Inside ASI-AP

I was reading an article over the weekend in the May-June edition of Advancing Philanthropy (the journal of the AFP - Association of Fundraising Professionals - www.afpnet.com), which is conveniently now provided to all members of the Fundraising Institute of Australia (FIA - www.fia.org.au). The article was a summary of a study by the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council (www.runwalkride.com) and it shows that funds raised through athletic charitable events - such was walkathons and bikeathons - grew by more than 10% in 2007. The top 30 athletic fundraising events in the US generated more than $1.64 billion in gross revenue in 2007. The top programs included Relay for Life (American Cancer) at $406m, Team in Training (Leukemia) at $125m and Start! Heart Walk (American Heart) at $106m.

I was in Sydney last Thursday and Friday trying to get back to a regular monthly visit to Sydney. On Thursday I met up with Finsia for a brief project status update following their renewals being run, and then I attended the project kick off meeting for National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Friday I met for breakfast with Nasser - who used to work with ASI Consulting - and has now setup his own consulting business (Avion Software www.avion-software.com) and has signed up as an iMIS Authorised Consultant. We are already using Nasser for a number of ASI projects and will continue to help him build his iMIS business as he starts to work directly with iMIS customers. Nasser's business partner is Sashank Kotcherlakota; and Sashank is also iMIS experienced as he worked for a few years at CPA Australia as a developer and he worked on both iMIS web and marketing suite projects while there.

I have been pretty occupied over the past couple of weeks helping out the consulting team with their current workload spike so have not had a chance until now to write up the week that Bob visited. Bob arrived on the Monday morning and after checking into the hotel came over to the Melbourne office to join the 1pm pizza lunch and listened to the CEO quarterly briefing. The rest of Monday and into the evening was spent on rehearsals for the exec round table event.

Tuesday and Wednesday was down at the Sofitel at Weribee Mansions for the 2008 Executive Round Table Briefing. I will post about that event separately, but suffice to say Bob believed it was the best round table event yet.

ASI was pleased to host the very first meeting of 3 REI's (Real Estate Institute's) - Qld, SA and Vic (all iMIS customers) - in the Melbourne office last week, and I joined the team of REI's and ASI'ers for lunch. While both REISA and REIV have been long time users of iMIS, REIQ only recently joined the list of REI users and between the 3 organisations they agreed to meet up and share iMIS experiences. And they will be meeting up ongoing on a more regular basis as a result of the success of this last meeting. It was great for me to be able to meet with the key exec's from each and share stories over lunch. At lunch was David and Jason (SA), Ivars and Neelu (Vic), Greg (Qld) and Shearne, Colin and myself from ASI.

For the first time Bob Alves was actually in Australia for the first quarter CEO update. Bob flew in from the US on Monday morning, and at 1pm in the Melbourne office we had pizza lunch and then played the pre-recorded presentation that he had recorded on the Friday night before coming to Australia. The presentation ran about 45 minutes and it was a little weird listening to Bob speak while he sat there with us - and he didn't even move his lips!

During the presentation Bob covered off first quarter Balanced Scorecard results, financial results, value award winners and he highlighted the global Consulting department. He also made particular mention of the strong first quarter results for AP, Europe and Canada (I had posted previously about the AP first quarter results).

After relocating the Melbourne office last year, this year it is the turn of the Sydney office. We are moving from North Sydney into the Sydney CBD area - which gets us closer to customers, transport options and higher quality premises. To support our telecommute environment we are taking out space in a shared executive office on level 33 of Australia Square - which is located at 264 George Street (down towards the Circular Quay end of George Street). Australia Square is an iconic building in that it is a round tower which at the time it was built was the tallest building in Sydney.

The interviews for the initial round of candidates for our third Business Development Manager get underway this week to take advantage of David, Bob and Julie all being here in person. The current plan is to have one interview in Melbourne and two in Sydney. The new BDM will be joining Amanda and Martin in the new business group which is dedicated to bringing in new customers to iMIS. Both Amanda and Martin exceeded quota last year, and that along with a continued confidence in the new business market is a trigger to hire to ensure we capitalise on all of the right opportunities (with an emphasis here on the word 'right' - where the potential customer and ASI are aligned in strategies and values). At the same time we are continuing to work on our sales process cycle optimisation although it is harder than expected - but are committed to an outcome that will see higher quota's for both Amanda and Martin.

