If you’re attending Cloudforce in London I hope you made it along to the session being presented by the Salesforce Foundation and JustGiving.

They’re launching the integration we’ve built between the two systems’ APIs to allow users of either system to benefit from the great technology they both offer.

Right now we’re looking for some organisations to help us test out the connection further – we’ve been running now with real customers in the UK for the last month or two and the feedback is great.

If you want to participate or find out more visit our dedicated pages here.

PS – here’s a pic of the launch, Joseph from Salesforce and Jamie from JustGiving

As we’ve known since we stumbled over Salesforce in 2009 (OK, it was a bit big to stumble over back then even, crashed into maybe!) the benefits of the newer technologies are so far ahead of ‘traditional’ business IT delivery it’s pretty hard for anyone to cling on for too long to reasons why not to use it.

Have a read, if you’re still wondering whether or not to move into the new world hopefully this will help.

http://delimiter.com.au/2012/05/14/nsw-agencies-push-very-hard-for-saas-rollouts/

There are numerous government agencies, financial institutions and health providers in Australia storing customer information with Salesforce who have validated we enable them to comply with privacy legislation relevant to their industries.

– Trust is salesforce.com’s number one value as a company, and privacy and security are integral to the company’s trust mission.

– Salesforce.com complies with applicable Australian privacy laws in providing the salesforce.com services to customers, including:

• The Privacy Act, including:
  • The National Privacy Principles
  • The Information Privacy Principles
• APRA guidance on outsourcing and off-shoring

– Salesforce.com’s privacy certifications include:

• EU/U.S. Safe Harbor
• TRUSTe Privacy Seal + Safe Harbor Seal
• TUV German privacy certification
• Japanese privacy certification

– Salesforce.com’s security audits and certifications include:

• IS0 27001
• SAS 70 Type II/SSAE 16

– Salesforce.com assists customers’ efforts to comply with requirements they’ve determined to be applicable to their use of the salesforce.com services by offering a robust set of customer-controlled privacy and security features that can be implemented.

– There are additional resources available to customers: Security Implementation Guide, Trust website.

Really enjoyed Connecting Up Australia 12, some great conversations and a fantastic international line-up. Was good to catch up with Terry Stokes from LASA, an organisation we’ve worked closely with in the UK for the best part of a decade. Also great to hear Gunner’s keynote this morning, couldn’t agree more with pretty much everything he had to say about the cloud. Was also relieved to hear the positive words about the Salesforce platform, something we’ve bet our organisation on for the huge benefits we think it can bring to the sector.

So what was the big take-away this year?

The last couple of years have been very much focused on social media and its impact on the sector. For sure it is and will continue to be a massive part of the modern world and something every organisation has to get to grips with – never before has there been such an amazing opportunity to engage directly with supporters wherever they may be.

At the same time there’s a whole lot of other stuff going on in the technology world – not unconnected, nothing is unconnected these days – but it’s broader in its direct impact for organisations. It was great to see this year that the discussion has broadened out and there’s much more emphasis on the whole technology picture. The talk was very much of how organisations can benefit from the new technologies of every description – cloud, social, web, mobile etc. And just as importantly, what to worry about in the process.

Without doubt each year it becomes more and more exciting to be involved in technology and the not-for-profit sector. It has moved from a backend processing function to being absolutely key to every organisation’s success (or otherwise).

Looking forward to #CU13! See you there..

So why weren’t organisations fundraising from Salesforce? The technology platform was clearly miles ahead of anything else so why not? Two main reasons (imho) – the standard data model with each contact being in an account is great for B2B but not so great when you’re talking to 1000s of individuals who may or may not be linked to any company.

The second is transaction processing – Salesforce was designed with relationships in mind, not taking in large numbers of transactions in, tracking where they came from and where they’re going.

So that was where supporter360 was focused – how can we make it so users would feel like Salesforce was built with the not-for-profit sector and fundraising in mind and remove those two stumbling blocks? The first problem was the hardest to overcome – the data model is at the heart of Salesforce and we needed to find a way that didn’t break Salesforce (and therefore access to all of the applications on the AppExchange + all the future updates) but allowed a person to exist in the system without the need for an account.

There are lots of work-arounds out there but most of them involve massive compromise. We think our solution is the perfect model and actually enhances the standard Salesforce data model quite significantly. I was in a demo yesterday and the fundraising director – who had worked with Salesforce before – said ‘Oh, great – that was the very problem that I was going to raise but you’ve solved it!’

