Maximizing the Use of Planning Apps for Your Association
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]One of the universal activities common to all associations is planning meetings, big and small. Using effective planning apps are paramount in keeping your team informed, connected, and collaborating. Many organizations use Google Calendar, Trello, or Jira to manage their planning activities. While those apps are good, if you are an Office or Dynamics 365 user (or are about to be), you may want to instead consider using Microsoft Planner and StaffHub in conjunction with the Teams app.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Teams and Planning in Action Last month we explored the main features and functions of the Microsoft Teams app in our blog article, “Microsoft Teams: Designed to Improve Your Association’s Collaboration.” In that article we focused our thesis around the ways Teams can be used to facilitate better team collaboration. Now we want to tell you more about how you can use Planner and StaffHub with Teams to help maximize your planning activities.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text] Planner Microsoft Planner is a project task management system. Planner makes it easy for your staff to create new plans, organize and assign tasks, share files, chat about what you’re working on, and get updates on progress. Planner can be used to manage an educational event, brainstorm new member engagement ideas, track completion of annual meeting components, prepare for an advocacy day, or just generally organize your team members more effectively. It is connected to your Outlook, so you will receive notifications and reminders of upcoming tasks that you set for yourself. It also allows you to assign individual tasks or assignments with due date expectations to any of your organization’s other Office or Dynamics 365 users. If someone else assigns you a task, you will receive a notification that a task has been assigned to you. Then you will also start receiving the reminder notifications in Outlook. When implemented within Microsoft Teams, this becomes an invaluable way of assigning, tracking and completing tasks for your team. Likewise, when used in a Dynamics based association management environment (like Altai’s), you will also be able to have all your planning activities link directly back to your AMS. Because this is already a part of Office 365, this is super easy to use and considerably less expensive than a separate time and materials management system. .[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text] StaffHub Microsoft StaffHub is currently an app that helps you create and manage work shifts, share files, and communicate important information with team members. Effective October 1, 2019, StaffHub will be retired and all its capabilities will be rolled into Teams. Today, Teams includes the Shifts app for schedule management. Starting in October StaffHub’s additional capabilities will roll out over time. Both today and in the future, this tool can be particularly useful for organizations that have annual meetings, advocacy days, or multiple events that require a coordination of staff and volunteers. Team members can have access to all their shift information, including the ability to easily swap shifts with others, from a mobile app. Using the app can ease the on-site coordination of events. It can also lower the probability of miscommunication within the team. When used in a Dynamics 365 environment, StaffHub can also help with committee management by seamlessly tracking and logging your committee’s activities within your AMS. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text] Summary With so many familiar tools already available to you through Office 365, the need to add outside planning apps is practically obsolete. If you would like to see the overview of Planner and StaffHub specifically, please complete the form below to receive a link to view our joint webinar with ReviewMyAMS entitled Top 5 Microsoft 365 Apps You Can Use Today. You can also always reach us at sales@altaisystems.com with any questions about this article and how it can be used to enhance your association management.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_cta h2=”View our Top 5 Microsoft Apps You Can Use Today Webinar” h4=”Simply complete the form below and a link to the recording will be emailed to you.” style=”3d” color=”blue”][/vc_cta][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Microsoft Teams: Designed to Improve Your Association’s Collaboration
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]If you currently use Skype for Business or Office 365, you have probably heard that Microsoft is planning to replace Skype. The heir apparent to that program is Teams. As both a Microsoft partner and a user of the program, we can tell you that there is nothing to fear and so much to gain in making the switch to Teams. Read below to see why we recommend teams. It really does score a home run![/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] About Microsoft Teams Skype currently offers screen sharing and quick chatting (instant messaging), among other capabilities. Those same capabilities are also available in Teams as is so much more. Because every team is unique, Teams is designed to allow people to communicate and collaborate with purpose-built, integrated applications. Teams allows for multiple channels to be created and conversations to flow from top to bottom while notifying users of updates. If users need a face-to-face conversation, with a single click they can easily start a video chat with other channel team members. