Inside ASI-AP

The boardroom lunch I hosted yesterday - 25th October - had an invited audience of finance managers and finance executives. We have gone full circle with the targeted audiences and so now we have returned to the finance department, and next month CEO's. It was a slightly smaller crowd than last month with 3 prospects organisations and the remainder all customers.

My speech was a little different this month in that I used slides and the projector for the first time. The basis of my speech was the iMIS Value Cycle slide which continues to be a powerful message for all customers to hear. And since this was the second finance execs lunch that we have held this year, I was able to use the "what keeps you awake at night" notes from the first finance lunch to further tailor the presentation. What I found is that most of the "keep awake at night" issues from the finance execs related to the last 2 segments of the Value Cycle - commerce and business intelligence. And these are the parts of the cycle which most customers have not completed as yet.

So that was my challenge to the finance execs - to help their organisations complete the full iMIS Value Cycle, and at the same time, solving some of their own "keep awake at night" challenges.

My specific challenges were to:

1. Eliminate all direct data entry within 5 years; and

2. Help your organisation understand and implement business intelligence.

Copy of my speech and Powerpoint slides below. And don't forget to look at the full list of "keep awake at night" notes on this wiki page here (ASI-only login required).

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Luncheon speech for Finance contacts MD Boardroom Lunch 25 October 2007

Good afternoon and welcome. It is my great pleasure to host our boardroom luncheon today, a new monthly event on the ASI calendar.

We have 2 objectives today. Firstly, networking. Networking – ohhh, I hear some of you sigh - not another networking event, our calendar is already full of them! Well that may be true, but today is a little different. Firstly, all of you in the room work for non-profit organizations. As an aside, you may be surprised to learn that the iMIS community in Australia is made up of almost 2,000 people like you. But we need to go a step further. The other thing all of you have in common is that you are finance managers and executives. And for that reason, I know you have common challenges that you face in your jobs, and we would like to think that over lunch you will talk about some of those challenges.

The second objective is to talk to you about iMIS. Which I will be doing after lunch.

So – let’s get started. You have 2 tasks to complete before we serve lunch. The first is to look at your profile form in front of you. We would like to share your contact details with the rest of the group here today, but to do that we need your permission. So please check your details are correct, cross off anything you do not want us to publish, and if you are OK to share just with this group here today, tick the box.

At the bottom of the same profile form you will see space to write 3 things that keep you awake at night. Keep you awake at night? Huh? Why would you want to tell me that? Well, let me be a little more specific. If you are an iMIS customer, I want you to be specific about 3 things that keep you awake at night related to iMIS and your finance systems, including your websites. If you do not use iMIS, then consider whatever system you use to manage your membership and finance programs, and what keeps you awake at night with those systems. The what keeps you awake at night list will not be published, it is just for my reading.

[break for 5 minutes to let forms be completed]

Now you job over lunch is introductions. Here’s how we are going to do this – you need to nominate someone at your table to be the ‘introducer’ – and it can’t be one of the ASI staff. Each of you need to introduce yourself to one another at your table, and then the introducer will stand up after main course and briefly introduce your table to the room.

So nominate your table introducer and introduce yourself to your table, and we will being serving main course.

[Main course served]

Welcome back. And lets hear the introductions from each table.

If you are looking for things to talk about at your table over desert, I’d like to draw your attention to this card: “7 Business Drivers of High Performance Non-Profits”. Pick 1 or 2 drivers from the list to discuss.

[Desert served]

[Main presentation]

Welcome back, I trust you enjoyed lunch and your conversation with your peers.

Let’s move on now to our second objective of the luncheon – an update on iMIS 15.

Before I do, however, I just wanted to give a brief overview of ASI and iMIS generally.

iMIS is the only complete, upgradeable, web-based not-for-profit business software system available. iMIS provides a broad range of relationship management, marketing communications, commerce and business intelligence functionality. That all sounds fancy, but there are really some pretty basic principles here. iMIS gives you a single, complete system to manage your members, your donors, manage your events, manage education and training, manage your marketing, manage your website and process all the commerce related to your members and donors, including online e-commerce – all in the same system! But I will come back to this shortly.

So, that’s one of the reasons your organization would invest in iMIS.

Another reason, and equally important, is because ASI believes in customer for life. We believe once you buy iMIS you will never have to buy another system.

Customer for life – that is a big commitment to make. And for us to make that promise, we have to do 2 things. We have to keep iMIS upgraded with both current technology and with current business practices. And secondly we have to give great service and support.

Unfortunately for us, when you first buy iMIS, customer for life is a pretty hard message for us to get across. You generally buy iMIS to solve some business problems. Common examples of business problems include high maintenance costs of supporting a custom built system, a customer’s record spread across multiple systems multiple times, or the inability to understand all the products and services a member or donor uses from your organisation.

For many of you, the actual reasons for buying iMIS may be lost with previous management. But that doesn’t really matter, because iMIS needs to keep solving your business problems, today and into the future. So we have to keep you up to date. Customer for life.