We’ve kept pretty quiet about this element of supporter360 so far but we think it will be the secret weapon that makes all the difference. The user experience is much more logical and clean.

The next part was the transactional side of the system. If you’re fundraising you need to be able to take money in whatever way it’s offered to you (legitimate sources only of course!) – people might have all sorts of stipulations such as the funds money needs to be allocated to or when they might give you the money. You can’t say ‘No, sorry we can’t take your money as that’s too complex for us’ – you need to say thanks and have a system that handles the complexity with ease.

So we built a system that allows for pretty much any type of transaction – split gifts as many ways as you need; pay all or part pay; pay in regular chunks or irregular chunks.

My job’s now a bit too easy – the things that Salesforce keep rolling into the platform (we’re currently having great fun solving problems all over the place with Visual Workflows) on top of the perfect data model and powerful transaction processing plus all of the other things we’re building into the system are making showing people the system great fun!

And we’re only really getting started, that’s the really exciting bit. Now the nuts and bolts are tightened up to the right level we can work more and more on the exciting bits to help organisations get their message across and bring in the money as inexpensively as possible. Keep posted

If you want to know more check http://www.supporter360.net

APPICHAR ADDS DAVID JONES, FUNDRAISING DATABASE SPECIALIST TO ITS GROWING SUPPORTER360 UK TEAM

appiChar, the technology partner for the not-for-profit sector is pleased to announce that David Jones will be joining its team as Business Development Manager to help take supporter360 out to the sector.

David comes with extensive experience of the sector having worked for a number of charities over the years and who helped Donor Strategy become a highly successful fundraising database that was purchased by IRIS NFP. Before that, David was with ProgressCRM which became part of ASI Europe.

appiChar founder, Ian Ryder said “Adding David to the team is great news for us as a company, David adds a new depth to our knowledge about the needs of fundraisers, something we will increasingly need as more and more organisations sign up to supporter360. We’ve been having great success in Australia which we’re now looking to replicate in the UK.”

David said: “This is a really exciting move for me. I’ve been looking at the market for some time and knew the Salesforce platform is a complete game-changer for the sector. After looking at the options available in the Salesforce world it was clear to me that the open approach of supporter360 was what the market needed.”

So far in 2012 the appiChar UK consulting team has doubled in size and is working with some of the biggest not-for-profits in the country. To help maintain the high level of service Andrew Harley has now taken charge of the whole UK operation. Andrew says “We’ve got a first-class team working on some great projects so it’s an honour to be able to guide them through such an exciting period of growth.”

ends

For more information on appiChar and supporter360 please visit www.supporter360.net.

• We’re now implementing around 25 organisations with supporter360 across the globe including some really big names which we’re adding to all the time. First ones are in Australia, the UK, NZ with a few other countries looking likely over the coming months.
• We estimate that by the end of this financial year (the Aus one, so end of June) we’ll have 50 or so organisations up & running or in the middle of implementation. After that it’s anyone’s guess but given we’re keeping pretty quiet at the moment and we don’t have a massive installed base telling everyone how amazing things are…it should be exciting when both those factors change around completely very shortly.
• Our partner model is really taking shape and it looks very much like we’ll be working with some of the best names in the business to implement supporter360 out into the world – something we think is really exciting for the sector as it’s opening up things to some really great technology companies that previously had no easy way in to work with NFPs.
• When we got to a stable base product at the beginning of the year we were able to start on some of the more exciting areas of the system – some of the higher level functionality that will be what takes supporter360 up to the next level (see Regular Giving and Moves Management as a couple of examples). Absolutely loads more to come on that front!
• The UK side of things is really taking shape with Gift Aid now looking really good and a couple of really big wins over there – top 20 UK organisations. We’ve also got some really big partnerships coming in the next few months over there (I’m paying a visit in April if you’re over there and fancy a catch up).
• We’ve added some really awesome talent to our teams in the UK and Aus and have some more on its way in over the coming months – some serious experience of the NFP sector and also some really talented people on Force.com.
• Some great partnerships with other tech companies that have great solutions we are looking to roll into supporter360. Our approach has been to do as little as we can ourselves, if someone else has created something awesome why not bring it in if it makes sense and we can? We think the end result works out far superior to one company trying to do everything (with the associated lock-in that usually brings).
• Salesforce keep doing really cool things like rolling great functionality into the product like the analytics reporting functionality (and plenty more) which is more and more making the Force.com platform look like the only game in town for many organisations.

