I am still buzzing from the iBEF Conference in Toronto last week.   

In our pregame briefing earlier in the week we learned that we would have an interesting mix of executives and organization types attending this Conference; representatives from regulatory agencies, professional societies, accountant, architect, church, management, municipalities, trucking groups as well as a business school.  A wide range of attendees means different perspectives, different needs, different wants, but they all had one thing in common, “they use iMIS software and they want it work well.”  

My expectations of the discussions at this conference were exceeded by the engaged and energetic dialogue that took place.    Remember the agenda is set by those who “show up.” Thank you to all of you who attended and participated in this Conference.  Thank you for showing up. 

I think Woody Allen said that, “80% of success is just showing up.”  That must be like the 4 out of 5 dentists who recommend sugarless gum!  Anyway, I have always felt that there are three levels of showing up.   Sometimes, after all, the stars align in the worst way to prevent you from being at your best or even from being on time. 

So, first and foremost, just showing up is good.  Showing up on time is great.  And of course, the best habit to acquire is showing up on time and ready to contribute, which makes you valuable at every meeting.  It is amazing to me how many people show up at meetings not ready to participate.    If you are not going to add your voice or your experience to the discussion, why bother showing up?  Isn’t that a waste of your time?  

When you show up prepared and ready to contribute, your input becomes important.  It makes the final decision stronger when every corner of the organization (including yours) participates in this way.  Imagine how valuable you become when you show up with important information and ideas. Isn’t that the reputation you want to earn?   

As I tell anyone who will listen, “the iBEF Conference is the beginning of an executive level conversation about strategy, planning and continuous improvement, discovering what others are doing, what ASI is doing and what iMIS can do that you did not know.”   And Toronto Conference easily met this standard. 

In the coming weeks we will continue on-line (through our blog) some of the conversations we started in Toronto on iMIS Analytics, Task Centre, Data Management, Performance Management and iMobile.  If you have thoughts on any of these topics send me your comments and I will include them in the blog. Please consider joining us at one of the upcoming iBEF Conferences in 2010 (note:  If you travel by air to attend a Conference and stay overnight dinner is on me!): 

29-Jul           Chicago

16-Sep         London, UK

27-Sep         Washington DC at NiUG Discovery Conference

7-Oct            Houston

14-Oct          Sacramento

TBD             New York

TBD             Denver

11-Nov         Toronto

18-Nov         Atlanta      

When I became Executive Director of the New Jersey Apartment Association (NJAA) in the 1990s, the telephone in our office almost never rang.  Our mission statement proclaimed that we were the “voice of New Jersey’s apartment industry providing information, education and government affairs representation to the industry.”

But despite that lofty charge, our telephone still did not ring.  No members calling with compliance questions; no legislative staffers looking for statistics or information; no vendors looking for a new way to market their products and services; no reporters looking for a quote. 

We did have several calls from telephone service providers wanting to sell us new phone service.  Sarcastically, I would ask them if we switched to their phone service, would the phone start to ring more?  Their answer was always the same:  “No, but when it does ring it will cost you less.”

Which is what confirmed to me that this was not a telephone service issue.  Instead it was something about us that was preventing people from calling – or more to the point, believing they needed to call us.  In short, we had to consider who we were and who we wanted to be.

After some thought, I came up with an idea, gathered the team together in our conference room and distributed a piece of paper to our staff with a new mission:  “Make everyone who contacts us glad they did.”

Because before we could better serve our constituencies, we needed to change how we were perceived.  We needed to let them know, one call at a time, that calling the apartment association would be a valuable experience.

1. What did this mean?  It meant that, regardless of the question, we would do whatever was necessary to cause every caller to say, “My call to NJAA provided useful information.”  We weren’t trying to hit home runs; we were just shooting for “useful” and the feeling that calling us was not a waste of time.
2. Need to get and stay ready.  We then identified the top 20 reasons why people traditionally called us, and prepared excellent written responses in advance.  To support this effort, we put together packets of information on compliance and policy issues, marketing/sponsorship opportunities, programs and events, membership, and more so that each staffer could be ready to help any caller. 
3. Become a known industry resource.  We not only maintained our own event calendar, but the calendars of sister organizations as well as related regulatory agencies, the municipalities and the State legislature.  That way, even if someone called and we did not have what they needed, we could still be useful by directing them to the right place.