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Office and Dynamics 365 Integrations Unlike other chat platforms like Atlassian’s HipChat and the popular Slack, Teams is fully integrated with Microsoft’s full suite of 365 applications. Your favorite apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Planner, and Power BI are all able to be accessed from Teams. Therefore, any spreadsheets, documents, etc. that are being shared with the Team are synced with a copy stored in cloud storage on OneDrive and within SharePoint. This allows for team members to always be using the most current version of the content. It also has collaborative editing features that allows multiple team members to be inside the content at the same time making edits in real time together. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When you create a team, you get a corresponding Office 365 group, which includes a group inbox and calendar in Outlook. Although you can’t post messages or view channel conversations from Outlook, the Outlook group provides an email address people from outside the team can use to send email to the entire Team. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text]Our customers, Member based organizations, are most excited about this feature: As of the April 2019 release, Microsoft is including the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement app for Microsoft Teams. Now, users of teams can access their Dynamics 365 application right from within Teams. This will now enable you to collaborate on and view your association management data like who your most/least engaged members are without ever leaving Teams! Collaboration between people in the membership or event teams can work directly with the education team to collaborate on mutual initiatives at the same time. This collaboration can be a game changer for departments like the events’ team. Microsoft Teams combined with Dynamics 365|Altai AMS provides your organization with an Association Business Platform allowing staff to collaborate on membership, engagement, events, logistics, registrations, sponsorship, speakers, etc. all in one place. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text] Cool Features But wait, there’s more! Teams boasts some incredibly useful functions and features that can take your Association’s collaborations to an even higher level. Here are the top two: Automatic Transcription of Meeting Minutes – This is a game changer for times when you need to have committee or board meetings quickly and accurately transcribed. Users can have recordings of their Team meetings automatically transcribe the conversation so that users can play back meeting recordings with closed captions and search for important discussion items in the transcript. AI Bot capabilities – Bots are a way for users to “set it and forget it.” The key problem bots solve is time management and the following are designed to do just that without ever leaving Teams: Calendar BOT – Allows you to compare calendars and schedule meetings quickly and easily. Who – Allows you to search for someone within your organization by being able to ask a simple question. (Best for large Associations) Polly – Allows you to easily conduct and analyze surveys and polls. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Coming Soon Live Captions and Subtitles: For attendees of Teams’ meetings who are hearing impaired, have different levels of language proficiency or are connecting from a loud location, live captions and subtitles will be available for meetings. This feature will make your Teams meetings more inclusive and improve meeting effectiveness by allowing attendees to read speaker captions in real-time, so they can more easily stay in sync and contribute to the discussion. Secure Private Channels: Later this year you will be able to customize which team members can see conversations and files associated with a channel. Instead of creating a separate team, you will be able to restrict participation and exposure in a channel to limit visibility. This feature, as well as Information Barriers, will be particularly helpful for associations who have committee or board members administering varying roles in the association. Information Barriers: Allows you to limit which individuals can communicate and collaborate with each other in Microsoft Teams. Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Allows your IT admin to prevent sensitive information from inadvertently being shared inside or outside the organization. Admins will be able to detect, automatically protect, and screen for sensitive information in chats and channel conversations. Live Events in Microsoft 365: Available now, this feature allows users to create live and on-demand events for employees, members, boards, committees, and other constituents. Live events use video and interactive discussions across Teams, Stream, or Yammer. Users can have up to 10,000 attendees participate in real-time from anywhere on any device. If people want to review the event, they can use artificial intelligence (AI) features such as automatic transcription to consume the content of the event recording. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Teams Beyond Microsoft Teams collaborative capacities extend beyond Microsoft specific apps. At its inception, Teams started with over 70 Connectors and 85 Bots that allows it to communicate with non-Microsoft apps. Connectors can currently push updates from Trello, GitHub, MailChimp, and more to Teams’ channels. That number continues to grow as the platform grows. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Microsoft Teams adoptions and features are growing at a rapid rate. There was a recent Spiceworks survey that examined the adoption and perceptions of collaborative chat applications. “The results show that while Skype for Business continues to hold the number one spot with 44 percent of businesses
Flow Saved Us Hundreds of Coding Hours – It Can Do the Same for You
