Todd Hager to present on Panel at Columbia Books Conference, “Beating the Recession: The Non-profit Executive Tool Kit”

Cost-saving Methods Available for Associations to Ride out the Recession

Bethesda, Md. (March 27, 2009) – In the midst of a recession cutting deep into everyone's budgets, associations have been suffering from the same economic symptoms as their corporate peers. Members are holding back money for dues, cutting into association revenues; meetings are being canceled as potential attendees worry about the cost of travel. Some associations are even cutting jobs.

Especially in this economic environment, associations can avoid busting their budgets in the short and long term using many different tools, including: engaging in talks with their banks, using technology to increase efficiency and implementing solutions such as mergers and outsourcing.

Associationexecs.com is hosting an all-day conference specifically designed for senior association executives to learn just those skills. BroadPoint is attending the Beating the Recession: The Non-profit Executive Tool Kit will be held May 28 at the Fulbright Center in Washington, D.C. This conference includes five practical sessions that will cover cost-saving methods in areas ranging from banking and financial management to technology and overhead management. Break-out sessions on association back office management and primary cost centers will focus on more specific cost controls such as overnight shipping, payroll, printing, and meeting costs.

Todd Hager, Vice President of BroadPoint Technologies will be on hand to present a panel on tools and technology that can aid a Non-profit during the recession.

Beating the Recession: The Non-profit Executive Tool Kit sponsors include RAFFA, Expense Reduction Analysts and the Alliance for Nonprofit Management. Early bird registration is available for $497 until May 1, $597 after May 1.

A full agenda of the event is available at http://www.nptools2009.com/agenda.html.

CRM Implementation Success – A Second Opinion

By Beth Scheidt

CRM Practice Manager

BroadPoint Technologies

In the medical world, a second opinion is almost always recommended when the patient is undergoing a major procedure. The second opinion reviews the patient's history, checks assumptions and explores alternatives. While a major medical procedure is not a perfect analogy for a CRM implementation, certainly there might be some valid comparisons made to the pain and agony possible in both.

Typically, a company implementing CRM hires someone like BroadPoint to help them through the process. This collaboration generally has a better outcome than if a company attempts to roll out CRM on their own. (Perform surgery on yourself?) The company gains the years of experience from the implementer and the implementer uses the business process knowledge of the company to help deliver the final results.

For some projects, a second opinion is a life (project) saver. By supplementing the company's staff with a CRM project manager, a project manager who is not employed by the implementer, the project has a high likelihood of finishing with healthy results. Here are two recent experiences with an independent CRM project manager that help illustrate the point.

A large, Not-For-Profit (NFP) group had replaced an old membership system with a highly customized and integrated CRM system. The NFP's day-to-day IT functions were outsourced and the internal project management was delegated to staff members who still had daily responsibilities for managing staff and membership. The NFP executives belatedly realized the project was significantly over budget, way behind schedule and off scope. This was definitely a triage situation!

The NFP's internal project resources did not have the expertise or dedicated time to provide oversight for this implementer. For the NFP's part, they consistently provided incomplete or nebulous descriptions for required work. The implementer rarely returned to the NFP team for clarification on changes, was particularly difficult to communicate with, seemed to always be focused on other customers' work, and did not appear to ever test their delivered work.

As an independent expert, we took the steps to make sure the NFP group thoroughly defined and documented their needs and worked closely with the implementer to ensure they understood the requirements as defined. Because of our experience, we were able to validate the implementer's approach and several times suggested alternative, cost saving solutions. We made sure deliverables were properly tested by both the implementer and the NFP before being released. By providing the NFP with an independent CRM project manager, we were able to bring the project back in line with the original goals and stop the budget hemorrhaging.

In another successful use of a CRM project manager, we worked with a large, international firm to supplement their internal project management staff. Unlike the previous example, both the implementer and the client had strong project management resources. The implementer was remotely located and we were onsite.

Like the previous example, this was a highly customized, integrated CRM implementation. The value the CRM project manager brought to the operation was experience and a fresh perspective. There were several instances where the client was defining customizations based on existing processes. It took a fresh perspective (and experience) to ask, "Why are you recreating this process?" We were able to identify instances where the client was trying to duplicate functionality that the field staff had long since abandoned (no matter what management thought). We were also able to make suggestions of small changes that really impacted the user's experience for the positive.

