I work with Renato Cruz Sogueco, CIO of the Society of American Florists, on the ASAE Technology Section Council. At a recent section meeting, Renato alluded to a white paper that SAF has produced for the past couple of years, which highlights technology in the floral industry, and places the technologies into three categories: the …
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 …
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 …
At a recent ASAE Technical Section Council meeting, there was a lot of talk about benchmarking. One participant said his executive director is always asking for benchmarks from other organizations, to see (for example) if they’re spending the right amount of money in the right places. In other forums, I’ll see people asking about membership …
When I work with clients on system selection (or when I’m presenting on this topic), I point out that one of the objectives of the process is to minimize the number of software demos we actually have to sit through. Software demos are one of the most expensive steps in the system selection process, because …
At the recent ASAE Technology Section Council meeting, Heidi Byerly of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) made the following comment (and I paraphrase): “The future of the CIO (chief information officer) is to become the chief process officer (CPO).” I think that’s brilliant. It is time for the chief information position to move …
It may be a cliche, but one of the most critical elements to the long-term success of your database is a high level of trust between you and your software vendor. You have to view your vendor as a partner in your success (and you a partner to their success). You can’t view the relationship …
I have a client who sends an every other week email newsletter, nicely formatted and designed, simply called “Staff News.” And surprise, surprise, it’s news about what’s going on with the staff at the association. The format of the newsletter includes events, reminders, announcements, “out and about,” and birthdays. The entire newsletter takes about two …
Admittedly, I’m not much of a social media maven. I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and maybe a couple of others, but I don’t actively “work” these sites. I know some think this is the wave of the future, but I’m not seeing much business return at this point. Having said that, I was a bit …