All groups have cultures -- and sometimes each corner of our organization has its own culture.  I suspect that culture often times is the biggest barrier to creating change.  The symptoms of problems in our organizational cultures are sometimes too subtle to identify (probably not as obvious as realizing the phone isn’t ringing) in order to change the culture to turn these issues around.

Why is it that some organizations succeed in incredibly competitive and price-driven markets, while others struggle?  Do these organizations have some special competitive advantage?  Probably not.  While piece by piece your organization probably has the ingredients to create its own advantages, it is also true that ordering and blending the pieces into a winning formula is elusive.  

So what enables organizations like these to nimbly adjust to market conditions, implement new systems, and succeed in down markets while the rest of us are busy just trying to get everyone on the same page?

1. “Are your strategic goals shared organization-wide?”
2. “Is every process and every action taken inside a department bringing you closer to those goals, or moving you away from those goals?”; and
3. “When times get tough does everyone retreat to their old ways of doing things, the ways that are most comfortable?  Or instead, does everyone work on improving and doing those things that will move you towards the achievement of your shared goals?”

Often when I discuss culture as a key to success, I get replies discounting the examples because those organizations had some kind of tangible competitive advantage.  That may be true for some, but certainly not for all.  Many organizations succeed despite the lack of a clear competitive advantage – and the reason is usually organizational culture.

But how many of us rank organizational culture as the key ingredient to our success?  And as leaders, what are we doing to ensure that the organizational culture, the culture we want and need to be successful, permeates every corner of the organization?

That said, I would love to hear your responses about organizational culture and its impact on change, new initiatives, achieving your goals, attaining success in your organization – and what you believe are the keys to “changing the culture.”

Hello,

I wanted to share some exciting information that may have been missed by community members. 

Nathan Slovin to lead iBEF; ASI’s innovative customer excellence program  Bob Alves, Chairman and CEO of Advanced Solutions International, Inc. (ASI), announced that the company has appointed Nathan Slovin to serve as Executive Director of it’s iMIS Business Excellence Forum (iBEF) program, a members only network of international iMIS customers committed to business excellence 

“At year end 2009 we took a big picture look at ASI and our customers and we found a gap; we had put into place the iMIS Business Excellence Forum (iBEF) to help iMIS customers maximize their value and investment in iMIS by improving overall organizational productivity, excellence, facilitating the sharing of information between our company and our customer’s organizations and providing our clients with an effective methodology to help customers take full advantage of iMIS. This year we are filling that gap, improving the program, by having one person take the sole focus for iBEF; someone to ensure that iBEF is a valuable resource to all of our customers who are members.”

Mr. Alves continued, “Late in 2009 Nathan Slovin, long-time nonprofit professional, attorney, former iMIS customer and NiUG founder, moved to Washington DC.  He and I had several meetings and the more I listened to his approach to nonprofit business I realized that his energy, enthusiasm and strength as an organization builder were what we needed to transform iBEF into a top level program for our customers.”

“Our award winning customer service departments and the people in them are tops, but I am not satisfied.  We need to continue evolving, serving our customers in different ways and at higher levels so that we continue to meet our company mission of keeping our customers for life.”  “By bringing Nathan Slovin on board as the Executive Director of iBEF, we put into place someone with wide-ranging perspective and industry credibility who will serve as an advocate for both our member customers and for ASI and our partners by leading iBEF, and building its value and enhancing communications between ASI and our member customers.”

Nathan Slovin said, “I am excited to be selected for this position.  Ever since I started my consulting firm I have been looking for situations like this.  It is a perfect fit.” Already working across departments at ASI to improve the iBEF experience for senior level executives in the iMIS community Slovin continued, “We have a full schedule of iBEF programs (13 total) in 2010 and we are looking to increase client participation by engaging the entire iMIS community in the process and making sure that every iBEF meeting is a valuable experience for the participants.”   “It is imperative that iBEF be valuable.  After all, we are asking senior level people at our client’s organizations to take time, participate in this program, improve planning and ultimately become an active member of the iBEF community.  Paramount to the success of this effort is making sure that we do not waste anyone’s time.  Our message, ‘Show up at iBEF and you will be glad you did.’” The iBEF program also has the support of the NiUG International User Group.  The iBEF Member Network has a position on the NiUG member community on their web site so members can engage on-line at their convenience all year long!    