All told we’re feeling like it would be hard to be in a better place…we’re getting interest from all over the place from small organisations right up to the biggest of them all. As ever there’s a stack of work for the team to do but they’re also all seeing the changes taking place internally and the pressures easing as new people come on board and start to push things forward.

Keep posted, we don’t plan to be quiet for too much longer so I get to spend a bit more time on the bit I really love…making a noise about something or other

Charities target the elderly and dying for bequest dollars.

In a shocking turn of events, it was discovered via the undercover reporting of the esteemed Jonathan Marshall that organisations across Australia, many providing some of the most important services to the country were:

• Taking a strategic view of their funding requirements
• Doing everything they can to make sure they tell their story in the most efficient manner to the right people in order for those people to make an informed choice about the money they spend
• Were sharing knowledge on best practise to help make sure they weren’t wasting time and money

Not only this, it was discovered during a shocking get-together in Australia’s Gold Coast that they were endeavouring not to take themselves too seriously in the process.

The secret event was arranged via a range of clandestine methods that our journalistic hero was able to crack. These methods included (but may actually include many more secret methods beyond the reach of mere mortal journalists):

• Use of undercover websites such as www.fiaconference.org.au
• Secret advertising in places only known to a small minority such as professional magazines and big banners all over the conference venue
• Other secret, untraceable communications tools such as emails and conversations between delegates

Among the discoveries that will shock journalists across the land were items that include:

• Charities using underhand tactics such as wishing people happy birthday – actually on their birthdays indicating that organisation may actually keep records of the people they talk to
• Charities actively talking to people that may actually die at some point, even talking to them about the fact they may actually die one day and may like to do something useful with their money beyond giving it to ungrateful kids

———-

FUNDRAISERS URGED TO FOSTER SPECIAL TIES

In more shocking news it was discovered that charities actually may use colours in the process of recording information about the people they speak to. It will come as a surprise to many potential donors that their information has been given a colour, a colour that they may not even have been consulted on. Our under-cover reporter discovered real-life situations where donors had been given colours that they were known not to like.

]]>http://www.supporter360.net/journalist-targets-the-australian-population-with-dumb-storyhttp://www.supporter360.net/supporter360-membership-gift-aid-more-this-week1Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:26:12 GMTThe appiChar team has been on a great mission this week completing the roll out of the very first supporter360 customers culminating in 2 customers live and another about to follow. The great thing with the first 3 implementations is they’re a mix of a lot of the functionality in supporter360 – one fundraising, one membership management and one general CRM / email marketing.

By the end of Feb we should have another 4 or 5 on top running live or very close and then a similar amount in March so very quickly we will have a solid collection of live customers in place and we’ll be getting some great feedback from real life customers. Additional areas will be live including our volunteer management module that allows detailed skills matching and scheduling.

2012 has had a great start to it generally, we’ve had a lot of interest from a range of places  & countries and thankfully the tools we’ve created to help us manage the next stage of growth look to have hit the mark.

Talking of  those tools, we’ve added specific pages to ‘Sami’, our Sales and Marketing Interface which show how our membership management and Gift Aid (UK) functionality work. From a UK perspective Gift Aid is a  big addition and something we’re very excited about. We have some great plans on that front and we’ve been fortunate enough to have the UK’s leading expert help us pull everything together. Over the next few months we are looking to build that functionality to make sure it collects every penny owed and looks in places you hadn’t had the opportunity to look before.

Similarly with the membership management, we’re lucky enough to have one of Australia’s best experts in the subject as part of our team. Initial customer feedback has been great and will only get better over the coming months.

And last but not least, the same can be said for fundraising too where we have our (growing) team of  guest designers who will be adding a lot over the coming months.

As I type I’ve just got the email from Salesforce reminding me that Analytics will be going out to Enterprise customers in 8 days – that’s a good way to round out a great week.

This has been one of the major missing parts of the Salesforce platform, being able to easily build complex reports and lists based on data from across the organisation.

Today’s announcement that instead of charging extra for Analytics, it will just be *rolled into the Enterprise and Unlimited versions is particularly great news for NFPs who get 10 Enterprise licenses donated (and 80% discount after the first 10).

