Protech held their first annual users group conference last week in DC. I thought it was a pretty good effort, but I hate attending conferences at the Reagan Building. That building was designed to confuse me.

At any rate, once I was able to find the conference and the meeting rooms, I was pleased with what I saw and heard. Protech did a nice job of developing a cross-section of break-out sessions covering both technical and non-technical topics. They also announced that they will be working on developing a CRM for Members users group, which is great news. I’m constantly harping on my clients (and at the AMS vendors) to get active in their users group, and if there isn’t a users group, start one! (Here’s a short rant from several years ago: http://www.effectivedatabase.com/join_users_group.shtml).

CRM4M is  very promising product, but it will be much better served if the customers can get organized and communicate to Protech what their needs are.

One cool thing I learned: The link from CRM4M to Excel can be dynamic. That is, you can create a query, export it to Excel, and make the link dynamic to the website so that every time the Excel sheet is opened, it checks the database to see if data has been updated. Very cool!

A less cool note was that the Word merge capabilities in CRM4M only work through Outlook. That is, you have to be using Outlook as your database view (which is very cool in its own right) to use the Word merge capabilities. This is less cool because many users work from the web browser rather than from Outlook.

UPDATE: Full disclosure: EDM is an independent third-party consulting firm. This means we have no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this blog. We provide unbiased opinions on what we see.

At a session at TAUG (TMA Resources Annual Users Group meeting), Ron Moen asked a great question: "How many of you 'mystery shop' your own association?"

What a GREAT question. I'd be willing to bet the answer is somewhere around 1% of all associations actually do.

I typically do this as a side-effect of the work I do with my clients. Often I'm testing their new systems, and so I'm experiencing the online aspect of what a customer sees. But how many times have you actually had someone call your association and try to order something? There are firms you can pay to do this, or you could just have your Aunt Sally do it on your behalf. Either way, it's worth a try. I'd love to hear some stories of associations doing this.

So this is very cool: http://wiki.avectra.com

Avectra has created a wiki for (as they put it) "the use of its staff, clients, prospects and partners to share and expand our knowlege of netFORUM." Right now it's still an open site. It will be interesting to see if stays public, because it's bound to include information about the netFORUM product that they won't want their competitors to see.

On the other hand, perhaps this transparency will give them a competitive edge. I'd love to see it stay public and hopefully it will grow. I'm constantly harping on my clients (and anyone who will listen) to get active in their vendors' users groups, and this wiki is certainly another avenue for participation.

UPDATE: Full disclosure: EDM is an independent third-party consulting firm. This means we have no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this blog. We provide unbiased opinions on what we see.

For years now I've been hearing from vendors about "dashboards." (I think the first time I heard the term was in 1998.) And I've seen some VERY slick dashboard tools, most recently at Protech's first Customer Conference. But I can honestly say, with the hundreds of associations I've worked for, worked in, and know of, I can count on one hand the number of associations that actually use dashboards.

Am I simply missing those associations that are using them, or is my experience "typical" ? Are there assocations out there using dashboards (specifically dashboards driven from their AMS or a data warehouse)? Or is this all talk, now going on ten years? I'd love to hear from anyone who has even seen dashboards in action, much less uses them.

I had the opportunity to attend TMA Resources Annual Users Group meeting (TAUG) last week in Albuquerque. They put on a very impressive event, including two sessions specifically focused on AMS consultants.

TMAR is focused on their new AMS product dubbed Personify. The product looks very slick, including some nice integrations with Business Objects for dashboards, analytics, etc. I don’t have any ideas on pricing at this point, but I’m fairly certain this product will be out of reach of smaller associations (those with budgets under $5 million).

In one session on customer service, I got to hear the story of an association that had raised its dues by $5. As a result, as many as 25% of their members were paying the old dues, even though the new dues were clearly printed on the invoice. The customers were saying, in effect, sorry, I’m not paying higher dues. The association was seeing this as a “customer service” issue. I’m sorry, but if a quarter of your members are refusing to pay a nominal dues increase, you don’t have a customer service issue, you have a business model and value communications issue. No amount of customer service training or database improvements is going to fix that!

UPDATE: Full disclosure: EDM is an independent third-party consulting firm. This means we have no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this blog. We provide unbiased opinions on what we see.

I'm always urging my clients to develop staff positions that focus on maintainenance of the database. And I don't mean a dba in the traditional sense (i.e., one who tunes the system and keeps the technology running) but a staffer who is responsible for making the database work for the organization.  

The National Defense Industrial Association recently advertised for a position called "Data Integrity Manager." You can read about it here: http://asi.careerhq.org/jobdetail.cfm?job=2536639  

Hallelujah! Data integrity is crucial to long-term database success. By creating this position, NDIA not only sends the message that data integrity is important, but is improving the likelihood of success with their system. One of the primary reasons users stop using a system is their belief (accurate or unfounded) that "the data is wrong." With a staff person in charge, users can no longer hide behind this excuse. If the data is wrong, the Data Integrity Manager has a responsibility to make it right.