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.

Finsia (www.finsia.com) - a new iMIS customer - this week launched their new website based on iMIS 15 and the iMIS 15 .NET Content Manager. Finsia - Australia's premier membership organisation for financial services professionals - went live with iMIS 15 in the back office in April, and quickly followed with their website this week.

In addition to Content Manager, they have implemented the new iMIS 15 public views for Customer Management, Billing and Events - giving members the ability to renew online, update their profile online and register for events online. New members can also join online and in fact 7 new members joined online in the first day the site was live.

Our 6th Annual Executive Round Table is scheduled for May 20 and 21 to be held at the Sofitel Mansion and Spa in Werribee, just outside of Melbourne. We have made a venue change this year and gone back to the Sofitel chain for a better quality hotel and dining experience after being at Moonah Links for the last 2 years. Plus it is not as far for Marla to drive to when I lock my keys in my car!

The theme for this year's round table is "achieving business excellence" with specific focus on process centric cultures and targeted customer offerings. We will also be presenting an iMIS 15 roadmap for the first time - something that customers have been requesting for the last couple of years. Bob Alves is host once again, and the ASI team includes Mick, Jay, Marla and myself from AP, and David Riffle is also flying in from the US. Colin arrives back from the US right as the round table starts so he should be attending but not having to present. And we have a great guest speaker which I posted about earlier in the week.

Mick and I went over to Melbourne Uni today to visit with Dr Mile Terziovski, Associate Professor in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Melbourne Uni and he is also the Executive Director of the Centre for Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Mile was our lecturer last year at AIM on the subject of managing operational improvement and he is a highly regarded expert on the topics of process centered organisations, learning organisations and innovation - all cornerstones of business excellence frameworks including our own iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF) and the 7 business drivers of high performance non-profits.

Mick and I were in Sydney Tuesday and Wednesday last week working with Chartered Secretaries Australia (CSA - www.csaust.com - an iMIS Content Manager website) and the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF) program. We conducted 2 meetings relating to the strategic roadmap component of the iBEF program. All of the CSA state managers and the national office managers were in town for their 3 day semi-annual management meeting so it was a great opportunity to meet with the 12 or so senior staff including Tim the CEO.

Jason also spent about 2 hours separately addressing the same meeting on the iMIS Events and Education module enhancements.

We are finally getting around to installing our "virtual reception" in the Melbourne office main entry. First step was to install a LCD screen in the entry foyer - as you can see from the pictures below.

Next up we will be installing a camera that will be pointed on Jennifer so visitors to the office will see Jen's welcoming face on the screen even though she is sitting out in the back office. The screen is also hooked up to a PC so we can use it to run Powerpoints to welcome visitors for special functions (seminars, training etc).

At lunch on day 2 of the Innovations conference Donna and Don presented the awards for the President's Club. I live-blogged yesterday about some of the demo's of each of the nominations, where ASI solution providers and ASI Consulting staff submitted add-on iMIS applications.

Stuart from our own office presented on behalf of Leo his nomination for the REIQ Certification module. For the last 2 years running AP has taken away the ASI Consulting award, so Stuart and Leo had some high expectations to meet! Unfortunately it wasn't to be this year, but there was some pretty tough competition.

Clubs NSW - a long time iMIS customer - recently decided to refresh their website and implement iMIS Content Manager. They upgraded to iMIS 15 last month, and this week launched their new www.clubsnsw.com.au website using the latest Content Manager version and .NET templates. They are the first customer in the AP region to use both the .NET Content Manager and iMIS 15.

The website implementation was done by Glass Onion, and (formerly) our own Nasser did much of the template coding.

ASI has won a prestigious award from the International Institute for Software Testing (IIST - www.iist.org) for having achieved significant improvement in testing best-practices. ASI was one of 5 award winners. Read a copy of the ASI best practice submission here; the submission by itself is a great read on how the ASI Production department develops and tests iMIS.

Yesterday was our last day of management training so that we have now completed all the necessary course days for our "Graduate Certificate in Management" at AIM. All that is left now is to complete the 3 written assignments and then it is graduation time!

Since it was our last day, I took photos of some of the team in the AIM training rooms in Melbourne. Unfortunately Jay was not with us this week as he is attending the annual Product Management planning meeting in the US. And Colin did a separate management class at the end of last year.

Bob gave his latest quarterly CEO address to US staff late Friday night our time, and it was recorded and played back for 18 of the Melbourne office staff over a pizza lunch yesterday (Monday). If you haven't listened to the presentation, you can download the MP3 audio recording from the ASI staff portal (www.advsol.com/staff). Note you need to be logged in as ASI staff to access the recording. Bob covered topics including global BSC results, year end financial results, Value award winners (including a high proportion of AP staff - congrats to everyone!), some feedback on what senior ASI managers are looking forward to in 2008, and finally an overview of the Marketing department.

With my absence over the last couple of months I was out of the loop on some of our customers' iMIS website upgrades - using iMIS Content Manager and iMIS Business Objects (iBO). Some of the most recent ones are listed below.

Victorian Golf Association (VGA) - www.golfvic.org.au - launched their new website based on iMIS Content Manager, e-Customer Management, e-Events, e-Communities and e-Orders. Note the dynamic home page showing upcoming events live from iMIS.

Just prior to Ross's temporary relocation to Belgium - all the way back in December - he was promoted to Tech Support Team Lead. Congratulations Ross!

Ross's new role means he manages the queues and workload of both Jana and Annette and takes care of escalation of any of their SMR issues. Plus he still takes care of his own share of SMR's.

Don't forget to add Ross as a friend on Facebook to track his whereabouts in Europe - his profile is here. In particular take a look at his 'Connected World' photo blog, which shows just how powerful telecommuting can be! For those not on Facebook, above is one of the photos showing Ross working on SMR's in Iran.

Congratulations to Stuart who earlier this month was promoted to Senior Consultant!

Stuart has had an outstanding year in 2007 and continues to rate highly in project surveys completed by our customers. Jason recently adjusted his work schedule so that in addition to assuming responsibility for more projects, he is also allocated time each week to provide general customer care activities for Perth customers.

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.