In both the examples above, the independent CRM project manager role enhanced the implementation by providing cost savings and improving the user experience. If you decide your project could benefit from a second opinion, be sure you choose the right independent CRM project manager. Both the CRM project manager and implementer need to work together on your behalf. Beware of the implementer and independent project manager who considers their own best interest above yours and the project. In that case, you may find the cure is worse than the disease!

Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 6

Let SmartList Alerts Warn You

How Many Customers are Over their Credit Limit
1) Setup your Smartlist

2) Pick Favorites and name the Favorite, example ‘Customer Over Credit Limit

3) Click Add and select ‘Add Favorite and Reminder’

4) Select ‘Number of Records’, example ‘ Greater Than 0’

5) You can set reminders based on the number of records or the total of the column

6) Click OK

Specific Customer Balance was Over $1,000
1) Setup your Smartlist

2) Pick Favorites and name the Favorite, example ‘Astor Suite > $1000.00’

3) Click Add and select ‘Add Favorite and Reminder’

4) Select ‘Total of Column’, example ‘ Customer Balance > $1000.00’

5) You can set reminders based on the number of records or the total of the column

6) Click OK

You can setup a reminder for an existing Smartlist
Go To Tools >> Setup >> User Preferences >> Reminders button

Click on New; select the Smartlist Favorite to see all the existing Smartlist options to choose from.

When you delete the Favorite, it deletes the reminder

Reminders appear on the Home Page

Business Intelligence - First Steps

Business Intelligence. Everyone seems to want it in order to make critical business decisions, however, the concept tends to be ethereal with little understanding of the mechanics required to produce meaningful, current, and easily-accessed information. We have created dashboards and ad hoc reporting through SharePoint and other tools - the presentation of information isn't really the hard part. The challenge is rooted in understanding the data that matters, the processes that run the business and how to organize the information in a fashion that has meaning to the team.

Data that Matters

An organization's metrics needs to resonate with the entire team from the person who answers the phone or greets visitors to the person who ultimately determines the direction of the firm. The information must be communicated in a fashion that can be easily understood while focusing on the things that truly matter to the organization. I came across a blog entry that provides guidance on determining and communicating the "metrics that matter" within an organization (8 Tips for Crafting Metrics That Matter - by Jesse Farmer). Metrics need to be actionable with a focus on results.

Understanding Business Process

Our implementation work typically begins with an analysis of business process and requirements. We start with an understanding of the 'As Is' processes and determine 'To Be' taking special care to understand the gaps, especially as they relate to the requirements. Careful consideration should be given to ensuring that value is added at each step of the process. The real nuance comes from understanding the interconnectedness of processes and how success is measured at each step. This notion of interconnectedness struck a chord with me when I spent some time with Ron Dimon of Business Foundation. His organization helps large firms determine, understand and manage their processes. They have created very unique depictions of business processes and their relations showing interconnectedness through the use of a "Periodic Table of Business". Rather than getting submerged in technology, Business Foundation uses a straight-forward, paper-based system to align teams around processes. However the business processes are presented, they need to be an accurate, tested depiction with buy-in from team responsible for implementing and administering them.

Rallying Around the Metrics

If you have the metrics that matter (i.e. the receptionist and CEO are both looking at the same metrics each day) and you feel confident that your processes are clearly defined with the granularity of data you require, presenting the information is a straight-forward process. As I mentioned above, we have had tremendous success using SharePoint as a means of delivery for metrics and reports. However, there are many presentation options to consider including hosted options. Remember the thermometer charts used to show fundraising progress for charity? It does not need to be overly slick to get the point across. Get the information in front of the team, be clear about how the information is accumulated and what the goals are, show trending wherever possible, and post it consistently.

The overall theme here is clarity over chaos, simplicity over complexity and consistency over a flash-in-the-pan approach. This will all translate to better organization alignment and at the end of the day, isn't this what it is all about?

Recent awards from ASI

BroadPoint was recently awarded the Chairman’s Circle and New Sales Leader of the Year at ASI’s Annual iNNOVATIONS Partner Conference.

We work hard to get recognized as an outstanding organization whenver possible. This is a great honor for us and we are very excited to announce. For the whole story click here.