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] “What was months and weeks is now days and hours” The 4th Industrial Revolution is all about the “rapidness” of software solutions. What used to take months and years now takes hours and days to accomplish. To do this we need to leverage new tools and adopt a new way of thinking. Recently we applied this idea to a client request that we digitally re-imagined. One of our clients previously used the following process to respond to a member’s request for a particular report: the member would place the order, then the mail room would print and stamp the report, and finally mail it to the member. That complete journey for the report to go from order to member receipt of the report took 2-4 days. Our client wanted this same journey to now digitally take less than 60 seconds – without requiring an expensive fulfillment house to do the work. This type of order was not as simple as putting the reports in a digital shopping cart, paying for them and then the member could download a digital copy. This client had a twist, they wanted the following: [supsystic-tables id=4] Process Exploration Initially, this process looked time consuming and expensive. In an effort to reduce the need to write hours and hours of new code, we explored outsourcing part of the process using 3rd party fulfillment. After spending an hour trying to estimate the time and cost needed to complete this project, I said, “Let’s see if Microsoft Flow can do this.” Sure enough, all the tools were there. In 4 hours we had this process 100% working. If we had to do it again from scratch, it would take 1 hour using Microsoft Flow, which is a no/low code Business Platform app. Historically, to shave seconds off a member’s time online, we would need to do hours of custom application development for our clients. Now, using Low/No Code tools, like Flow, changes not only our ability, but the ability of your organization to improve efficiency and save money. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”25px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Low-Code Development Platform is In Demand Low–Code Development is a new approach to quickly building unique business applications. Instead of traditionally coding an application line-by-line, the applications are drawn like a flowchart. This process allows users to develop powerful new applications intuitively and quickly. The demand for low-code platforms is increasing. In Forrester’s survey of global developers, 23% reported using low-code platforms in 2018, and another 22% planned to do so within a year. The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Development Platforms For AD&D Professionals, Q1 2019 report named Microsoft PowerApps (of which Flow is a part) a leader in this category and rated it the strongest on strategy. If you are interested in seeing how Microsoft Flow can help your organization streamline its processes, please complete the form below to receive a link to view our Flow webinar or contact us at sales@altaisystems.com for a demonstration. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”15px”][vc_custom_heading text=”Microsoft Flow Webinar Presentation Request Form” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_raw_html]JTNDaWZyYW1lJTIwc3JjJTNEJTIyaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZhbmFseXRpY3MuY2xpY2tkaW1lbnNpb25zLmNvbSUyRmFsdGFpc3lzdGVtc2NvbS1hc2F0YSUyRnBhZ2VzJTJGdHp4Y3dieGVlbWJoZ2F2eHFoYmJhLmh0bWwlMjIlMjBhbGxvd3RyYW5zcGFyZW5jeSUzRCUyMnRydWUlMjIlMjB3aWR0aCUzRCUyMjEwMCUyNSUyMiUyMGhlaWdodCUzRCUyMjUwMHB4JTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZodG1sJTIyJTIwZnJhbWVib3JkZXIlM0QlMjIwJTIyJTIwc3R5bGUlM0QlMjJib3JkZXIlM0EwJTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGaWZyYW1lJTNF[/vc_raw_html][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Microsoft or Salesforce: What is the Best Platform for Your Association?
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Within the Association landscape there are multiple AMS (association management software) solutions. That scope narrows significantly when looking at progressive software models that promote the idea of digital transformation. The two most robust and popular Business Platforms used by associations then comes down to Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce, but which one is the best?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] Growth Comparison Statistics Since 2014, Microsoft has focused on its SaaS business, and business is great. They have grown from a $380B (market cap) to a greater than $800B company in just four years. Most of that growth is attributable to their Business Platform. Some of the more popular components of the platform include: Microsoft Azure Business Cloud – growing at a staggering 75% growth rate Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Microsoft AI and Research has 8,000+ employees working every day to make easy AI available to everyone. (No other company is doing more to make AI easier than Microsoft. No other company is investing more in AI than Microsoft.) Microsoft BOT Service – provides an integrated environment that enables you to build, connect, test, deploy, and manage intelligent bots – all from one place. This initiative alone has over 300,000 developers working with it to continually improve your experience. Microsoft makes many acquisitions each year, and over ¾ of them directly benefit the Dynamics business platform.