Inside ASI-AP

I posted about 6 months ago on moving from doing this blog to an internal tool called Yammer (www.yammer.com).

Part of that move was getting used to moving from a formal style of writing in this blog to the micro-blog format of Yammer, which I have been enjoying. The downside to Yammer is that it is only available to ASI staff.

I have been recently starting to move to Twitter which is fully open - anyone, anytime can read my tweets. There is still some confidential stuff on Yammer but as much as I can I will post on Twitter.

So please follow me - @PaulRamsbottom - at www.twitter.com/PaulRamsbottom.

A number of you have asked me recently how come my blog here is not getting updated as often as it used to.

The main reason is that I have moved to a new tool called Yammer (www.yammer.com) which is like Twitter but it is internal to ASI. Which means I can talk about confidential goings-on at customers and it stays confidential within ASI staff. We have been using Yammer for about 3 months now.

I like Yammer because you can post short snippets, like Twitter, and post often. It requires a lot less thinking than putting together a blog entry.

Of course the downside is that outside of ASI you can't see what is going on, which was the whole point of this blog in the first place ....

Hosted by Bob Alves and Paul Ramsbottom
at the offices of EMA Central, Wellington, NZ
1 day 9.30am to 4.00pm Exec Forum agenda

The notes below are the ones I wrote down during each of the open discussion sections - the introductions, the share your strategy session, and the closing/feedback session.

1. Notes from INTRODUCTION section:

a. William – NZVA / VetLearn

30 FTEs – with 3 in the IT team

Purchased iMIS 2007 as part of a single repositories project

Currently on 10.6 with i15 iBOs for website integration

Substantial $$ spent

Want to hear about the ASI vision for a stronger customer focus – “disenfranchised” at the moment – a) have to lead things themselves with regard to implementation and b) oversold on the level of efforts required to get things done

Meeting at the EMA Central offices in Wellington, right after the iBEF Exec Forum - Bob Alves and Paul Ramsbottom from ASI

Paul Winter (CEO) and David Brandon (Corp Svcs Mgr) from EMA Central

"better business practices"

Lack of web functionality in iMIS and Coresoft compared to what they already had with Pivotal – this surprised them

Still using Pivotal for lookup - really??

"Disappointed" about what can be done on the web - compared to Pivotal

Justification for iMIS
1. give members the ability to manage their own communication streams
2. straight thru processing from the web into iMIS

Bob Alves and Paul Ramsbottom in Auckland, 2 Sep 2009

Paul Ramsbottom: Bob just reported in from the iBEF Exec Forum in New York. He said it was going great; the best one yet!
4 days ago - from iPhone
reply

Martin Angelin: I have been working with a prospect in Adelaide calkled Trees For Life. Whilst iMIS is a good fit, they will need some custom development for some elements of their Land Management Programs. Interested in iMIS users, ideally in SA but anywhere really, who can show the way custom applications can be built on iMIS foundation. VECCI and AIM Vic with web sites are some. References from Avion (AFI maybe) or iServices would be useful. Any suggestions welcome. I will need to contact the customers early next week. « less

Paul Ramsbottom: Blackbaud Q2 earnings call - market news: avg sale price is being maintained (slightly down) but unit counts are down. Read the full quote on the no decision factor and BB's view of their competitive world: "So, if you had 100 opportunities, then no decisions in the path for 40 or so percent, they might be 50 or 60% there, depending on the sector. So, yes, there is in some sense more competition for the remaining parts and, yes, we represent the largest, the safest, the most financially secure and the highest customer satisfaction vendor essentially in the market in those segments. And so the win rates that we are experiencing once there is a decision made, the percentage of those cases that we win is going up regularly quarter-by-quarter here. And we are very pleased that the improvement in the win rate and I believe that's an acknowledgement for the quality of the organization, the quality of the customer satisfaction. And also I believe that in times like these you may need to make sure you invest with someone who is going to see you through the hard times." « less

Paul Ramsbottom: Working on getting Bob's trip here planned for late August. Sydney and NZ at this stage. iBEF Exec Forum Sydney on 27-28 August. And then considering a mini-iBEF event for senior customer execs in Wellington on 1 September. Will do a few customer visits as well - NBCF and AICD in Sydney, EMA and hopefully NZICA in NZ
2 days ago

Andrew Wilton in reply to Martin Angelin: She's not sure... planning on a holiday first to Germany to visit her mother
2 days ago

Jay McCormack in reply to Martin Angelin: Call centre discussion was quick and easy... at this stage they are just looking for options and ideas on what other iMIS customers have done.