Which is a great introduction to iMIS 15. iMIS 15 is the next upgrade of iMIS from iMIS 10. Why the numbering? Actually this is ASI’s 15th year in business. iMIS 10 was released in our 10th year, and iMIS 15 in our 15th year.

Importantly, iMIS 15 is an upgrade. It will come shipped to you on a CD that you can use to upgrade from your iMIS 10.6 system. It is like an upgrade to Windows or to Office.

So what’s new in iMIS 15? How I would like to explain this today is by talking to you about the iMIS Value Cycle.

[slide click]

The iMIS Value Cycle is what iMIS provides your organisation so you can add VALUE to your customers, your members and your donors.

If any of you are marketing trained, you may be familiar with the term closed loop marketing. Well this is similar. The iMIS Value Cycle is a closed cycle that continues to go around.

It starts at the top – with a good customer database. 1 name, 1 record in 1 iMIS system. Once we have that, we can use that to communicate effectively – right message, right person, right time. Simple tools like mail merge, to Informz email, SMS texting. The point of any good communication – the right message, right person, right time – is the right result. Sooner or later, it will be a commercial transaction – either immediately like an event registration or donation. Or maybe later in the year when they renew membership. To track that we you need to use the commerce parts of iMIS – of course things like AR/Cash, but all the other areas as well – online web transactions, EFT, Bpay, credit card authorization, deferred income, general ledger interface.

Once we have all these 3 things in the system – customer relationship info, communication info, commerce transactions – we can put that all into a data warehouse and analyse it to enable use to make better informed decisions on who, how, when and why. And then we start the cycle again.

Unfortunately, very few of you have gone one full cycle yet. Some of you are up here in the first segment, and probably about half of you have got down the bottom here.

We want to help you go the full cycle, and then do it again, and again. Guaranteed to help improve your business, to help you service your members and donors better, and to get more done with less. And if your organisation needs some more convincing, I am happy to come visit you and present this to your executive team and Board.

But how does all this apply to the Finance department. Great question. A few months ago we ran a lunch the same as this, with some of your peers from other customers – but all finance executives. Like we did for you today, we asked them to write down the things that keep them awake at night. And this is a summary of what they told us.

[slide click]

Take a minute to look over those points. Some will be familiar to you at your own organisations.

[pause]

Now – let me summarise these points into a couple of categories. Like this.

[slide click] [pause]

All OK so far? Now as it just so happens, these 2 groups slot right into the iMIS Value Cycle, like this …

[slide click] [pause]

One group into the Commerce area, one group into the Business Intelligence area.

So my challenge to you today is for you, and your departments, to take up the iMIS Value Cycle challenge. I mentioned already that very few of our customers have gone the full cycle. In fact most are down around here at the moment. And guess what.

[slide click]

The finance department can take charge and get the cycle completed. These 2 areas are right in the areas where you can make things happen. And, over the next couple of years, you need to. You absolutely must.

Let me give you a couple of things to think about, and for you to go back and work on.

Firstly – data entry is something you need to eliminate. A transaction should flow all the way through to your financial statements without any person touching any part of that transaction. The only thing you need to do is reconciliation between iMIS (which functions are your receivables ledger) and your GL. Now I realise that of course not all of your members and donors can use your website to do their own transctions on your website, but what I am talking about is electronic processing – not just web transactions, but BPay, direct debit, direct credit, credit card deductions, and even if none of those suit, you can outsource your data entry to bureau services and simply get a data file to import into iMIS every day.

So your first challenge – eliminate direct data entry by your organisation staff within 3-5 years.

Secondly – start to teach your organisation about the power of business intelligence and business analytics. About building a data warehouse. About understanding how a data warehouse puts a time value on your data for trend analysis like you have never had access to before.

[pause]

So – there we have a brief summary of iMIS 15 and a couple of areas relevant to your departments. iMIS 15 delivers to you the iMIS Value Cycle. iMIS 15 is available now.

iMIS 15 - is the next step in the journey of customer for life. We promise to keep you upgraded with technology and with current best practice. And we promise to give you great service and support. Anytime we do not do that you need to please let me know. My email, my direct phone number and mobile are on the handout sheet.

That brings us to the end of my presentation. A couple of key date reminders before we leave. If you or one of your team want to see a demo of iMIS 15 you need to register to attend one of our free weekly webcasts – goto our website to signup. I am also very pleased to announce that the NiUG iMIS user group – a true independent user group - is now formally established in Australia. If you are an iMIS user and not already a member of NiUG you need to join. Contact the chairman - Rod Dalglish at the Bus Association of Victoria – and Rod is here today – welcome Rod.

In closing, I just want to come back to the objectives for today. Firstly networking. I trust that the lunch environment, the exclusive finance executives only invitations, the table layouts, the questions on what keeps you awake at night, helped you meet your peers today. I welcome your feedback.

Secondly, an update on iMIS 15, the next upgrade to iMIS to keep you as a customer for life. And the iMIS Value Cycle.

Myself and the other ASI team members are available here until around 2.30 if any of you have questions or would like to speak with us individually.

Otherwise - that is the end of our proceedings today, and the luncheon is now closed. Thank you for joining me.

[End]