Inside ASI-AP

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 ....

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.

View photos from the ASI Melbourne staff GPTW Celebratory dinner Wed night 13 May. Missing were Nissi (sick baby boy), Colin (leave) and Ross (flying home from Europe). We made the best 50 companies to work for in Australia for 2009! See the media release.

I missed posting both the customer survey results for Q1 and the BSC results. So this is a catch up for Q1. I should have the Q2 results done in the next couple of weeks, so look out for those then.

Q1 is a great example of how the BSC works as a management system. Before the BSC we generally managed the business on financial results. But in the balanced scorecard, financial results are only 1 perspective of 4 total perspectives. The financial results for Q1 in AP were outstanding, and without the BSC everyone would be happy. But if you look at our BSC strategy map below you will see we have some significant red areas in the 3 other perspectives. And since it flows from bottom up, reds will eventually flow up and lead to poor financial outcomes if they are not addressed now.

June is our half-year for financial reporting so it is a significant set of results. In AP we have had a record 6 months - and not just beating previous results by a few % points, but in fact smashing them. Revenues were just under $4m for the 6 months - 15% ahead of budget and 34% ahead of last year. And all that with no increase in headcount - in fact there has been a decrease.

EBITDA results have also been strong ahead of both last year (by $500k) and budget (by $300k). Of particular significance is that Q2 was a great quarter in it's own right, further extending the already ahead of budget results posted in the first quarter (see full story on Q1 financials).

Somehow I missed posting about our Q1 customer satisfaction survey so I will cover off both Q1 and Q2 in this post. While the Q2 results were slightly improved on the Q1 results - neither were great news. In fact, in Q1 we saw the lowest satisfaction numbers we have seen since we started the surveys.

The charts below show the results by question for both Q1 and Q2 separately.

Colin, Liza and I sat in on a brown bag session given by Das last week on how to access the iMIS Analytics data warehouse via ProClarity. While the Analytics engine has been available on our internal iMIS client system for some time, it has now been made available to all managers globally, thus putting the information in the hands of people who can make something of it and do something about it. The US managers had their brown bag intro session some weeks ago.

I have been pretty occupied over the past couple of weeks helping out the consulting team with their current workload spike so have not had a chance until now to write up the week that Bob visited. Bob arrived on the Monday morning and after checking into the hotel came over to the Melbourne office to join the 1pm pizza lunch and listened to the CEO quarterly briefing. The rest of Monday and into the evening was spent on rehearsals for the exec round table event.

Tuesday and Wednesday was down at the Sofitel at Weribee Mansions for the 2008 Executive Round Table Briefing. I will post about that event separately, but suffice to say Bob believed it was the best round table event yet.

For the first time Bob Alves was actually in Australia for the first quarter CEO update. Bob flew in from the US on Monday morning, and at 1pm in the Melbourne office we had pizza lunch and then played the pre-recorded presentation that he had recorded on the Friday night before coming to Australia. The presentation ran about 45 minutes and it was a little weird listening to Bob speak while he sat there with us - and he didn't even move his lips!

During the presentation Bob covered off first quarter Balanced Scorecard results, financial results, value award winners and he highlighted the global Consulting department. He also made particular mention of the strong first quarter results for AP, Europe and Canada (I had posted previously about the AP first quarter results).

After relocating the Melbourne office last year, this year it is the turn of the Sydney office. We are moving from North Sydney into the Sydney CBD area - which gets us closer to customers, transport options and higher quality premises. To support our telecommute environment we are taking out space in a shared executive office on level 33 of Australia Square - which is located at 264 George Street (down towards the Circular Quay end of George Street). Australia Square is an iconic building in that it is a round tower which at the time it was built was the tallest building in Sydney.

Bob will be in Melbourne and Sydney later this month - arriving into the Melbourne on Monday 19 May, then heading to Sydney on Saturday 24 May prior to flying home on Sunday 25 May. While in Melbourne his main responsibility is to host the Annual Executive Round Table for our invitation-only largest customers; he will also be in the office for a couple of days on Thursday and Friday catching up with me, my review and AP business plans and budget reviews. And if there are no delays to his incoming flight he should also be joining us in person for the quarterly pizza lunch and CEO address on the Monday 19th.

I was a guest of AIM Vic at their "Managing the Future" lunch series on Tuesday where the keynote speaker was Bob Welsh, CEO of VicSuper. Bob has been leading VicSuper with sustainability as a core operating principle since 2000, and has recently been recognised by the UN for his achievements in this area.

There was certainly of lot of interest in sustainability with over 200 people in attendance at the lunch, in many ways driven by the new government's plan to introduce a carbon emissions trading scheme from 2010. This will mean that the cost of carbon will directly impact an organisation's bottom line and as a result costs for many services - including electricity - will go up.

The March 2008 financials have been published - and thus also the first quarter (Q1) results. The budgets are now loaded into Great Plains so we have our first actual to budget results available.

The quarter has been very strong in AP with revenue growth in all areas. Total revenue was up 8% on budget and very significantly 22% up on first quarter of last year. AP EBITDA is ahead of the budget by $320k and ahead of last year by $330k - both better than forecasted increases.

Globally the first quarter financials have also been positive - just under budget for total revenue and 6% up on last year; EBITDA is ahead of budget.

I always look forward to a busy schedule of events in the office as it means more and more people get to come in and visit us and hear our message. I am not completely convinced a message needs to be heard "8 times, 8 ways" before it sinks in, but I am convinced that the message needs to be communicated a number of times from different people. And for me the events we run are a key part of that communication.

This week we have the iMIS Friendraising seminar in Melbourne and Sydney (see here for event info), we have the MD Boardroom luncheon in Melbourne and we have some customers coming in for training.

With the changes we are making at ASI to become a global company I know some of you are questioning why. I think over the years ASI has generally proven itself to be ahead of what customers need in technology trends, and the latest moves on globalisation are no different. Some of our customers are now truly global organisations - and in many cases are dealing with issues between the international head office and the country offices, that we are typically used to seeing between a national office and the state offices. For us to continue to be successful in this changing environment we need to have a global product and a global company supporting it - just being US focused is not going to cut it any more.