Inside ASI-AP

I sat in on the iMIS 15.1 customer briefing in Melbourne last Thursday, which was the first one of these I have been to this year. Marla has already posted photos and Colin also posted about the customer briefing series.

We had the biggest attendance so far for the Melbourne seminar which was held in our boardroom, with 60 guests registered. We hired in some additional seats and the seating was more comfortable than I was expecting.

Colin spoke well to a fairly long presentation of 50+ slides (PDF version here iMIS Customer Briefing Melbourne July 09.pdf) but I really feel we have some work to do in improving the way we explain the benefits of the 15.1 upgrade. The presentation was good in explaining what new things are on offer with 15.1 including some of the current promotions, but what was lacking was explaining the benefits to the customer.

We held our first luncheon of the year with our CEO and general manager contacts last Wednesday under the iMIS Business Excellence branding. It was our largest lunch so far and I think reflective of the importance of non-profits, and in particular our customers, understanding the importance of business excellence, and in particular iMIS Business Excellence, in the current environment.

To have 24 CEO's and GM's in the room listening to our message is a great outcome and on top of that, we just get better and better at delivering the message. Similar to the last few lunches, I did the opening 10 minutes, and then after main course Mick spoke for just under 10 minutes, and then Mick spoke again after desert.

We held our very first boardroom luncheon in Sydney yesterday. We have run these in our Melbourne boardroom for over a year now and they have been well regarded, and with the growth of our Sydney business it was time to run them in Sydney as well. Of course we don't have the same boardroom in Sydney as we do Melbourne, so we booked into Prime restaurant in the basement of the GPO building in Martin Place and enjoyed a nice 2 course lunch.

We had a combination of existing iMIS customers and prospective iMIS customers attend, including a few of our 10+ year customers from the earliest days we were in Sydney. The invited group were membership managers and executives and there was plenty of discussion around membership performance in the GFC.

The annual iBEF Executive Forum for our top 10 or so customers was held last Wednesday and Thursday at the Peppers Torquay Sands Resort, south west of Melbourne.

We held the June boardroom luncheon in the Melbourne office today Tuesday 23 June. For the last 2 years these have been called the "Managing Director's Boardroom Luncheon Series" and they ran only in Melbourne. For 2009, we have refined the format and renamed them to the "iMIS Business Excellence Luncheon Series"; and for the format, we are introducing other speakers besides just me, and will be running them in both Melbourne and Sydney, with the first Sydney lunch coming up later this week.

For today's lunch Mick Varga was the featured speaker, and the audience was marketing and development managers / executives from both customers and prospective customers. I spoke for the first 10 minutes to provide the introduction and overview, then Mick spoke for 10 minutes between main course and dessert, and again for 10 minutes after dessert.

The first week of June marked the beginning of Customer Briefings - the topic: iMIS 15.1 Maximise your Potential. So far we have presented in Perth and Wellington. Other capitals are being scheduled for the coming month.

The purpose of the briefing is to show a lot of the great new features of 15.1. Customers will see a lot of benefit in Site Designer, Content Designer, IQA Improvements and also SSRS support (SQL Server Reporting Services). There is real potential in 15.1 for every customer.

As part of the briefing we also recommend every customer review their iMIS usage regularly - get back to basics and make sure you are making the most of your current investment. We provide each attendee with a personalised iMIS Value Cycle profile for their organisation to help them have meaningful discussions with their Customer Sales Executive or other ASI Staff.

We held the first boardroom luncheon in Melbourne office last week on Thursday 21 May. For the last 2 years these have been called the "Managing Director's Boardroom Luncheon Series" and they ran only in Melbourne. For 2009, we have refined the format and renamed them to the "iMIS Business Excellence Luncheon Series"; and for the format, we are introducing other speakers besides just me, and will be running them in both Melbourne and Sydney.

For the lunch last week Mick Varga was the featured speaker, and the audience was IT managers and IT executives from both customers and prospective customers. We also changed the format and made the presentation style a little more hard hitting, less high level and giving more practical advice that can be put into action right away. I spoke for the first 10 minutes to provide the introduction and overview, then Mick spoke for 10 minutes between main course and dessert, and again for 10 minutes after dessert.

