I had the opportunity to sit through a lengthy demo of the Polaris product from ARC Solutions. Overall I was pretty impressed with what I saw. Their product is entirely web-based and takes advantage of all the latest technology available to web-based databases.

ARC is still a relatively young business (7 years old) and still has a relatively small client list (under 30 clients). But they’ve received some venture capital money and have developed some very nice tools. Their target market is associations in the $1 million to $25 million budget range, and I think this product will be a good consideration for these associations.

Some of the things I saw that I liked:

• The “recent items” task bar reflects more than just recent contacts (i.e., individual and organization records) but also reflects recent “objects” such as an order page or an event set up page. I think that’s cool because I find I frequently have to return to a page I was working on and the page is often NOT related to a person or org record.
• “Resend confirmation email.” This simple link resends the confirmation email for a membership join or renewal or an event registration (and probably others). A really simple function that’s missing from a lot of other AMS products.
• The system has really nice user tools that allow you to add fields and place them on many different screens. Also of note is that the users can “design” how the staff view looks and how the “member portal” (public-facing pages) look. These can look different, which is good. The downside is if you make a field change to the database, you have to remember to make a change in a couple of different places if you want that change to show on both the staff and public side. Overall, though, I think it’s net positive.

Some of the weaknesses:

• As of now, there is no Outlook integration. So any conversations had in Outlook need to be manually copied to records within Polaris.
• There are no email templates available at the individual record level. That means that if you want to send a single email to someone (say directions to your event) you’ll have to have a copy of that in Word (or somewhere else) and cut and paste it into the email within the database.

Overall, if your organization is willing to take a risk on a relative newcomer to the association, this is a product worth checking out.

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.

As I noted here, I was pleased to see an AMS vendor provide client access to their online help system. In a nutshell, the online help that is available from the vendor can be modified by the client to include client-specific business rules. This is a great concept and one that is long overdue.

I’m pleased to report that I sat through two demos last week where both vendors allowed for the same thing: Protech and Aptify.

In the case of Aptify, the online help can be modified by the client and is protected through upgrades. In addition, Aptify allows for field-level help as well, which is very cool. In their case, you can hover over a field within the database and call up help on that specific field. Nice feature.

I’m very pleased to see more vendors offering this option, and I hope in the near future it will become standard industry practice.

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 was attending a demo for one of my clients recently. They were taking a look at the IMPAK database from Integrated Software Systems, Inc. (ISSI).

During the demo, the ISSI staff pointed out that there is online help on each screen of the database. But what really caught my attention is a simple utility within the database that allows the client to edit the online help screens. In other words, for each screen in the database (and sometimes for multiple sections within the screen) there is an online help tool that the client can edit to add any of their own business rules and processes. What a great idea!

As I have written many times (here and here, for example), documentation is absolutely critical to long-term data management success. Yet very few organizations ever bother to document what they do. Now, at least one vendor is making it very easy to do that.

Kudos to ISSI for implementing this concept.

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.

Members Only Software has been running a quarterly giveaway of their association management software to "needy" organizations. According to the press release I received, United Cerebral Palsy of Michigan received their free software last Winter and has been live since April 2007.

As I wrote here, "free" software can be a risky proposition for associations, but if you understand the risks going in, there's nothing inherently wrong with free software.

For more information on the program, contact Doria Howe at doria (at) membersonlysoftware.com or 202-332-9662.

Kudos to Members Only Software for "giving back" to the community.

ARC Solutions is one of the many AMS vendors that I track (full disclosure: one of my clients uses them for their AMS). So I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised to hear that ARC has secured $2 million in venture capital funding to support the roll-out of their new product Polaris. I've seen an early demo of the product and it looks promising. ARC is selling it in a SaaS model (see salesforce.com as an example) so the pricing could be very association-friendly.

I'll be keeping an eye on the product and the company and will report back when I've learned more.

I had the opportunity to view a demo of the Computility AMS recently. For very small associations, I think the system is worth consideration. Here are the highlights:

• CRM tool. The system includes a neat area for tracking contacts and follow ups with companies and individuals, and even allows for assigning follow up to other staff members.
• "Process" tab. Computility will work with the association to identify any "repeatable" tasks (e.g., membership sales and follow up) and set these up under the Process tab for easier tracking. It's a sort of workflow tool that I've not seen in many other AMS products.
• Pricing. Computility has very aggressive pricing for implementation and sell their product as an SaaS tool. This means a monthly fee per named user, which Computility has set very low, at least for now.