On Tuesday Jay, Mick and I were at APESMA (www.apesma.asn.au) for the fourth of a series of meetings with each of their key departments to help us plan out a one year roadmap as part of their iBEF program. APESMA have some unique challenges in that it was recently restructured to split the commercial business units from the traditional union organisation. The commercial units - including Chifley Business School (www.chifley.edu.au), Member Advantage (www.memberadvantage.com.au) and ETM Search & Selection (www.etm.com.au) - are all substantial businesses in their own right, but they also share infrastructure and many services with APESMA.

The open project manager position has now been filled and we are very excited to be welcoming Andrew Kennedy into the ASI Consulting team. Andrew will be based in Sydney; he will be starting the week of June 2nd. Andrew comes to ASI with strong project management experience including at Optus, a national law firm and most recently a software company specialising in customer data integrity solutions. Like myself and some of the other ASIer's, Andrew is engineering educated; and his interests are soccer, rock climbing and teaching spanish.

Finsia (www.finsia.com) - a new iMIS customer - this week launched their new website based on iMIS 15 and the iMIS 15 .NET Content Manager. Finsia - Australia's premier membership organisation for financial services professionals - went live with iMIS 15 in the back office in April, and quickly followed with their website this week.

In addition to Content Manager, they have implemented the new iMIS 15 public views for Customer Management, Billing and Events - giving members the ability to renew online, update their profile online and register for events online. New members can also join online and in fact 7 new members joined online in the first day the site was live.

Our 6th Annual Executive Round Table is scheduled for May 20 and 21 to be held at the Sofitel Mansion and Spa in Werribee, just outside of Melbourne. We have made a venue change this year and gone back to the Sofitel chain for a better quality hotel and dining experience after being at Moonah Links for the last 2 years. Plus it is not as far for Marla to drive to when I lock my keys in my car!

The theme for this year's round table is "achieving business excellence" with specific focus on process centric cultures and targeted customer offerings. We will also be presenting an iMIS 15 roadmap for the first time - something that customers have been requesting for the last couple of years. Bob Alves is host once again, and the ASI team includes Mick, Jay, Marla and myself from AP, and David Riffle is also flying in from the US. Colin arrives back from the US right as the round table starts so he should be attending but not having to present. And we have a great guest speaker which I posted about earlier in the week.

Bob will be in Melbourne and Sydney later this month - arriving into the Melbourne on Monday 19 May, then heading to Sydney on Saturday 24 May prior to flying home on Sunday 25 May. While in Melbourne his main responsibility is to host the Annual Executive Round Table for our invitation-only largest customers; he will also be in the office for a couple of days on Thursday and Friday catching up with me, my review and AP business plans and budget reviews. And if there are no delays to his incoming flight he should also be joining us in person for the quarterly pizza lunch and CEO address on the Monday 19th.

As I posted about during the Innovations conference last month, the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF) program is to be rolled out in the US embracing selected AiSPs and customers. Bob has appointed Neil Kleinberg to lead the program launch in the US, and over the coming weeks Mick and I will be meeting with Neil and others to help co-ordinate and support the launch. I am also in the process of creating a wiki that will incorporate all of the iBEF documentation so it can be opened up for collaboration with ASIer's in the US, the AiSP's in the program and to customers - I'll post more on this as the wiki nears completion.

It was just Lap joining me for lunch today from Melbourne office for our first quarter recognition luncheon. Lap was awarded the core value award of "respect" in the first quarter of 2008 - congratulations Lap! After a year of going to Rockpool each quarter I thought we would try a new restaurant this year, so it was back to Crown again and to the new restaurant right next door to Rockpool - Bistro Guillaume (www.bistroguillaume.com.au).

While promoted as french bistro style the prices were high-end restaurant but luckily the food was outstanding, and I would certainly go back. Lap enjoyed for the first time ever snails for entree and a souffle for dessert !

Mick was in Sydney yesterday visiting with the Taxation Institute of Australia (www.taxinstitute.com.au) and conducting the first of their iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF) meetings. The first meeting agenda was a workshop session with their strategy team to better understand their strategies and key initiatives. I normally attend these meetings with Mick in person but this time we decided to keep me in the office and connect me in using Sykpe video instead.

While we have conducted many video conference meetings on our Tandberg video units, these are only ASI office to office - customers do not have the Tandberg equipment for us to call into customer boardrooms. So enter the $100 webcam and Skype. Mick setup the webcam in the Institute's boardroom and then ran the meeting for 3 hours with me sitting in my office. The quality was far better than expected and I would certainly use it again.