The main features of include:

• bucketing, a feature which lets you group data and place them in categories – buckets. For numeric data, you can say that deals under $1000 are small, and over that are large
• cross-filtering, that allows you to filter on related objects, for instance, in a report on accounts and contacts, to show all contacts in accounts that don’t have a closed opportunity.
• a new report format – joined reports – where you can join reports together, to report on multiple children of the same parent, for instance, meaning you can have a report showing the products, and team members on each opportunity in your team.
• higher limits on snapshots, scheduled reports and dashboards, and dynamic dashboards.

Roll on the Spring’12 release, this opens up a whole new world of possibilities of what we can provide for our customers and also lets us keep focusing on the core functionality that we want to build into supporter360.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120118006745/en

In 2007 their share price sat at $148 and now it’s down to $16 and who knows where the bottom will be.

Why’s this relevant to the NFP sector? As I’ve said quite a few times here and elsewhere, the very same dynamics are at play all over the technology world, even in our corner of it. Seemingly big players that miss the boat can quickly get into a tailspin, especially if innovation isn’t in the DNA. RIM with all their cash and people and infrastructure haven’t known which way to turn and it’s hard to see how they can be relevant in the future unless someone picks them up and sifts out the useful bits.

Found this great response from Allen Gunn, founder of Aspiration. I don’t agree with every word but the majority of it rings true.

Ultimately I see this as a positive thing for the sector as a whole. The world is changing very rapidly and older business models are being wiped out – you only have to look at the likes of Kodak, RIM, Nokia, even Microsoft themselves wondering where to go.

For these two companies I see a similar outlook, especially now they are joined. Convio probably had a better chance on their own but now they have joined forces with all that other technology baggage just when lack of baggage is the ultimate advantage.

While everyone else now can take advantage of all the amazing new things going on in the world these two are going to be totally preoccupied trying to untangle a complete patchwork mess of technologies whilst trying to keep staff, customers, shareholders, bankers, etc etc happy.

Don’t get me wrong, for sure both companies have some good functionality and that’s why they’ve done well. But Blackberry’s have good functionality as well but they’re just not as nimble and flexible as an Android or iPhone. The same holds 100% true. The way I see it you can match and then overtake functionality much, much quicker than you can change platform or move an entire company with all its legacies, let alone two companies.

When you’re falling into a hole, you try and grab onto the biggest thing you can find. The execs at Blackbaud looked ahead, seeing they’ve spent $50+ million on the wrong technology platform and didn’t know what else to do. I wish them all well over the next few years of integrating teams of people (including lots and lots and lots of hungry sales people) who traditionally were sworn enemies.

Meanwhile everyone else will just plough a merry path with no obstacles or barriers.

PS – any partners out there nervous of the ConBeard future looking for an open, affordable, scalable, user-friendly alternative designed for the sector just let us know, we come baggage-free and designed for the current and future world, not one that’s passing by

Edit: Some interesting comments from worried customers and former staff here.

And here…and here

And if you want the ‘real’ story from the front line check out https://twitter.com/#!/conbaud

Found this great response from Allen Gunn, founder of Aspiration. I don’t agree with every word but the majority of it rings true.

Ultimately I see this as a positive thing for the sector as a whole. The world is changing very rapidly and older business models are being wiped out – you only have to look at the likes of Kodak, RIM, Nokia, even Microsoft themselves wondering where to go.

For these two companies I see a similar outlook, especially now they are joined. Convio probably had a better chance on their own but now they have joined forces with all that other technology baggage just when lack of baggage is the ultimate advantage.

While everyone else now can take advantage of all the amazing new things going on in the world these two are going to be totally preoccupied trying to untangle a complete patchwork mess of technologies whilst trying to keep staff, customers, shareholders, bankers, etc etc happy.

Don’t get me wrong, for sure both companies have some good functionality and that’s why they’ve done well. But Blackberry’s have good functionality as well but they’re just not as nimble and flexible as an Android or iPhone. The same holds 100% true. The way I see it you can match and then overtake functionality much, much quicker than you can change platform or move an entire company with all its legacies, let alone two companies.

When you’re falling into a hole, you try and grab onto the biggest thing you can find. The execs at Blackbaud looked ahead, seeing they’ve spent $50+ million on the wrong technology platform and didn’t know what else to do. I wish them all well over the next few years of integrating teams of people (including lots and lots and lots of hungry sales people) who traditionally were sworn enemies.