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text][supsystic-tables id=1][/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text]Like Microsoft, Salesforce has also grown and is doing a fantastic job. It’s gone from a $60B (market cap) to a $155B company in just 4 years. They, too, have also acquired a few companies. Some of Salesforce’s notable acquisitions include: Heroku – In 2010 they added this platform as a service (PaaS) that enables developers to build, run, and operate applications entirely in the cloud. MuleSoft – In 2018, they added the most widely used integration platform for connecting SaaS & enterprise applications in the cloud and on-premise. Datorama – In 2018, Datorama joined the Salesforce community by bringing AI enhanced marketing to compete with the Azure based Adobe Marketing Cloud. Platform Summary: Microsoft’s platform is the fastest growing, has the greatest number of business apps and connectors, and is the largest platform available to organizations. Microsoft is accelerating debt free at a tremendous rate making it very difficult for other platforms to keep pace. Due to its rapid growth – platform connections, integrations, and offerings are always being updated and added. It is also the most affordable, has frequent price drops, and performance increases.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] Pricing Models Both Salesforce and Microsoft offer varying SaaS pricing models. While it is difficult to compare them exactly the same way, Microsoft is typically 2/3 the overall cost of ownership when looking at equivalent features. The key is to look deeper into initial set up costs, licensing, transactions costs, API costs, feature costs and ROI over the long term. Unlike Salesforce, “Upsell” and “Go Live” cost increases are not part of Microsoft’s plan. Microsoft is generous with licensing and does not halt you like others do if you dip into an unlicensed feature. Reflected in Dynamics’ price is its robust out of the box functionality and inherit Microsoft integration. When associations are quoted implementation costs of a Dynamics based platform, the costs may initially come in higher than Salesforce. The key is to look deeper at the long-term costs. The cost to add apps is significantly reduced with a Dynamics implementation because so many apps are already included. Salesforce does not have the same number of included apps with its application. While the extensibility of the platform is comparable to Microsoft’s, the cost of implementing the extended functionality will most likely be much higher. Salesforce offers basic services out of the box, and they have a sizable AppExchange that allows users to easily extend their platform. The apps there are all designed to integrate with the Salesforce platform. What you may not know is that the AppExchange typically adds 25% to the cost of the app. Also, you cannot bypass Salesforce’s AppExchange to purchase your necessary apps from another venue. Microsoft has 3 “App Stores” (CRM, Azure, Office) with some overlap and thousands of apps. Unlike Salesforce, there are many hundreds of other app stores that allow you to add apps without paying that commission. In fact, many of the apps in Microsoft’s app stores are free and open source. To help give you a better understanding of the platforms’ price differences, we have developed the following comparison chart:[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text][supsystic-tables id=2][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text]When viewing a demo in either platform you need to be sure the demo you see is the product you will ultimately get. For example, if the demo is showing you the Lighting Enterprise license but your users are getting a Force.com license that is like test driving a Mercedes S Class and then learning the car you bought was a Toyota Celica. Shameless plug: Altai demos using the team license, and when demoing to the sales team at your organization, we demo using the Customer engagement. Platform Cost Summary: Microsoft is considered by experts to be approximately 2/3 the overall cost of ownership versus Salesforce. That said it is recommended you do your research when considering licensing for each product. Beware of licenses that will need to be upgraded on “Go Live” day. When that day comes, it will be too late to shop and negotiate pricing.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Microsoft vs. Salesforce by the Numbers Both Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce provide equivalent sales, service, and marketing functionality. Both provide customization data entry form design, easy reporting, social monitoring, app stores, dash-boarding, etc. Companies like Altai have added your necessary features such as membership, events, certification, donation and member commerce to Microsoft Dynamics. To understand what each company is doing in terms of investments, hiring, and giving, review the chart below:[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][supsystic-tables id=3][/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Platform Summary: While Salesforce has grown significantly over the last five years, they can’t touch Microsoft in terms of resources. The financial and technical investments Microsoft makes in their own products and
The Evolution of AMS, CRM, and the Business Platform
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] In today’s association marketplace, most people in the industry understand the basic functions of an AMS (association management software) solution. At its core it is a database that houses membership, event, and basic accounting data. Starting in 2005, progressive associations started learning about what the Fortune 500 companies where doing with true CRM systems that Siebel and others were creating. Organizations wanted to have interconnectivity between their various software’s. They wanted one place where they could get a 360° view of their customers and access their marketing, finance, community, etc. data under one main umbrella. Thus, using CRM (customer resource management) solutions in associations began. Unlike AMS systems who try to retro-fit their software to plug holes created by new software integrations, CRMs were