About Nathan Slovin While I am trained as an attorney, my twenty-four+ year career includes experience as a property manager and legal counsel in the apartment industry and as Executive Vice President of the New Jersey Apartment Association (iMIS user), Interim CEO at the Arizona MultiHousing Association and the Greater Hudson Valley Apartment Association, former National Apartment Association (NAA) Board member and President of the NAA Association Executive Council.   As a consultant I have served clients in both the nonprofit and for-profit worlds; assessing and rebuilding process, operations and structure in all departments, planning and leading strategic planning sessions, rewriting By-laws and implementing leadership development programs including management training, human resources department development, assessing current and new revenue sources, providing interim executive services and serving as an ongoing advisor to management. I have spoken to groups across the country on laser focussed customer service, advanced leadership, working and speaking with elected officials and housing issues, meetings and events planning.  I am a trained mentor at Phoenix Youth at Risk, a founder of NiUG and have served as the Southwest Regional Marketing Director for an innovative security deposit insurance program. In short I have been around and have participated in the nonprofit world from every angle which gives me a unique perspective on nonprofit business management and leadership. 

Education:

• Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York, NY
• The George Washington University, Washington DC

About ASI

Advanced Solutions International (ASI) is the largest, privately owned global provider of software for member and donor-based non-profits and has served nearly 3000 customers and millions of users worldwide since 1991. ASI is the developer of iMIS, an upgradeable software solution for managing associations, membership, non-profits, and fundraising. iMIS 15, the latest evolution of iMIS, leverages Microsoft's .NET development platform to provide a flexible and open web-based solution.

Contact:Director of Public Relations
Advanced Systems International 901 N. Pitt Street, Ste 200Alexandria, VA 22314703-739-3100http://www.prweb.com 

Melbourne, Australia hosted ASI Asia-Pacific's first iBEF Executive Forum for 2010.  The venue was just outside the CBD in Richmond, overlooking the yarra river in the shade of the gum trees.  The group of 9 were almost all attending their first forum.  Thank you to all our guests for taking time out from their busy schedules to join us for what was a very fulfilling day for all.

Next stop is Sydney on Thursday 18 March 2010.

Here's a selection of the photos from the Melbourne event:

We are pleased to provide early notification of our planned iMIS Business Excellence Executive Forums for the Asia Pacific region in 2010.  We encourage iBEF group members to save the date to join us for the forum in the city most convenient to them.

Asia-Pacific iBEF Executive Forum Dates:

• Thursday 25 February - Melbourne 
• Thursday 18 March -  Sydney
• Thursday 15 July - Wellington 
• October (TBC) -  Gold Coast, Queensland (will be held prior to the NiUG Discovery Conference).

The forums offer a unique opportunity to network with a group of senior executives representing the largest Not for Profits in the iMIS community to discuss achieving business excellence and hear about what other Not-for-Profit organisations are doing to overcome common issues and challenges. Take a look previous attendees feedback here.
 

There is no cost to attend the iBEF Executive Forum. Travel and accommodation costs are at your own expense.  The forums are open to CEO. COO and senior level staff only - by invitation only.  Further details by contacting Marla Nelson at mnelson@advsol.com.

Surfers Paradise (yes there is such a place!) on Queensland's Gold Coast was the venue for the NiUG Asia-Pacific Discovery Conference and also hosted ASI Asia-Pacific's final iBEF Executive Forum for 2009.  Overlooking the Surfers Paradise skyline and coastline our group were able to break for a couple of photos with the well known Surfers Paradise skyline, including Q1 (the world's tallest residential tower) as their backdrop.  Unfortunately inclement weather prevented a stroll down to the beach!  The group also joined the more than 100 NiUG Conference delegates for welcome drinks at the end of the busy day.  Thanks to all our guests for making the trip.

Asia-Pacific's 2010 forum dates will be posted shortly.

Here's a selection of the photos:

The latest business excellence lunch was held in Melbourne on Wednesday, October 7, 2009.  It was attended by membership managers from 14 ASI customers. The key message delivered during the lunch was the need to drive members and prospective members online for transaction processing - specifically, that it should be a minimum standard to have an online renewal service for members with automated fulfilment, and that it should be a minimum standard that prospective members can join and pay online and with automated fulfilment.