Meanwhile everyone else will just plough a merry path with no obstacles or barriers.

PS – any partners out there nervous of the ConBeard future looking for an open, affordable, scalable, user-friendly alternative designed for the sector just let us know, we come baggage-free and designed for the current and future world, not one that’s passing by

Edit: Some interesting comments from worried customers and former staff here.

And here…and here

And if you want the ‘real’ story from the front line check out https://twitter.com/#!/conbaud

On the surface the move look fairly logical but as hard as I try I can’t completely see the value and wonder whether it’s good thing generally for the sector. Keep in mind that debt has been used to fund the purchase so that means  fundraising dollars will be going to service that debt + try and recoup the $275m paid. That’s not for me to judge but those banks are going to want that interest no matter what, just as the shareholders will want their ever-increasing returns or else.

Forgetting all of the business side of the deal it’s the technology that I can’t quite get. Both companies have purchased various companies to build their portfolio of services and the level of integration between some of those systems might not always be as great as it might look at the sales demo (so I’ve heard J). Now take two companies with completely different technology platforms and try and merge the two – all you’ve done is increase the complexity even further. It could take years to unpick.

And then there’s the platforms themselves – Blackbaud have invested heavily in Microsoft platforms, rebuilding their entire system – $50m was the last number I heard but it was a while ago so it could be a lot more by now. Should Enterprise CRM customers now be nervous?

Or should Convio’s customers be nervous?

Or are they just going to keep going with two platforms doing different things?

All the while the new breed of companies minus any of that baggage are popping up all over the place with an open view of things all looking to work together instead of shut out or block off the rest of the world. With the latest technologies like AWS, Heroku, Force.com etc people can build better, more scalable applications without all the headaches mentioned above.

I know which camp I’d rather be in…

On the surface the move look fairly logical but as hard as I try I can’t completely see the value and wonder whether it’s good thing generally for the sector. Keep in mind that debt has been used to fund the purchase so that means  fundraising dollars will be going to service that debt + try and recoup the $275m paid. That’s not for me to judge but those banks are going to want that interest no matter what, just as the shareholders will want their ever-increasing returns or else.

Forgetting all of the business side of the deal it’s the technology that I can’t quite get. Both companies have purchased various companies to build their portfolio of services and the level of integration between some of those systems might not always be as great as it might look at the sales demo (so I’ve heard J). Now take two companies with completely different technology platforms and try and merge the two – all you’ve done is increase the complexity even further. It could take years to unpick.

And then there’s the platforms themselves – Blackbaud have invested heavily in Microsoft platforms, rebuilding their entire system – $50m was the last number I heard but it was a while ago so it could be a lot more by now. Should Enterprise CRM customers now be nervous?

Or should Convio’s customers be nervous?

Or are they just going to keep going with two platforms doing different things?

All the while the new breed of companies minus any of that baggage are popping up all over the place with an open view of things all looking to work together instead of shut out or block off the rest of the world. With the latest technologies like AWS, Heroku, Force.com etc people can build better, more scalable applications without all the headaches mentioned above.

I know which camp I’d rather be in…

I’ve been in technology for about 23 years professionally, another 7 or so before that when I got my first Acorn Electron. So nearly three quarters of my life according to my maths. I’ve either designed and managed or helped design & manage technology for commercial and not-for-profits for most of that professional time. I came into the world of mainframes where things just generally did what they were supposed to do (if relatively little compared to today’s standards). Then came PCs and Windows and it all got much more complicated.

And it hasn’t ever stopped getting more and more complicated. As every year has passed new layers of technology get added to the pile to try and hold together all the different overly-complex systems within the enterprise.

The good news – especially for organisations that would really love to just get on with what they do but still take advantage of all the things new technology brings – is that after all the hype the pendulum is really swinging in the other direction thanks to the maturing of internet-age business technologies (call it cloud computing, SAAS, whatever you like, it all adds up to the utility computing that has been discussed for years but always with a view to the future). And the pendulum might actually just be a full-on wrecking ball knocking through years of too many people getting paid without adding enough value.

We’ve seen these sorts of changes in consumer technology and it’s now starting to hit home in the world of commerical technologies – probably the most conservative area of technology that will only change where there are clear competitive advantages to be had (or strong disadvantages to not changing such as getting left behind).

So what are the advantages and changes down the track that organisations should be looking at?

