Inside ASI-AP

Last month I attended as both a delegate and as a sponsor the "CEO Symposium" event run by Associations Forum. This is the third year this event has been run by John Peacock and his team. The venue this year was the Novotel Pacific Bay Resort at Coffs Harbour. A copy of the agenda is here: AF-CEO-Symposium-Brochure-08.pdf

The delegate numbers were about the same as the previous year (65 delegates), but I did notice the average size of the organisation they represented to be smaller than the previous year. In fact this is a trend that we have been noticing at most of the conferences in the past year. A consistent number of CEO's and senior staff from the large associations and non-profits are just not attending.

ASI was the exclusive technology sponsor at the event, and we were joined by Guild Insurance group as co-sponsors. A third sponsor - FAST Meetings - actually ran the event and I was particularly impressed at the techniques used by the FAST Meetings team to encourage group participation and feedback. The networking and idea sharing as a result of their methodology was a standout for me.

I gave a 15 minute presentation to the conference on the 7 business drivers and the iMIS Value Cycle. A copy of my speech is below.

I also enjoyed one-on-one time with a number of customers and potential customers and made my visit to Coffs Harbour worthwhile. In particular I spent some time with Stephen Harrison, who was formerly the CEO of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia (ICAA) plus he also did some time last year as acting CEO for Finsia. Stephen is currently the CEO of a new international organisation called the Global Accounting Alliance which is made up of 9 of the world's leading accounting associations. Stephen has a wealth of experience in managing large professional associations and my time spent with him was stimulating and educational.

---------

Presentation by Paul Ramsbottom to
CEO Symposium
1 February 2008

Powerpoint slides: Assoc Forum CEO Symposium 01Feb08 presentation.ppt

Before I get started, I just wanted to give a very brief overview of iMIS.

iMIS is the only complete, upgradeable, web-based not-for-profit business software system available. 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!

It is probably easier for me to show you a slide on what iMIS does for your organisation - we call it the iMIS Value Cycle.

[slide]

And this is 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.

ASI doing those means we can help you be a world class organisation. With a commitment to innovation and excellence.

Many of you will be familiar with TQM – or Total Quality Management – principles. When an organisation embarks on a journey for excellence, a quality framework provides the basis for ensuring everyone in your organisation can strive and create customer satisfaction at continually lower real costs. Common quality frameworks are ISO 9000 and Six Sigma. But today I would like to bring to your attention the Australian Business Excellence Framework.

This is Australia’s Framework for innovation, improvement and long term success, applicable to all organisations including non-profits. The Framework has been designed to assist organisations to measure current performance and build a pathway to long-term success and is based on a set of 12 time-honoured principles of leadership and management.

[slide]

The slide here shows the 12 principles of the Australian framework. Innovation, improvement and excellence. I am going to pause a minute to let you read through this list. More information on these are available from SAI Global (part of Standards Australia).

[pause]

You will notice that many of the principles on the list refer to systems, data, processes and customers. These are the things that iMIS helps support in your organisation.

So based on feedback from our largest customers, and taking a subset of the Australian Business Excellence Framework, we have created the iMIS Business Excellence Framework. A framework to ensure innovation, improvement and excellence using iMIS.

The iMIS Framework is based on 7 business drivers for high performance. You have a card in front of you with the drivers listed on it, plus on this slide here.

[slide]

The 7 business drivers provide you a guideline on all the functionality iMIS can support in your pursuit of business excellence.

Even if you don’t use iMIS all 7 drivers are still absolutely relevant to your organisations.

I thought it best to outline some of the drivers by giving you examples of what some iMIS customers are doing to strive for excellence.

#1 – one name, one record. The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons recently completed a project where almost 70 different data sources – from databases to Excel spreadsheets to Outlook contact lists – were combined into a single iMIS database and a single Great Plains financial system. By combing all of their customer data into a single system they were more effectively able to respond to the ACCC on surgical training. Without doing so, surgical training standards in Australia may have been put in jeopardy.

#5 – process driven culture. David Collier, CEO of the Psychologists Registration Board of Victoria – since joining the Board has re-invented the complaints management processes of the Board using iMIS process manager to make them open and transparent and they are now the model organisation for all government reporting of registration Boards.

#3 – targeted customer offerings. Australian Institute of Company Directors, an iMIS customer with their national office in Sydney – have implemented leading edge segmentation strategies based on personality type surveys to have a far stronger understanding of the 4 types of members they serve and how each of the member segments want to be serviced.

And finally - #6 – performance management & measurement culture – CPA Australia analysed a year’s worth of marketing campaign data and professional development course attendance data all held in iMIS, and as a result of that analysis, made substantial changes to their CPD program that saw 20% of existing courses cancelled and other courses made more relevant.

[pause]

Before we finish, I would like to challenge you on three of the drivers.

Firstly - #1 – one name, one record – which is ultimately about effective data or data management. We hear so many stories of organisations with copies of customer data everywhere. Marketing departments taking a copy of the member data into a spreadsheet and then running their own systems off that copy of the data. Of staff with their own Excel lists, of their own Outlook contact lists. To get this data into one system takes leadership from you, the CEO. At the College of Surgeons, the CEO David Hillis personally sat in on all the project meetings to hold his team accountable to eliminating 70 data sources. It would not have happened without his personal commitment. So I am asking you today to make the same commitment to your organisation, if you haven’t already.

Secondly - #4 – automation of transactions. Your challenge is to eliminate transactional data entry in your organisation within 5 years. This does not mean you have to be a completely online business with only web transactions; what I am saying is that other organisations that are set-up for transaction processing do yours for you as well – there are many examples – like B*Pay, Australia Post Billpay, credit card deductions, direct debit, EFT, and bank bureau (or lockbox) services that will process your cheques. As you start to eliminate data entry staff, look instead to replace their skills with data analysts. And make your move from data entry to data analysis. Like the first challenge, the leadership on this needs to come from you. 5 years …

Which leads to the final challenge – #6 – performance measurement - start to teach your organisation about the power of business intelligence and business analytics and the importance of performance measurement. 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. Even if you don’t use Analytics right away, putting the right systems in place today to start collecting the right data for you to analyse next year or the year after. Your IT team will do the implementation for you; but you need to ask them.

[pause]

So – there we have a brief summary of the iMIS Business Excellence Framework and the 7 Business Drivers of high performance non-profits.

The continual journey of customer for life. We promise to keep you upgraded with technology and with current best practice using quality frameworks. And we promise to give you great service and support.

To help you build a world class organisation - with a commitment to innovation, improvement and excellence.

[End]