designed from their onset to seamlessly integrate and extend associations’ software capabilities. Top CRMs Used by Associations Today Today from a CRM perspective, the top two in the association marketplace are Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce. Both CRMs provide equivalent sales, service, and marketing functionality. They also both provide customizable data entry form design, easy reporting, social monitoring, app stores, dashboarding, etc. Companies like Altai have added membership, events, certification, donation and member commerce to CRM. Historically, Salesforce was first out with a CRM SaaS solution, and today they have 19% of the market. Since then others have also introduced SaaS models and have captured the rest of the market: Microsoft has 5%, Oracle, SAP, Sugar, HubSpot, Zoho and others have 75% of the market combined. What is a Business Platform? As technology continues its constant evolution, so too must associations continue to evolve in their approach association management. Today’s progressive organizations need more than just a CRM. They need security from hacking. They need Business Intelligence (BI) to collect, integrate, and analyze complex data. They need global compliance (GDPR, and many others). They need artificial intelligence (AI) to help anticipate their members’ needs. They need multi-channel marketing automation to reach members on every communication platform they are currently using. They need financial management (ERP) for forecasting. Simply put – they need MORE. Business platforms provide organizations all the same things traditional CRM platforms provide and MORE. They provide, security, BI, AI, ERP, temporary and permanent infrastructures, service management, sales management, identity management, community management, integration management, data quality management, countless extendable apps, etc. The list goes on and on! Arguably the most robust Business Platform is Microsoft Dynamics. Top Platform Facts Approximately one-third (1/3) of organizations worldwide are currently using Office 365. Chances are very high that your organization is using Office 365 right now. If you are, you should know that NO OTHER Business Platform can integrate as seamlessly with Office 365 as Microsoft Dynamics. They are made to go together. Dynamics even appears as an “app” on the Office 365 dashboard. How Do I Know if I Need a Platform? If you are contemplating a digital transformation change, then you need a platform. If you are constantly adding and integrating systems to support ever-growing needs to support your members, then you need a platform. If you have an IT staff that wants to be relevant to today’s marketplace, then you need a platform. If you believe that your needs are beyond supporting simple revenue streams, then you need a platform. If your organization operates more like a current Fortune 500 corporation instead of the typical association business model formed in late 80s and early 90s, then you need a platform. Do you derive all your revenue from membership, events, products, a few donations, etc.? Is your business model for the next 10 years projected to be the same as the last 20 years? Then you will be better served by sticking with your current legacy system or purchasing a new inexpensive AMS. If you answered, “No,” to these questions, then the time has come for you to evolve with the times, purchase a Business Platform and undergo a digital transformation. Contact us at sales@altaisystems.com to learn how we can show you what the power of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, on which Altai Systems is built, can do for your organization.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Altai Announces New Partner
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]We are expanding our leadership team as a part of Altai’s continued growth and commitment to innovation. Therefore, we are excited to announce that as of January 1, 2019, Altai’s newest partner is Grant Costello! Journey to Partner Grant started as a Consultant with Altai in 2010. As time progressed, Grant wrote more and more code and was tapped for his ideas on multiple projects. Last Spring, Altai’s current partners, Mike Frye and Jon Martin, approached Grant with an offer of a minority share in Altai Systems. Grant accepted, and the agreement was finalized last month, Goals for Altai’s Development Grant’s role is to lead the development team and oversee Altai’s custom features. In addition, he will lead the development of new features and oversee product architecture. When asked about his future goals at Altai, Grant replied, “I’m excited to be able to help shape the Altai product. I want to bring new features that make people’s jobs easier and automate maintenance and configuration so their time can be better spent with their members.” Personal Profile Grant is a Baltimore, Maryland native who attended the University of Maryland – Baltimore County (UMBC) majoring in Information Systems. While still in school, he worked full-time for another software company prior to starting at Altai. In addition to his interest in software development, he is also interested in the collection and storage of solar energy. He is a hobbyist who collects old laptop batteries with the goal of someday building his own power back system. Recently married, Grant resides in Baltimore with his new bride and 30 pound adopted rescue dog, Dixie. Congratulations, Grant! We can’t wait to see your plans in action.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_cta h2=”Experience Altai’s Unlimited Capabilities” txt_align=”center” style=”3d” color=”blue”]If you are interested in learning about Altai’s features, then sign up today for our next webinar: The Power of the Altai Systems Platform Built within Microsoft Dynamics.[/vc_cta][/vc_column][/vc_row]