One of the big pieces of the puzzle missing from a typical small to medium organisation is the ability to store normal files & documents in ‘the cloud’ – there have been lots of offerings for the home use but nothing really practical for an organisation. All that’s changing with solutions like box.com (was box.net). They (and others to follow no doubt) are now starting to offer serious options for ditching the server infrastructure completely…or if you need local servers they can almost act as a local cache for the centralised web store.

What I see as really exciting now is that other web services are plugging into the likes of Box. We’ve used Mindmeister to create some of our snazzy mind maps to show what supporter360 can do…no longer do we need to store those files in Mindmeister as it can work from and save directly into Box.

The really big one in this is Google docs – instead of now having to store your files in Google, you can store them directly in Box which means it can sit with all your other docs so you don’t end up with different bits of information sat all over the place completely unconnected.

And of course supporter360 and Salesforce.com integrate into Box so those letters to key supporters that once sat isolated either in your database or on your server now sit in Box and you can access them from your iPhone using supporter360, Microsoft Office, Google, whatever.

When you start to tie all this information together and have it accessible by the people who really need it, when they need it wherever they happen to be and whatever device they happen to be using – without the hassle of your IT department (if you have one) slaving for months and spending buckets of your supporters’ money – it turns into something that can really enable an efficient and fast-moving organisation, something everyone is going to have to be one way or another to stay successful in the coming years.

I’ve been in technology for about 23 years professionally, another 7 or so before that when I got my first Acorn Electron. So nearly three quarters of my life according to my maths. I’ve either designed and managed or helped design & manage technology for commercial and not-for-profits for most of that professional time. I came into the world of mainframes where things just generally did what they were supposed to do (if relatively little compared to today’s standards). Then came PCs and Windows and it all got much more complicated.

And it hasn’t ever stopped getting more and more complicated. As every year has passed new layers of technology get added to the pile to try and hold together all the different overly-complex systems within the enterprise.

The good news – especially for organisations that would really love to just get on with what they do but still take advantage of all the things new technology brings – is that after all the hype the pendulum is really swinging in the other direction thanks to the maturing of internet-age business technologies (call it cloud computing, SAAS, whatever you like, it all adds up to the utility computing that has been discussed for years but always with a view to the future). And the pendulum might actually just be a full-on wrecking ball knocking through years of too many people getting paid without adding enough value.

We’ve seen these sorts of changes in consumer technology and it’s now starting to hit home in the world of commerical technologies – probably the most conservative area of technology that will only change where there are clear competitive advantages to be had (or strong disadvantages to not changing such as getting left behind).

So what are the advantages and changes down the track that organisations should be looking at?

One of the big pieces of the puzzle missing from a typical small to medium organisation is the ability to store normal files & documents in ‘the cloud’ – there have been lots of offerings for the home use but nothing really practical for an organisation. All that’s changing with solutions like box.com (was box.net). They (and others to follow no doubt) are now starting to offer serious options for ditching the server infrastructure completely…or if you need local servers they can almost act as a local cache for the centralised web store.

What I see as really exciting now is that other web services are plugging into the likes of Box. We’ve used Mindmeister to create some of our snazzy mind maps to show what supporter360 can do…no longer do we need to store those files in Mindmeister as it can work from and save directly into Box.

The really big one in this is Google docs – instead of now having to store your files in Google, you can store them directly in Box which means it can sit with all your other docs so you don’t end up with different bits of information sat all over the place completely unconnected.

And of course supporter360 and Salesforce.com integrate into Box so those letters to key supporters that once sat isolated either in your database or on your server now sit in Box and you can access them from your iPhone using supporter360, Microsoft Office, Google, whatever.

When you start to tie all this information together and have it accessible by the people who really need it, when they need it wherever they happen to be and whatever device they happen to be using – without the hassle of your IT department (if you have one) slaving for months and spending buckets of your supporters’ money – it turns into something that can really enable an efficient and fast-moving organisation, something everyone is going to have to be one way or another to stay successful in the coming years.

In Australia we’ve been heavily focused on developing supporter360 and after a rocky start – we decided our first efforts weren’t good enough so we took the tough decision to redo a whole chunk – we’re now headed into a great place. It’s made this year a painful one but we’re seeing already it was massively the right decision – what we have produced is awesome and most importantly, the lessons from the first go allowed us to really get the underlying structure of the system to a place that will make it much more flexible and adaptable. The team has had to work silly hours to try and make up ground lost and we’re almost back to where we wanted to be.

