Inside ASI-AP

In writing up todays monthly luncheon I realised I did not post my speech for the previous luncheon which was for CEO's and executives back in November. The lunch was held on 16 November 2007 and was well attended due to our special guest - Bob Alves, ASI's CEO. We even had 2 execs from a potential customer in NZ fly over for the luncheon and to meet Bob - which was a first!

Like the October luncheon for finance executives I based this presentation on the iMIS Value Cycle; plus I also discussed the Australian Business Excellence Framework and ASI's own 7 Business Drivers of High Performance Non-Profits. The business excellence frameworks are very relevant for forward thinking CEO's and proved to be a popular topic. I also used the same "what keeps awake at night" question to get feedback on some of the issues the CEO's in attendance are facing.

My parting challenges to the audience were:

1. Make a CEO level commitment to one-name, one-record and eliminate the personal Outlook contact lists, Excel spreadsheets and other data sources you have around the organisation; and

2. Help your organisation understand and implement performance measurement and in particular business intelligence / analytics.

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 (ASI-only login required).

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Luncheon speech for CEO/Executive contacts MD Boardroom Lunch 16 November 2007

Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Paul Ramsbottom, I am the Managing Director of ASI Asia-Pacific, and it is my great pleasure to host our boardroom luncheon today. We also have a special guest with us today – Mr Bob Alves – Chairman and CEO of ASI worldwide. Bob is joining us from Alexandria, Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. Welcome Bob.

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 CEOs or COOs. 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 the iMIS Business Excellence Framework program and the 7 business drivers of high performance non-profits. 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 IT 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 your 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 – the iMIS Business Excellence Framework and the 7 business drivers of high-performance non-profits.

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 designed to support non-profit organisations. 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!

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.

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.

Another aspect to customer for life is that we want you to use iMIS well. It is important to me and the ASI team that you are good users of iMIS. But not only that, we want iMIS to help you be a world class organisation. A world class organisation. And a commitment to innovation and excellence.

But how can iMIS help you be world class when many of you are not even sure of the full capability of iMIS? You know iMIS can do more than it currently does for you, but you may not be exactly sure just what.

Which is a great introduction to the iMIS Business Excellence Framework.

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.

The Australian Business Excellence Framework describes the principles and practices of high performing organisations 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.

[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.

Let me give you some examples of some iMIS customers that are embracing some of the principles outlined here.

#8 – use data effectively. 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 – 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 – because of effective data use. Without doing so, surgical training standards in Australia may have been put in jeopardy.

#4 – improve processes. David Collier (here today) CEO of the Pyschologists 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 are now the model organisation for all government reporting of registration Boards.

#3 – customer focus. 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.

#1 – clear direction – APESMA, represented here today by Erin Wood, are ISO 9000 certified and active quality framework participants. Erin is currently the quality leader within APESMA and using iMIS effectively helps APESMA meet their quality audit requirements each year.

And finally - #8 again – using data effectively – CPA Australia analysed a year's worth of marketing campaign data and course attendance data at their professional development courses 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.

So based on your 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]

So I'll ask the question again I posed a few minutes ago - how can iMIS help you be world class organisation when many of you are not even sure of the full capability of iMIS? You know iMIS can do more than it currently does for you, but you may not be exactly sure just what.

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

Each of the business drivers have some direct relevance to iMIS and iMIS functionality. For example:

#4 – automation of transactions – you will be committed to cost reduction through reduced data entry and customer self-service for these interactions. iMIS modules like e-commerce, BPay, EFT, direct debit, Payment importers, credit card authorisation – do this for you.

#3 – targeted customer offerings - you will offer products and services that are specific to the various segments within your customer base. iMIS modules like IQA, Segmentation, RFM Analytics and Campaign Management – do this for you.

#5 – process driven culture - you will be committed to formal, ongoing processes for measuring the performance of all elements of your business to confirm productivity, quality, timeliness and relevance. The iMIS Process Manager module helps you implement such processes.

And finally #6 – Measurement and Performance Management Culture - you will be committed to ensuring key business processes are defined, adhered to, efficiently executed and effective. The iMIS modules of Campaign Management, the Informz for iMIS email marketing platform, and the iMIS Analytics business intelligence module help you build a performance culture.

[pause]

Before we finish, I would like to challenge you on two 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 – #6 – performance management - 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 with the iMIS Analytics module. 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.

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. 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 – details also in your handout bag.

In closing, I just want to come back to the objectives for today. Firstly networking. I trust that the lunch environment, the exclusive CEO/COO 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, to tell you about the iMIS Business Excellence Framework and the 7 business drivers of high performance non-profits. To help your organisation not just be a good user of iMIS, but a world class organisation – with a commitment to innovation, improvement and excellence.

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]