Weaknesses:

• e-commerce tools are still under development. For example, there is no utility currently for a member directory driven from the database (this is coming in the Fall, I'm told).
• Membership is tracked by a checkbox. I'm not a fan of systems that track membership this way. Membership should be tracked based on invoices so that no one "accidentally" adds or deletes members with a simple check of a box.
• Reporting. The query tool was good, but the reports tend to be simple queries, rather than full-fledged printable reports.

Overall the system holds promise. Even though the database itself is five years old, I think it still needs development in key areas (particularly e-commerce). Time will tell.

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 was trading emails with my colleague (and fellow AMS consultant) George Breeden recently, and he raised an issue that I've long felt was missing from essentially every AMS vendor out there. George put it this way:

The vendors should be taking proactive steps to maintain and build the relationships, not just in a reactive manner when they think the client is leaving - it's too late then. I would suggest that part of the package would be a yearly gap assessment and recalibration (training, BI, usage, etc) to help make sure the organization was getting the most of out the AMS system. If they were smart, they wouldn't charge for it either.

I think this is a brilliant idea, and I would add the following, which I've suggested to some of the AMS vendors. Every AMS vendor should have a client ombudsman. The ombudsman's job is to reach out to every single client on a regular basis, to get a sense of what the client is doing, how happy or unhappy they are with the AMS product, and what kinds of issues the vendor should be focusing on.

The reality is that the vast majority of associations that I talk to feel like they're out there on their own when it comes to their AMS. They feel like the only time their vendor listens is whent they're spending money. I'm always harping about how associations need to view this as a long-term relationship (see here, for example). Perhaps I need to start harping on the vendors, too.

For associations: What do you think? Is your AMS vendor paying attention?

For vendors: What do you think? Why can't you implement these ideas?

I spent the day at the Users Group meeting for JL Systems last week. JL is introducing a new product, called "New NOAH" (as far as I can tell).

The system is fully browser-based (which is a change from their Access-based legacy system) and is based on the DotNetNuke development framework. This is significant because JL can now tap into a broad range of developers who are building "snap ins" for the DotNetNuke platform, which may allow it to bring new tools to its AMS more quickly.

There are some nice new features, including the ability to modify screens so that you're seeing the data that's important to you, in a way that is useful to you. This new product is a nice leap forward for JL, whose NOAH product was getting pretty long in the tooth.

Performance of the database during the meeting was abysmal. Screen changes took many seconds to refresh. I'm going to give JL the benefit of the doubt and blame this on 50 people sharing one wireless access point, and all hitting a development server. But like all browser-based applications, JL needs to pay close attention to performance and screen refresh speeds. This will be especially true of their legacy clients moving from relatively fast Access program to a browser.

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.

Avectra recently released version 2.0 of netFORUM and several of their existing clients are now working through the process of upgrading.

Christy Gemuendt, Project Manager, Healthcare Assn. of NY State, had the following things to say about their upgrade (posted with her permission):

• Overall, the upgrade went very smoothly. There were very few "showstoppers" found during the testing process. Anything found was fixed in very short order.
• The interface was VERY well received. Even my most cantankerous users are smiling. Big kudos on the overhaul of the UI.
• Users are loving a number of the features, such as add batch on the fly and favorites.
• There are noticeable performance enhancements, and we aren't even taking advantage of all of them yet (we don't yet run IE 7.0, which is required for some of the AJAX enhancements to be most effective).
• We noticed reports are running *fast* compared to before. We received so few helpdesk calls today (all so far have been related to user education) regarding the system that I am thinking of buying a few extra lottery tickets on my way home….

Upgrades are one of the necessary evils that we all have to endure with our data management systems. Congratulations to HANYS and to Avectra for a job well done. I hope to hear from more Avectra clients about smooth and successful upgrades.

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 recently sat in a demo for ISSI's IMPAK software. I've been working with ISSI since 2002. I've always said that ISSI offers more "bang for your buck" (i.e., functionality for the dollar) than just about any AMS on the market, and the latest offering didn't disappoint.

During the demo, three things jumped out at me:

1. The contact management piece within IMPAK now provides auto-email capability. Simply put, this means that if an activity is assigned to another user (e.g., a call comes in and another staffer needs to respond to it), the IMPAK system will kick off an email to the staff person who was assigned to the task, even if that person is not logged into the database.
2. Their grassroots module now has an integration with CapWiz.
3. A sponsors module has been added as a separate module (sponsors used to be managed within events). This provides additional functionality.

As is typical of ISSI, all of these modules come as part of the baseline package. I'm amazed at what they squeeze into their AMS for such a relatively low price.

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.