Our managed services & infrastructure team in Aus has gone from strength to strength, we’ve built a truly fantastic team that has quality running through it from top to bottom. Going forward we’re going to have some great opportunities to see how we can integrate cloud services into our offerings, the technology world is changing quickly and it’s great to have to a group of people who are keen to be part of that. Alongside supporter360 we think we’ll be able to really move organisations 100% into the brave new world in a sensible and sustainable way.

So what for 2012?

Through the hard work of a lot of people we find ourselves now in a great place. We’ve got opportunities coming in from pretty much all over the world so the challenge now is going to be making sure we stay sensible and focused. A lot of work has gone into how we can get supporter360 out in innovative ways so that we’re not limited by the size of the team in any one location. That starts with the ‘Sales Machine‘ and we’ve got similar tools to help with the actual scoping, design & implementation that flow through from the Sales Machine’s initial work…once everything is fully in place we think we can really speed up the implementation process and maintain a consistently high standard.

Already we have a number of partners keen to help us get supporter360 out to the world which is great at this stage, something that we hope will become even more once it’s up and running in 10, 20, 30 and so on organisations across the world.

Technology is changing incredibly quickly so it’s almost impossible to look too far ahead – that’s why it’s crucial to be working with the most advanced systems. Salesforce definitely provide that and I think together with all the other advances in mobile and the cloud generally, we’re going to really start to see much faster moves away from the traditional complex Microsoft world.

Getting über awesome

The year started with a lot of ‘awesome’…of late we’ve moved onto ‘über awesome’ – awesome just wasn’t enough! Here’s a to an über awesome 2012 for everyone from everyone at appiChar!

PS – last, but not least here’s a message from the appiChar Sydney team!

The questions so far have been around how to take advantage of the opportunities new social media platforms bring. There has been endless talking but the results have been harder to see.

The Salesforce platform that supporter360 is built upon has been leading the way in building ‘social, mobile’ into its very heart. This has been one of the most exciting aspects of working with such a forward looking technology platform – we know full well that whatever happens in the world, our customers will be ahead of the curve compared to older style systems.

Check out the Social Hub:

These tools will allow organisations to engage directly in the most important conversations going on out in the real world. Being able to actively thank someone for a positive comment or answer a complaint that you otherwise would never have known about. Being able to track in real time the response to campaigns from real people.

The options are pretty much endless as the tools have been designed to let you get creative, not just try and tell you exactly how an organisation should act so everyone does the same thing.

Those organisations that take advantage of these sorts of tools first will have a big advantage, building loyal support-bases and helping demonstrate how in tune they are with their supporters.

To find out more about supporter360 visit http://www.supporter360.net 

Already, before the product was fully up and running we’ve had about 20 organisations across the globe ready to go – the biggest of which is a $300m global annual income organisation.

I could write a lot here but it’s time to let the product do the talking – we think it’s properly awesome and in many ways it’s only just begun. There are so many ideas yet to plug in that it’s only going to go from strength to strength.

So if your organisation has supporters, needs to raise funds super-efficiently, needs unlimited possibilities and scale with the system it picks & needs to keep pace with change in the world…check out supporter360:

To find out more visit http://www.supporter360.net – sign up and we’ll be opening the doors this coming week.

Who'd believe you could get 20 developers in there?

Last week we had a management / development away week on a holiday camp on the outskirts of Melbourne. It wasn’t the most amazing location it has to be said – no offence to Sunshine but a beach with the Sunshine would probably have been quite nice!

On the bright side the lack of a beach helped make sure we knocked out some really good decisions and the developers rattled through some of the things we decided upon.

The outcome was there’s about 2 weeks of changes and reworks before we have what we will call version 1 of supporter360. There’s a real buzz on the team now, we think we’ve got something unique and that solves a lot of fundamental issues with the standard Salesforce data model with regard to fundraising to individuals and households. On top of that we think we’re building a lot of really smart, common-sense based functionality into the system whilst taking advantage of some of the awesome features the platform offers the sector.

One great thing working with the Salesforce platform is that when we mark down version one as complete, before it even hits a live customer we’ll already have improved it in some way. We don’t need to send out CDs or make people download and install revisions and bug fixes. We can manage all of that ourselves without them having to lift a finger so supporter360 will never have to sit still for long.

