Back in May of last year, I wrote the following post, which in essence said “There’s a lot of talk about dashboards, but I’ve encountered very few myself.”

Well, while attending the Aptify Users Conference a few weeks ago, one of the speakers was demonstrating the dashboards available in the Aptify product (which are, quite frankly, pretty slick). But the speaker went on to say “This is one of the most underutilized portions of our system.”

So  I’ll ask again, why aren’t more associations using dashboards? Do they not see the value? Or is it just to difficult to get them working correctly?

I’ll be speaking in Chicago next Thursday, October 2, for the Association Forum of Chicagoland. My presentation will be on “Data Mining and Business Intelligence.” You can get all the details here.

I attended the Aptify Users Conference in Chicago last week. I always enjoy the users conferences because I get a chance to hear what the company is rolling out in the coming year, and I also get a chance to hear the experiences of the users themselves.

Aptify is rolling out version 5.0 of their association management system sometime before the end of this year. They demoed some of the new features in 5.0. Below are a few that I found noteworthy:

• Role-based profiles. With these profiles, when users log in, they will be presented with certain types of functionality based on their role. For example, if you’re doing membership processing, you’ll only be presented with functionality that applies to that. I think role-based profiles (aka, “personas”) are going to be a key feature in future AMSs, because these profiles will help increase user adoption. “Screen noise” is one of the major hurdles to user adoption, and role-based profiles will help eliminate screen noise and allow the user to focus on the task at hand.
• Aptify is adding an “awards module” to 5.0, which will be included in the baseline system (i.e., no additional cost).
• Version 5.0 now has a recently used views along with recently used records. This means the user can quickly access a screen view that was recently being used (e.g., a query result) rather than having to navigate back to it with multiple clicks.
• Spell checking on all fields. Not surprisingly, I hear this from a lot of my clients. Spell checking on a database can be a tricky thing, but Aptify has added this functionality, although it has to be manually executed (”on demand”) rather than spell-checking while you type. Still, a nice feature.
• Save pending changes. With this functionality, users can save changes to the database that actually won’t take effect until some future date. For example, if you learn of an address change for a company that will take place in the future, you can add the data now but save the changes to take effect on some future date. Pretty slick.

My only criticism of the users conference was that the presentations were too heavy on the Aptify side and too light on the user side. That is, a users conference should be about the users, and presented (to the extent possible) by the users. I know Aptify is working on this for future conferences.

You can read my other users conference reviews here.

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.

One of the most significant changes to occur over the past couple of years in database management is the idea that the database must be more customer-friendly. Prior to Al Gore inventing the internet, when associations considered which database they might use, the only audience to consider was staff. That is, how would staff interact with the database.

Of course, all of that has changed. As a result, when considering a new association management system, associations must now consider not only how the staff interacts with the database, but how members and customers will interact with it, as well.

What this means is there is a dynamic tension between making something flexible enough for staff, while making it easy enough for online customers to use the system without needing training. In my experience, some AMS vendors do this better than others, but all of them struggle with maintaining that balance.

So when evaluating new systems, you have to be aware of this tension and be sure to evaluate the system from both a staffer’s perspective as well as the perspective of your members and customers.

I recently traded emails with an association colleague of mine, an executive director of a small association, asking him how his search for a new AMS was going. (He is not a client, but chose to do this on his own.)

He has called the process “a train wreck.” Here are just some of his comments (he agreed to let me discuss this as long as I keep his name and the product name anonymous):

“Goal was to have an all-in-one system that was both all the front-end stuff (CMS, forums, social networking, etc, etc) AND have a good enough back-end (ie, to avoid a separate hardcore AMS).

So, we wanted both, and it turns out that it is kinda good at neither once you try to start bending it to your specific needs.”

In other words, what they tried to get was a system that could do really good “Web 2.0″ and still provide solid association management tools. And in the end, from his perspective, he got neither.

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon experience for a lot of organizations. We focus on some really cool or powerful features (e.g., web 2.0 tools) and neglect to determine if the basics are being taken care of (e.g., standard AMS functionality like accounts receivable).

My experience suggests that the “old school” AMS vendors (those that have been around for 10+ years) do the basics of AMS very well. And that the new kids on the block (those that started from a web- and broad-community-of-users- perspective) do the Web 2.0 stuff really well. The problem is trying to get one system that does them both well.

So far I’ve not come across any system that does both exceedingly well. But if I had to choose, I’d choose the AMS functionality over the Web 2.0 functionality, because in the end, managing the money will be most important.

The traditional AMS vendors will catch up on the Web 2.0 stuff eventually. And the new guys with their newfangled 2.0 tools will eventually have stronger AMS back-ends. But for now, it’s the classic definition of compromise: A compromise is where neither party gets what they want and neither party is happy.

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.

Selection and implementation of a new association management system is an incredibly trying process. If done well, at the end of it all, you’ll have a new system that will address your organization’s business needs. There is a natural tendency to think “we’re finished” once the new system is up and running.

But alas, our work has just begun. Data management is a process, not an event, and as such, requires us to continually review how things are going. I typically recommend to my clients that six months and one year after going live with a new system, they take a few days to do a complete system review (i.e., audit). The purpose of the audit is two-fold: To do a sanity check to ensure that we’re accomplishing the things we set out to accomplish when we first began the project; and to determine if there are new needs that have arisen since the project began that we’re not yet addressing.

In my experience, organizations typically find both; that they have not accomplished everything they set out to do, and that new issues have come up. But that’s okay. This is a process. Like adjusting your course on a sailboat, continually reviewing where you are an making adjustments as needed will ensure that you get to the right destination.

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.

I recently received a copy of NTEN's CRM Satisfaction survey (you can get your own copy here). Here are my reactions:

• One conclusion drawn from the survey suggests that "after sales support" and a "user friendly interface" were the two most valued factors in a CRM system. This nicely validates something I wrote almost eight years ago.
• It was interesting to see that of the 22 systems that made the survey list, only four got an "A" (or A+ in one case) for "value." In all four cases, the systems that received those grades are free. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
• Of the 22 systems profiled, only two (Avectra's netForum and Advanced Solutions' iMIS) are broadly used in the association market. This survey covered the broader "non-profit" market (of which associations are a subset). Non-profits tend to focus on fundraising, for example, more than a typical association might.

I think this survey will be useful to non-profits considering CRM systems. Kudos to NTEN for putting this together.

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. In addition, NTEN is a former EDM client.