A review of the websites of prospective customers prior to the event showed that most customers still do not have these basic abilities on their site.  We challenged them to take this back to their organisation with the overriding thought - "Less is More".  The key thinking is that to enable customers and prospecetive customers to give you money in the easiest possible way, your website and the way they transact cannot be a barrier.  To quote an industry source, you need to "get out of the way".  To see the David Gammel blog posting about this, go here.

You can look at the case study slides put together for the lunch, along with the notes to the presentation. (You'll need to be logged in to see these)

Feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.

o    Subscribe to our YouTube page at www.youtube.com/ASICommunity to learn more about ASI and iMIS.

We completed an iBEF Executive Forum in London, England, September 17/18, 2009, at the Royal Garden Hotel with a vista that incorporates Kensington Palace, Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall.The Forum included a very interesting and participative group that shared their strategy, successes and challenges. The feedback was positive and everyone enjoyed the networking opportunities. Thanks to everyone and we look forward to engaging each customer on a roadmap that will lead to an improved use of iMIS by embracing the iMIS Value Cycle.

Here's a selection of the photos: 

Hello, 

We had an update on iMIS 15.1.2 I thought I would share with the community, which may help with projects that you are planning. This is informational only and the list of enhancements may change.  

The one enhancement that will probably interest a lot of people is the ability to accept accrual dues via Public Views. This enhancement may avoid tailoring a solution using a tool like iBO for .net and allow a pure product solution that is always preferred.

iMIS 15 Production Schedule Update –15.1.2

Major Enhancements

• Ability to accept Accrual Dues via Public Views
• Improved Usability (Better Displays)

          o Image Manager – Improved Picture handling for web sites

          o Grid styling – Improved display of Grids like IQA output

          o Grid includes ‘show all’

• Variable Width Site Template # 1600 – For iPARTS
• Communities Roles & Moderation – Now can have a moderator
• Enhanced Credit Card Security

          o Optional Advanced PCI Compliance Option

          o Gateway reference number tracked

          o Native SafePay (formerly Verisign) support for web transactions

• Gift Aid
• Improved WCM performance for remote servers
• Multi-instance Utility – For running 2 different versions of iMIS at the same time.

Sydney, Australia was the most recent Australian city to host the iBEF Executive Forum.  The venue for the event was down on Circular Quay overlooking the Harbour and the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.  After a heavy going afternoon of presentations and discussion, it was a welcome distraction for the group to take a short wander down to the Sydney Opera House and take in the afternoon sunshine for a few group photos!  The August Forum brought together the most diverse and largest group of Asia-Pacific customers ever for a AP Forum.

Asia-Pacific's next forum will be held prior to the NiUG Discovery Conference in another great location - the Gold Coast, Queensland. 

Here's a selection of the photos:

The 2009 Sydney iBEF Executive Forum was held in Sydney on 27 and 28 August.  As always the event provided a great chance to hear the successes that customers have had and the challenges that they are facing.  And the feedback tells us that our customers get a great deal from hearing about ASI strategy and direction, the chance to network with their peers and in particular, case studies providing real world examples of how customers are attacking business challenges.

Bob ran most of the first da, with a little help from Paul.  This day covered a review of the iMIS Product direction, the ASI business strategy as laid out in the balanced scorecard and a great deal of discussion surrounding specific customer strategies and business initiatives.

Dinner gave us the chance to engage in less formal discussion.  I found it incredibly interesting to hear from Amnesty their aspirations in engaging 500,000 Australians in action every year.  For them, this may mean an active database of 3 or 4 million people - 20% of the Australian population!!  I was impressed with what a great mission this is to be involved in and how committed Andrew and Jason were to achieving their goals.

The second day was led by the case studies and then followed by a number of sessions targeted at specific solution areas, trying to tie together problems raised on day 1 with how they might be addressed.  Again, the feedback from the sessions was that our customers are hungry for case studies.  Our intent is to try to make the whole second part of the event case srudy focussed.  Each presentation will have a case study element and, if possible, we will try to engage some customers in presenting the case study materials themselves.

For access to the materials, follow this link

Thanks to all those who attended and I look forward now to engaging with each customer on a roadmap that will lead to an improved, successful use of iMIS and embracing of the iMIS Value Cycle

We have just finished a number of iBEF Executive Forums over the last month that covered San Francisco, New York, Arlington and Toronto.

The forums went well and we got customers into interesting discussions on their strategy, planning process and during the workshop preview their inhibitors, business drivers and initiatives.