In order to get ready for going out to market properly with supporter360 we’ve created the Sales Machine - the place where we will be able to look after our (hopefully) future customers. We’ve created some great tools to help them do everything they need to understand what the system can do, how much it will cost, how it compares to other systems out there and even book a presentation directly into our diaries.

As ever we’re pretty excited about the Sales Machine as well, it’s something that can help us keep the costs down for us and therefore our customers AND deliver a better service – ticking both those boxes at any one time usually equals a good result so seeing that come together over the last few weeks has been great.

If you want to have a look at the Sales Machine just jump on the home page, register your details and we’ll be in touch shortly once the doors are fully open.

Who'd believe you could get 20 developers in there?

Last week we had a management / development away week on a holiday camp on the outskirts of Melbourne. It wasn’t the most amazing location it has to be said – no offence to Sunshine but a beach with the Sunshine would probably have been quite nice!

On the bright side the lack of a beach helped make sure we knocked out some really good decisions and the developers rattled through some of the things we decided upon.

The outcome was there’s about 2 weeks of changes and reworks before we have what we will call version 1 of supporter360. There’s a real buzz on the team now, we think we’ve got something unique and that solves a lot of fundamental issues with the standard Salesforce data model with regard to fundraising to individuals and households. On top of that we think we’re building a lot of really smart, common-sense based functionality into the system whilst taking advantage of some of the awesome features the platform offers the sector.

One great thing working with the Salesforce platform is that when we mark down version one as complete, before it even hits a live customer we’ll already have improved it in some way. We don’t need to send out CDs or make people download and install revisions and bug fixes. We can manage all of that ourselves without them having to lift a finger so supporter360 will never have to sit still for long.

In order to get ready for going out to market properly with supporter360 we’ve created the Sales Machine - the place where we will be able to look after our (hopefully) future customers. We’ve created some great tools to help them do everything they need to understand what the system can do, how much it will cost, how it compares to other systems out there and even book a presentation directly into our diaries.

As ever we’re pretty excited about the Sales Machine as well, it’s something that can help us keep the costs down for us and therefore our customers AND deliver a better service – ticking both those boxes at any one time usually equals a good result so seeing that come together over the last few weeks has been great.

If you want to have a look at the Sales Machine just jump on the home page, register your details and we’ll be in touch shortly once the doors are fully open.

Who'd believe you could get 20 developers in there?

Last we week we had a management / development away week on a holiday camp on the outskirts of Melbourne. It wasn’t the most amazing location it has to be said – no offence to Sunshine but a beach with the Sunshine would probably have been quite nice!

On the bright side the lack of a beach helped make sure we knocked out some really good decisions and the developers rattled through some of the things we decided upon.

The outcome was there’s about 2 weeks of changes and reworks before we have what we will call version 1 of supporter360. There’s a real buzz on the team now, we think we’ve got something unique and that solves a lot of fundamental issues with the standard Salesforce data model with regard to fundraising to individuals and households. On top of that we think we’re building a lot of really smart, common-sense based functionality into the system whilst taking advantage of some of the awesome features the platform offers the sector.

One great thing working with the Salesforce platform is that when we mark down version one as complete, before it even hits a live customer we’ll already have improved it in some way. We don’t need to send out CDs or make people download and install revisions and bug fixes. We can manage all of that ourselves without them having to lift a finger so supporter360 will never have to sit still for long.

In order to get ready for going out to market properly with supporter360 we’ve created the Sales Machine - the place where we will be able to look after our (hopefully) future customers. We’ve created some great tools to help them do everything they need to understand what the system can do, how much it will cost, how it compares to other systems out there and even book a presentation directly into our diaries.

As ever we’re pretty excited about the Sales Machine as well, it’s something that can help us keep the costs down for us and therefore our customers AND deliver a better service – ticking both those boxes at any one time usually equals a good result so seeing that come together over the last few weeks has been great.

If you want to have a look at the Sales Machine just jump on the home page, register your details and we’ll be in touch shortly once the doors are fully open.

Edit: 42 mins in, he definitely saw the future of Microsoft and where it would go wrong…

Edit: 42 mins in, he definitely saw the future of Microsoft and where it would go wrong…

Edit: 42 mins in, he definitely saw the future of Microsoft and where it would go wrong…

Edit: 42 mins in, he definitely saw the future of Microsoft and where it would go wrong…

Edit: 42 mins in, he definitely saw the future of Microsoft and where it would go wrong…