Inside ASI-AP

The Wednesday after conference was a full day for me with Chairman's Circle breakfast in the morning and then a full day Board meeting followed by a Board dinner.

The Chairman's Circle are the top AiSP's selected on an annual basis; for 2008 it is about 16 organisations. At the breakfast – which is hosted by Bob and Don – we handed out a draft of the Product Development Outlook document, which is a new document that we intend to publish next month on the iMIS product plans through to 2010. This document has been requested by customers and AiSPs for a couple of years now to help them plan better and get aligned with iMIS releases and technology. The AiSPs were very happy to be asked for feedback and they had some great suggestions on how to make the document a little better. I also spent a lot of time talking about the iBEF program and we explored ways we could have the Chairman Circle AiSPs adapt all or parts of the iBEF program in their own businesses with their own customers. This also got some great feedback and as a result we will be making more formal plans to do this.

After breakfast was the Board meeting. This is run in 2 parts – firstly is the pre-Board meeting and then the actual Board meeting. The pre-Board meeting is a presentation from each of the VP's (John – sales, Donna – production, Fred – finance) and discussion on business and operations directed at the VP's. Since John was running the sales training, Bob did the sales presentation. The sales report was positive with double digit growth reported in 2007 and license sales growth of over 20% forecast in 2008 with all 6 of the new US sales executives coming on stream in 2008 (most started mid-to-late 2007 so did not contribute to 2007 results). Donna reported on the current production status of iMIS 15.1, 15.2 and 15.3, and some of the changes made to our production processes to eliminate many of the issues we saw in the 10.6 release and to some extent the 15.0 release. Fred presented the 2007 results and then the 2008 budget. Of particular highlight from Fred was the new format for presenting our 2008 results on a global line of business basis instead of by country. This will really start to emphasise our global profile and that we really are "all in it together" and overall company success is as important to us all as just AP success was before.

After the pre-Board meeting, the VP's leave and just the Board meets for about an hour. The Board is Bob, Don, Larry (non-executive, and not present this meeting), Doug (non-executive), Niroo and myself. The Board has a number of legal tasks to perform like ratifying the stock option price and confirming stock issues. Of particular note is that additional stock was released to re-launch the staff stock option program - you will hear more about that later in the year! There was discussion on a number of potential acquisitions and further effort will be made on those. Overall the Board is satisfied with the company performance – revenue is growing towards the $50m goal that has been set, recurring revenue is increasing strongly and reliably (helps company valuation), new licenses are growing, and expenses are being held in check. These are the things that we need to do to make us attractive to outside investors which is what happens in an IPO (our shares are offered to the public on the stock exchange) – the public want to buy shares in a strong company that is profitable and returns regular and reliable dividends to the share holders.

The Board dinner was held at a famous Washington DC live music club – The Birchmere – where an amazing bass player called Marcus Miller was playing. Some great funk and jazz to end up a long but productive and positive day.

Other events on today was the ASI Consulting conference which Stuart attended on behalf of the all the AP consultants. Mick presented the iBEF program – the same presentation has he and I did on Monday – to the consulting team and also had positive feedback that we are doing the right things with this program to drive "customer for life" and customer satisfaction.

Amanda, Martin, Mick and Liza were in the sales training all day. Amanda and Martin are doing this for 3 days, while Liza and Mick were only there today. Colin was back in the Alexandria office with Shearne where he was holding his Customer Care department meeting all day.