There were some requests by attendees about 3rd party product information that can help extend the capabilities of iMIS. I have added to the library and entry for ‘2009 Presidents Awards Overviews’ that provides this type of information about additional product based solutions. 

Another source of solutions developed for iMIS by iMIS partners, developers, and customers is at http://www.advsol.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Extend_iMIS

I hope the information is helpful to you.

Following are the notes from the 3 speeches delivered at the iMIS Business Excellence Lunch.  You can link to each section below:

Go here for Opening Remarks

Go here for the content of Session 1

Go here for the content of Session 2

Opening Remarks

Good afternoon and welcome. It is my great pleasure to host our monthly iMIS Business Excellence luncheon today.

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 most of you are CEO’s or general managers.
And for that reason, I know you have common challenges that you face in your jobs and with your organisations, 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 iMIS business excellence, which I am going to start with right now. After main course Mick Varga, the manager of the iMIS Business Excellence Program will be speaking, and then Mick will be back again to close off the luncheon with you after dessert.

But first, an introduction to iMIS business excellence.  Let me take the business excellence part first.  Here at ASI we believe in a solid management system to run our business, to link our strategy to our execution and provide transparency to our staff and stakeholders in how we are doing.  For certain, it is part of our success.   We actually use the Balanced Scorecard management system, pioneered by Kaplan and Norton in the early 90’s, as our business foundation.  Some of you may be familiar with Balanced Scorecard, and if so you will be aware it really is one type of management or quality framework, which are today more generally called business excellence frameworks.  Other examples include Baldridge in the US, Six Sigma and locally the Australian Business Excellence Framework.  Business excellence if it’s not already needs to be on your radar.  Regardless of which specific system you follow, there are some common principles which include a focus on process, a focus on facts and measurement, and the concept of continuous improvement.   A guess what – iMIS can help support these things in your organisation.

So what does iMIS do?  Great question.  Unfortunately when I talk to many customers, this is what I hear:

• I know we have iMIS but we don’t use iMIS very well. 
• We have had staff turnover and the people that used to be good on iMIS are no longer working here.
• We only use 10% of what iMIS can do.

We hear these things and it is simply not a good enough excuse anymore. 

So let me start by giving you the CEO view of iMIS.  And to do so, I would like to draw your attention to this handout you have called the iMIS Value Cycle.

The first thing you will notice is that the cycle is a continuous cycle – which means it embraces one of the core fundamentals of business excellence – which is continuous improvement.

It starts at the top with Relationship Management – essentially the CRM functions of your system – and then circles clockwise, to marketing and communication – getting the right message to the right person at the right time, and then getting the right result – a transaction – commerce – like a membership renewal, an event registration, a donation, a product sale. And then we use all that information to build business intelligence that allows us to refine our relationships, our marketing and our commerce to go around the cycle again. Continuous improvement.

One of the key things to note here is that iMIS is an enterprise system.   It is not just a system to track your members and donors – that’s just the top part. It is not just a system to track payments from members or donors – that’s just the bottom part.  It is an enterprise system that will work right across your organisation. 

Let me illustrate that point by giving you an example of what happened after a customer started using iMIS across their organisation.  This was a real estate organisation and before iMIS they had separate systems in each of their departments.  If their merchandising department sold an “auction” sign, no-one else in the organisation knew or cared.  But when they started using iMIS the training and events team all of sudden were able to see what customers were buying.  And guess what – they were able to check to see if that member who bought an “auction” sign had actually been to an auctioneering training course, and if not, they signed them up.   While this may seem elementary, for this organisation it was almost earth shattering in the way it opened up the business.  Now you may laugh, but before you do I suggest that you take a hard look at your own organisation and I am sure you have examples like this going on regularly, today.

So while we can talk about the iMIS Value Cycle and agree with concepts, the execution is lacking in most organisations, and this has got to change.  If anything, the global financial crisis is a good wake up call for many of you here today that organisations in the non-profit sector need to embrace business excellence programs and best-practice concepts sooner rather than later. And if you are an iMIS customer we are going to be driving you this way harder than ever before. While at the same time ensuring each version of iMIS, including the latest version iMIS 15.1, allows you to implement and build on business excellence.