I sat in on the iMIS 15.1 customer briefing in Melbourne last Thursday, which was the first one of these I have been to this year. Marla has already posted photos and Colin also posted about the customer briefing series.

We had the biggest attendance so far for the Melbourne seminar which was held in our boardroom, with 60 guests registered. We hired in some additional seats and the seating was more comfortable than I was expecting.

Colin spoke well to a fairly long presentation of 50+ slides (PDF version here iMIS Customer Briefing Melbourne July 09.pdf) but I really feel we have some work to do in improving the way we explain the benefits of the 15.1 upgrade. The presentation was good in explaining what new things are on offer with 15.1 including some of the current promotions, but what was lacking was explaining the benefits to the customer.

We held our first luncheon of the year with our CEO and general manager contacts last Wednesday under the iMIS Business Excellence branding. It was our largest lunch so far and I think reflective of the importance of non-profits, and in particular our customers, understanding the importance of business excellence, and in particular iMIS Business Excellence, in the current environment.

To have 24 CEO's and GM's in the room listening to our message is a great outcome and on top of that, we just get better and better at delivering the message. Similar to the last few lunches, I did the opening 10 minutes, and then after main course Mick spoke for just under 10 minutes, and then Mick spoke again after desert.

Paul Ramsbottom in reply to Jason rowe: It is disappointing that I only found out about WWF by chance from a revenue report but nevertheless glad to hear it. This is a such a great story and included $20k in extra modules along with a customised online donations facility. This customer is in Malaysia and are probably one of the most switched on customers we have and the first fundraiser to upgrade to 15.1. These are the success stories of our future in a region of growth (Asia) that will guarantee our future, so take a hard look everyone at what we can achieve. This is one of the most significant pieces of news for 2009. Congrats to everyone invovled.

Paul Ramsbottom: Article from BRW on variation (drift) in workplace processes
1 attachment:
6 hours ago

Paul Ramsbottom: Great blog on the recent ASAE study tour to Singapore and Dubai http://www.gowithbo.info/bo...
19 hours ago - from iPhone

Paul Ramsbottom in reply to Paul Ramsbottom: ... "engagement index" to proactively determine who is engaged and who is at risk
20 hours ago - from iPhone

Paul Ramsbottom: Retail Council of Canada are focused on relationship mgt rather than renewals and track an "enfa
20 hours ago - from iPhone

Jay McCormack: Trying to find any customers who are using social networking or web 2.0 style tools on their websites. Any suggestions appreciated... don't care if it's our products or not.

Martin Angelin: Feedback from a recent imis demo Versus SalesForce ad RE. SalesForce Demo was poor quality and showed lack of preparation, but the user interface was so good they are still in the running. RE did a good job and presented RE7 but hope to present the Enterprise version to the Project Manager so watch for that strategy to show the product Roadmap. more »
5 hours ago

Paul Ramsbottom: We are suspending all travel for customer sales and product marketing for the rest of the year as part of the expense reduction programs. Travel if required by these departments will need to be approved by Bob or Fred. We will need to find alternative ways to run these meetings including phone, Skype, video conference and web conferencing.

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.

Colin Bryant: Letters sent to AP customers today that have iView and were current with SUP as at Jan 1, 2009 and are not yet upgraded to i15. The letter advises tech support has ceased for iView/iSync and that the conversion to i15 Casual Users for iView will continue to be honoured until June 30 2010. 15.1 is mentioned and encourages customers to contact their Customer Sales Exec to discuss upgrading.
9 hours ago

Liza Amiridis: Just to clarify, Wellington was not a total flop. They opportunities were sourced prior to the event. We had 6 prospects in attendance (representing 3 organisations) and Bruce McPhail (our NZ-based consultant)