Inside ASI-AP

I was in Sydney last Thursday and Friday trying to get back to a regular monthly visit to Sydney. On Thursday I met up with Finsia for a brief project status update following their renewals being run, and then I attended the project kick off meeting for National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Friday I met for breakfast with Nasser - who used to work with ASI Consulting - and has now setup his own consulting business (Avion Software www.avion-software.com) and has signed up as an iMIS Authorised Consultant. We are already using Nasser for a number of ASI projects and will continue to help him build his iMIS business as he starts to work directly with iMIS customers. Nasser's business partner is Sashank Kotcherlakota; and Sashank is also iMIS experienced as he worked for a few years at CPA Australia as a developer and he worked on both iMIS web and marketing suite projects while there.

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.

Sunday I flew Brisbane to LA – a 14 hour flight with me only getting about 1-2 hours sleep. Not to be encouraged. I arrived in LA at 7am with almost 8 hours between flights. I was happy that David Riffle and Marilyn were coming to meet me at the airport so we could get breakfast on the Sunset Strip. It was funny going to a restaurant with Marilyn, David and Greg and feeling that Marilyn and I would be treated as Aussies – but then Marilyn does have a US accent so she was treated as a local again and I was the only foreigner. Pancakes as big as manholes were on the menu. Hmm, I am so glad that the waitress suggested Marilyn and I share a stack since we were both ordering plain stacks. HUGE. I have attached a picture of David’s.

We have a substantial number of AP staff travelling to the US over the coming weeks to attend our "Innovations" (www.advsol.com/innovations) staff and partner conference, as well as attend other scheduled meetings held at the same time. This is the only time of the year a large number of ASI global staff (100+) come together at the same time for training and product updates. I have decided to send 8 people from the AP team this year - our most ever - to ensure we make the most of iMIS 15 related activities for customers and potential customers. It is a substantial investment but I am already very positive about the outcomes and the opportunities that iMIS 15 brings to everyone.

The on-time performance for planes on the Melbourne-Sydney route dropped this month to 64%. That's almost every second plane running late. To make matters worse, the east-west runway of Sydney airport will be closing from April for six months or so, and that means Sydney airport will close completely up to twice a month when strong east-west winds are blowing - and planes will be diverted. So if you absolutely need to be in a meeting in Sydney or Melbourne by 9am, you may want to consider coming in the night before. Or reschedule the meeting to start at 10am or after.

And of course, don't forget video conference - which eliminates travel altogether. Our travel expenses already in 2008 have jumped up over last year, so please think twice about the need to be there in person.

Before heading up to Singapore on Tuesday evening, I spent the whole day of the 2nd October with Marilyn at REIQ in Brisbane. REIQ are now in the user acceptance testing phase of their implementation project – which has been going well in all areas except the education department. So part of my time was meeting with the senior team – including Dan the CEO – to remove the roadblock holding up the education testing.

My other job was to do a presentation to the majority of the REIQ office staff – split into 2 sessions – on what to expect after going live, particularly looking ahead the next 2 years. It was timely to remind people – especially as they are caught up in the grind of testing – why they bought iMIS and where the project is going.

The initial training is now completed for our new Singapore AiSP - TAK Systems. In the last few weeks David Riffle and Keith visited with TAK for 5 days to complete 3 days of sales training and a couple of days of sales calls. Jason has also completed his 2 trips to Singapore where he completed 3 days of iMIS Overview training (first trip) and 3 days of iMIS Implementation training (second trip). Next on the agenda is for myself to visit and meet with TAK in the first week of October, and then a series of seminars later in November.

The removalists were at Julie’s apartment on Friday packing her stuff and sending it back to Brisbane. Julie is staying at her son’s house, and then a serviced apartment, until she finds a more permanent home. For the next few weeks Julie will not have her IP phone connected, so call her on her mobile.

After a year in Melbourne, Julie needs to move back to Brisbane for personal reasons - a combination of health (cold weather not helping) and family. Julie will continue in her current role for the foreseeable future while we assess how well her job function can be performed as a telecommuter. She will come to the Melbourne office about once a month to handle the face-to-face meetings she needs to have for her HR role.

Julie is currently planning to relocate sometime in October.

In Sydney this week for a couple of days for my monthly Sydney visit. I time these so that I can do my Wednesday meetings face-to-face with Amanda S and Jason, and then do the Melbourne team on video (which is the opposite of my normal week). Plus I also get to see Peter and Amanda K.

Also did some customer visits - including Taxation Institute, Property Council, Asthma. And some potential customers including Finsia. And Jon from Millpost. And Bruce from iServices was in our office too working with Amanda K.

The mood around town is very upbeat!

Week 13 – last week!

This was quiet week. Monday was travelling from Chicago (missed flight on weekend) and Wednesday was July 4th public holiday!

I met with John Benda to review what we had achieved in Customer Care setup in the previous 3 months, as well as going forward. Generally other items were just tidying up loose ends, and packing for the return home on Friday.

On Tuesday I went to the July 4 concert rehearsal with Carol and Randy and some of Carol’s friends – pictures attached. I spent most of July 4 packing up everything for the return trip. I did intend to ride the bike to the river and watch the fireworks, but it started raining and was windy just as I was about to leave. So I chickened out and watched the fireworks from the condo building roof (sundeck) – it was pretty amazing to see fireworks on a 360 degree view. Normally in Australia – fireworks are central thing – normally in the city area. In the case of July 4 – there are so many fireworks happening and from the building roof I was able see fireworks on the horizon everywhere!

Week 12

This week I was interstate visiting staff – Linda in Toronto and Fernando in Austin.

Visited three customers with Linda – Toronto Board of Trade, Purchasing Management Association of Canada and Deborah Hannah of NiUG & The Association of Municipalities of Ontario. Due to flight cancellations, I only managed to visit one customer with Fernando – The State Bar of Texas. All meetings were productive with the customers future direction the discussion topic, and mini Customer Care roadmaps to be produced by Linda for her meetings. I also had dinner with Linda and Andy Sherwin (Canada Country Manager) on Monday night (picture attached).

Week 11

This week there was a lot more iMIS 15 tasks including, attending the pricing committee meeting and working with Carol/Marty/Edward on the process for distribution and announcement.

Our current plan is to provide customers with an information sheet with their upgrade information. This information sheet will detail their iMIS10 licence, their proposed iMIS15 licence and any payment required to migrate this licence to Named Users. It is also proposed that we should develop a web page that the primary contact can view and also find out pricing for upgrading users. This would not be an invoice. A factor that will complicate this is the international currencies/pricing.

Week 10

More time this week with iMIS 15 pricing. We are now also reviewing the approach to deploy iMIS 15 and new Named User licences. This is important to ensure that customers are able to change to a Named User licence easily and make the most of iMIS15 as soon as possible. Customers will require a new code in the licence key in order for iMIS 15 GA to work – so it means distribution of new licenses to all active customers, and some payments (for additional casual/public users). Some of the options include online licence change form, or preparing forms for sending to customers with the iMIS 15 CD.

Week 9

I spent some time this week reviewing some concurrent user to named user migration scenarios for iMIS 15. Basically this involves take example customer licences and working out what this would convert to in iMIS 15 and any migration charge. I have been working with Marty to give feedback to the pricing committee. We had the monthly sales meeting with RMs on Tuesday which is a dinner on Monday night and a full day meeting in the Alexandria office on Tuesday. The purpose of the meeting is to review current sales opportunities and work towards getting a pipeline sufficient for targets.