Each month we hold these Boardorom luncheons, we invite various department heads from your organisations, and we continue to spread the message of business excellence.  But we can really only be successful if you here today, the CEO’s and GM’s, understand our message and can help drive your organisations towards business excellence – a focus on process, measurement and continuous improvement.  To implement the iMIS value cycle right across your enterprise.

We will now be serving main course.  I would invite you to discuss over lunch, with your peers at your table, your member acquisition processes.  That is how do members join your organisation, and how do you ensure that they rejoin for their second year?   What are the processes you have in place, how do you measure them, and what role does continuous improvement play in your acquisition processes.  Mick will be continuing that theme right after main course is served.

Session 1

A look at a key process

Paul kicked off today talking about Business Excellence and the iMIS Value Cycle.  I am going to continue that theme.  Firstly, I want to talk about process and the opportunities that adopting a true process focus can bring.

I want to walk through a simple example that should be relevant to most of you – the process for acquiring a new member.

When I work with your teams and I ask about the member acquisition process, I tend to get a very departmental view.  Your management teams and their staff will talk in a lot of detail about the functional steps in processing a membership application and payment.  Give or take some detail, they will create a list of steps that looks something like the steps mapped out on the handout you have entitled New Member Joins.

Now, it certainly helps to have this level of detail documented about the rules and instructions for processing a new member’s application and payment.  If the proverbial bus comes along, someone will be able to pick up these instructions and keep the organisation ticking over.

But this is not a process focus.  This is merely a set of processing instructions

It tells us nothing about where these new members came from.  Did they attend an event or training class with us?  Did we target them from an acquired list?  Did they register their interest with us on our web site?  How did we campaign to them?  How many times did we have to ask before they responded?

And once they have joined, what do we then expect to do with them.  Will they simply just get our newsletter?  Will we sit back and hope that they find the things they expected to get from us when they decided to join?

I’m sure it won’t be quite as unstructured as that, but I am also sure that for a lot of you, your members are not being engaged in a way that is measured and repeatable.  Do you know how many non-member event attendees are being converted to members?  Do you know the rate of first year members that fail to renew?  Can you cross reference this against the activity those new members undertook?  Are new members who attend the annual conference more or less likely to renew?  If they are more likely to renew, are you targeting them in structured and repeatable ways to drive their conference attendance and, as a consequence, an improvement in first year renewals?  Do you then go back and confirm that the assumptions you made about this correlation are true?

Being truly process focussed is about driving these things.  If you look at the other side of your handout, there is an expanded view of the New Member Join process. 

This time it is called Acquiring a New Member.  When we look at the process at this level we see a number of things that were hidden from us in the New Member Join process.

•    We have a defined marketing campaign that has known rules for who and how we target new members
•    We have a defined process for how we manage each new member opportunity.
•    And once the application has been processed, we have a series of engagement steps that every new member will be managed through.

We can now start getting an organisational picture of how a new member is engaged.  This will be a series of steps that are inherently inter-departmental.  It is a customer-centric view.  And implicit within the process is the fact that we can measure what happens at each step to confirm or refute the assumptions we’ve made about the process and make refinements

To create a picture of how this manifests itself at customers that I’ve worked with, I thought I’d highlight a few examples of inadequate or siloed processes

A national membership organisation we work with has coined the phrase mail-out fatigue.  More and more they are being contacted by members complaining about the number of mailings they are receiving.  The reason it is happening – nowhere in the organisation is there a defined process for how, what and how often each contact should be contacted.  So each department and each region is sending out many single message emails a month and no one is recording the communications being made.  It is not uncommon for a member to receive upwards of 20 emails in a month.  Imagine how this would impact on someone who has just joined as a member.  And with all this unmanaged communication, how can they know what is being effective?

The next example is poor execution of segmentation.  Many organisations execute segmentation by exporting their database into Excel and then they create the segments by hand.  This is, of course, very prone to error.  Recently, a national charity sent out a number of duplicate mailings – one for donors, and one for their members.  If you were both a member and a donor, you may have got the same mailing twice.  Apart from being expensive and wasteful, it was poor donor care as the organisation was unable to explain to the customer when they called in to check why they got two magazines.  The culprit – the segments were created by hand in Excel.