ASI Customer Sales staff are hitting the road in June to host a series of face to face Customer Briefings that will coincide with the release of iMIS 15.1.

Perth - Thursday 4 June
Wellington - Thursday 11 June
Melbourne, Brisbane & Sydney dates to be confirmed

The briefings will offer customers the opportunity to catch up with the local iMIS Community and meet with ASI staff.

Presented will be valuable information on:
• New features of iMIS 15.1 - the latest release of iMIS
• The iMIS Get Smart initiative - a roadmap for navigating the economic downturn
• Recession-Buster discounts available to iMIS customers.

Home page for the monthly boardroom luncheons. Links to blog postings and speech transcripts for each luncheon:

2009

I hosted our final boardroom lunch of the year this week - 29th October - and we had an invited audience of membership department executives.

Last year we used the theme of "what keeps you awake at night" as a means of getting feedback and prompting discussion. This year I have adopted a new theme based on the business drivers of high-performance non-profits and the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF). The focus for this presentation was on process management rather than functional management using the "join now" process as the example. See more in the copy of the speech below.

ASI AP will be hosting a series of iMIS seminars for prospective iMIS clients during November.

Details are:

iMIS Seminar for Fundraising Organisations
Wednesday 19 November
9 am - 10.30 am
The Grace Hotel Sydney
77 York Street, Sydney

Thursday 20 November
9 am - 10.30 am
ASI offices
Level 22, 459 Collins Street, Melbourne

iMIS Seminar for Associations
Wednesday 19 November
12 noon - 1.30 pm (includes a light lunch)
The Grace Hotel Sydney
77 York Street, Sydney

Thursday 20 November
12 noon - 1.30 pm (includes a light lunch)
ASI offices
Level 22, 459 Collins Street, Melbourne

I hosted our fourth boardroom lunch of the year this week - 1st October - and we had an invited audience of CEO's and senior executives.

Last year we used the theme of "what keeps you awake at night" as a means of getting feedback and prompting discussion. This year I have adopted a new theme based on the 7 business drivers of high-performance non-profits and the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF). The focus for this presentation was on process management rather than functional management using the "join now" process as the example. See more in the copy of the speech below.

For the past 7 years we have run an annual executive briefing/forum for our top 15 association customers, and since last year we have also added a twice yearly IT round table for that same group of customers. For the first time we are taking the executive forum program to our top fundraising customers.

While we have had a number of large fundraising customers for the past few years, with strong sales in the last year into large fundraising organisations we now have a core group of at least 20 organisations that give us the numbers to run our first executive forum.

The executive forum is scheduled for Wednesday 3 September to be held in our temporary Sydney office. A save the date email has just been sent out - copy below. This is an invitation only event where we have invited the senior executive responsible for iMIS in each of our top fundraising customers. The agenda will be high level and based around the concepts of the iMIS Business Excellence Framework program and the 7 business drivers of high performance non-profits.

On Thursday 24 July we hosted our 2nd IT Round Table event in the Melbourne office. This is an invitation-only event for the IT managers of our largest customers and customers in the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF) program. It followed on from the Executive Forum we ran for the same group of customers earlier in the year (for the Exec Forum the invitations are for COO's and senior executives). I posted some notes on our preparation here.

Based on feedback from the IT round table last year we are going to run these 1 day events every 6 months. The next one is scheduled for November and we will move to Sydney for that event.

In getting ready for the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF) IT Round Table next week (see Marla's previous post here for details) Jay, Mick and myself have been discussing the role of the IT manager at a medium-to-large iMIS customer, and what their role should be in supporting iMIS.

In the past, the iMIS IT role was a technical role providing sound infrastructure (availability of systems and backups), a form of help desk, and technical services like report writing and data extractions. But with iMIS 15 continually evolving the IT role is changing too. So I asked the question - does the IT role stay the same, or is their opportunity for the IT management role to expand as iMIS expands? Into areas like process management, analytics and business automation. Should the IT manager role play an active role in the executive management team of our customers - like a CIO would do? To help drive business improvement and to help introduce concepts like the 7 business drivers of high performance non-profits?