Your CRM does what? (Part 4 of 4 – Extending Orders)

By Todd Fleming

Senior Consultant

BroadPoint Technologies

In Part 4 of a 4 part series on extending your CRM application, we will take a look at functionality we added to the CRM Orders process in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and via integration to Microsoft Dynamics GP for a few of our clients.

Credit Card Verification

A requirement that some customers have is the ability to be able to accept credit card payments in Dynamics CRM at the time of the order. We have accomplished this goal in the past by customizing the Order to include a new tab called "Payment Info" with all of the necessary fields for Credit Card processing. The sales person enters all of the credit card information and clicks on the submit payment button which then sends this information to the client's credit card processor for authorization. Payments are authorized in real time and authorization numbers are written back to Dynamics CRM in the Payment Tab's payment status field. For clients that are integrating Dynamics CRM Orders with Dynamics GP Accounting we integrate both the Order and the Payment so no double keying is required.

Freight Calculation

Most of our clients sell and ship products using various carriers. Additional functionality can be added to the Dynamics CRM Order such that information about the order can be sent to FedEx or UPS to determine the actual shipping costs for the Order so that you do not have to estimate shipping costs. The weight and size for a product can be captured at the product level in Dynamics CRM and can be totaled at the Order level which will provide a more accurate shipping cost. Clients typically add a shipping and handling fee to this amount which can be done as a percentage of the overall freight cost or as a flat fee added to the actual freight cost. This information can then be integrated from Dynamics CRM to Dynamics GP.

Bar-coding

In a retail operation you may not have time to perform the necessary steps to create an order in Dynamics CRM. For one of our retail clients that already had their inventory bar-coded we worked with their existing bar coding hardware in order to add line items to a CRM order by simply scanning the bar code of the items the customer was purchasing.

Integration

Available Credit: One of the standard integration points between Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the mapping of the credit limit field. While this information is useful it does not tell you how much available credit a customer has. In order to determine the available credit in Microsoft Dynamics GP you have to consider open orders, invoiced orders, returns, credits, payments etc. We've created a view for the available credit and integrate this back into Microsoft Dynamics CRM so that you can view a customer's credit limit, current account balance and available credit. If the customer has exceeded their available credit we can hide the Submit Order button preventing the order from being submitted and processed until the customer's available credit is higher than the order total.

Returns: One of our clients had the need to be able to initiate a return within Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The order and integration was customized such that an order could be created with negative quantity items and this information could then be integrated to Microsoft Dynamics GP for processing.

Tip of the week from Brenda Hopkins – Week 5

Free Your Data with Excel Reports



The new Excel reports in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10 are really pretty cool and you don't need MOSS 2007 to use them. You can use a network share to let your organization use the Excel reporting features.



To setup the default reports you need to do 2 steps, deploy the connector and deploy the reports.

In GP 10 pick Microsoft Dynamics GP >Tools-Setup > System > Reporting Tools Setup.

Step 1 - Go to the Data Connections Tab

• In the System Level Data connections box enter a shared network location to deploy the connectors to.
• Do the same thing for the User Level Data connections. This can be a local directory.
• Check Enable Data Connection Deployment.
• Check Deploy Data Connections for all existing companies if you want to run Excel reports off all your companies. Otherwise, when you deploy, you'll have to pick a company.

Click Run Deployment and Print to the screen the reports for review

Step 2 - Go to the Reports Library Tab

In the System Level Reports box enter a shared network location to deploy the reports to, this is where users will access the shared excel reports and network security can applied to this folder.

Do the same thing for the User Level Data connections. This can be a local directory.

• Check Enable Excel Report Deployment.
• Check Deploy Excel Report for all existing companies if you want to run Excel reports off all your companies. Otherwise, when you deploy, you'll have to pick a company.

Click the Run Deployment button and Print to the screen the report to view.

How to access the Shared Excel Reports

1. You can navigate to the shared location on the Network and open one of the Excel reports.
   
2. Within Dynamics GP, go to the Navigation Pane on the lower left and pick Administration. Click on Other Reports and wait for them to load.

Pick a report and double click it or Click on VIEW. The report opens nicely (and quickly in Excel).
You may need to enable data connections. If a box pops up, enable data connections and proceed on.

In Excel 2007 the report shades every other row and provides filter handles on each column.