The final example is the segmentation model being well known in the marketing department, but not known to other departments – in this case, the call centre.    The marketing department of this membership organisation did some nice work in tailoring some campaigns to sell some training courses, including a couple of special offers for members in a some selected segments.  However the member call centre was not able to identify the members in those special segments and was not able to properly manage the calls.  The result – a lower conversion rate. Which was unfortunate because the marketing campaign was actually spot on.
How does iMIS help?  The answer is found in the iMIS Value Cycle and that’s what I’m going to touch on briefly after dessert.  While you’re enjoying your dessert, we would like to know where you see your organisation in line with this.  Do you have a defined, customer focussed acquisition process?  Or is your organisation still a loose collaboration of departmental silos that treat the member independently?

Session 2 

The iMIS Value Cycle

For this section, I want to go back to the iMIS Value Cycle diagram that has been given to each of you today.
The iMIS Value Cycle is a simple yet powerful explanation of how iMIS can help you consistently improve the way your organization is run. 

There are 3 key messages within it.

The first message is that you are a single enterprise and you need an enterprise system.  To be excellent, your organisation needs a system that is seamlessly integrated.  

• You need to know that a group of prospective members was influenced more powerfully by message A than message B. 
  
• You need to be able to get a single view of all the interactions that took place to get to the point of a member joining.
  
• And then after they have joined, you need to know that new members are retained at a higher rate when, for example, they attend a particular event or purchase a particular product
  

And you need to know these things with concrete certainty.  Only a fully integrated system can relate directly your marketing and communication efforts to the commerce or engagement they generated.  The outputs from one activity are the inputs to others.  Without an integrated, enterprise system, delivering this is practically impossible.

The second message follows on from this - your organisation runs on processes where the inputs of one process are the outputs of others.   

• When a new member is added, you need to know and have defined the best way to manage the ongoing engagement with them. 
  
• Based on your research and knowledge about other members with similar profiles, you need to know how this new member will get the most from their relationship with you.
  
• You need to know and have defined the optimal mix of products and services to be offered to them. 
  
• And you need to know that doing these things will deliver the best chance of retaining them.
  

By having defined processes that are member focussed and follow the flow the iMIS Value cycle it is possible to ensure that your organisation is streamlined and efficient.  When you acquire a new member, you need defined processes to manage the communication with them.  You need to ensure that crux of those communications is to drive engagement. 

Some of that engagement will be commerce, certainly, but it will also be other participation – on a committee, as a volunteer, or as a speaker at an event.  Through the recording of that engagement, you will be able to explore the patterns of behaviour and then feed that knowledge back into the cycle.  As an example, we can see tangible results of that participation as a measureable improvement in their likelihood to renew

And this leads to the third element - continuous improvement. 

For some of you, you may not be in a position to know the relationships between the different processes in your organisation.  You might not know that a new member attending a particular event delivers a much higher likelihood of second year retention.  Or that an element of your membership only joins to get a discount on the annual conference.  You may have a feeling about it, or have anecdotal evidence, but you lack the concrete evidence.

But if you use an enterprise system that adheres to this kind of value cycle, you will get this concrete knowledge.  And once you have it, it forms the basis for continuous improvement. 

• You can use the integrated knowledge that has been gained from each area of the value cycle to refine your understanding of your membership. 
• You can analyse behaviour patterns and adjust processes accordingly. 
• You can create defined processes that offer specific engagement opportunities that you know will drive improved retention, like targeting all new members with that key event, or creating a new membership offer for those members that only want the discount on the annual conference.

And then it is on to the next lap of the cycle - measuring whether those changes to the process were effective, continuing our pursuit of excellence.

To close, I’d just like to look at some of the areas within iMIS that support the value cycle.

There are of course the tools that you know about that most of you here are using, such as the core Customer and Relationship management modules and the vertical commerce modules

But there is now much more to iMIS, aimed at supporting you in an integrated way in all areas of the value cycle

There are Process Manager and Task Centre that support definition and management of your processes and automation where appropriate.

There is the Marketing Suite that enables the creation of segmented, targeted marketing campaigns and automatically correlates the activity generated by the campaign with the segment and message that led to that activity.

There is iMIS analytics, which enables you to drill down into all the information in your iMIS system to identify relationships between pieces of information to assist in refining your processes.

And there are tools for softer engagement, like iMIS community and Social Networking tools that support open, member to member interactions.

To get more information on what is available in these and other areas, there is a link at the bottom of the value cycle diagram you have.  And as a follow up from today, we will send each of you a personalised value cycle that shows you the components of iMIS you own and don’t own, and where they relate to the value cycle

Thank you for your time