, and some payments (for additional casual/public users). Some of the options include online licence change form, or preparing forms for sending to customers with the iMIS 15 CD.

Week 9

I spent some time this week reviewing some concurrent user to named user migration scenarios for iMIS 15. Basically this involves take example customer licences and working out what this would convert to in iMIS 15 and any migration charge. I have been working with Marty to give feedback to the pricing committee. We had the monthly sales meeting with RMs on Tuesday which is a dinner on Monday night and a full day meeting in the Alexandria office on Tuesday. The purpose of the meeting is to review current sales opportunities and work towards getting a pipeline sufficient for targets.

Week 8

It was a short week with Monday being a public holiday.

I spent a fair bit of time this week going through some iMIS 15 pricing scenarios with Marty and Fred. This is working out the conversions from concurrent users to named users. I defined some guidelines for US Customer Care staff on when to talk to me for decisions and when an RM needs to be involved. As US Customer Care crosses regions, this is a new thing which did not present itself in the AP operation. ASI US is expanding its hosting operations – most notably taking over the ISG operations this week. So I wrote up some benefits/reasons a customer would want to host with us so that staff had some points of differentiation when talking with customers looking at other external hosting options in the US.

Week 7
This week started off slow but had a lot of busy spots. I held two Customer Care staff meetings – US and AP. I have not yet found the best way to intermingle the US/AP staff given the US staff all work from home without ASI Video Conferencing. Also with timezones it is hard since I was at the AP meeting from 7pm-9pm. Anyway the meetings were productive reviewing activities and forecasts, with some update on iMIS15.

Week 6

This week I did manage to get some of those things on my To Do list done :)

I continued discussing the current US Software Update Plan process, and tried to determine improvements in notice and follow-up by finance/customer care/marketing. I don’t think many changes are required, but it will hopefully involve naming the Customer Account Executive on invoices and informZ follow-up emails and hopefully sending Reminder Notice for SUP invoices. Since January I have wanted to get the process using the iMIS Billing module like we do in AP – and as it turns out Consulting are currently reviewing the process to get this working.

Week 5 - Who can believe it is Week 5 already?

This week was one of those where I did a lot of things that weren’t on my To Do list. A lot of customers are asking about iMIS15 and how they change to Named User licensing and what the upgrade will cost. Given the Named User pricing is still in draft mode, this is difficult. However, with all the Webcasts and information, US staff are having to give draft pricing for customer budgets. It is all positive, just coming up with scenarios we need to do more research for answers.

Week 4 – This was another busy week - some of it actually away from the Alexandria condo.

Sunday (the day after I did so well at golf on Saturday haha), we had the monthly Sales Meeting with RMs, John Benda and other managers from the Sales group. Monday/Tuesday were at Innovations conference. It was good to meet with other US staff that I have spoken to by phone and not met previously. I attended most of the sales stream of presentations and two of the technical sessions. The networking opportunities were excellent and I also met a number of AiSP staff that are working with North American customers.

Week 3 – This was a busy week given the week after was going to be full of Innovations conference and other meetings. This is why the blog is late :)

With the allocation of US AiSP customers completed this week by Leon via SQL (would have hated to do 1273 records individually) I was able to complete the budgets/quotas for each of the US CC staff. This is a major thing since it is the first time to get agreement to have staff measured on gross nominal margins rather than a licence/services total revenue base like New Business. John Benda and I agreed on the base and quotas by the end of the week. We also managed to identify inactive AiSPs and reassign those customers with assistance from Amber in Accounting.