Cloud + Statistics + Membership Software = The Future

Last year Membership Management Services peered into the future in an interview with James Gelles (President) where we took an in depth look at where the Synagogue Software industry was heading. Over the past year Membership Management Services has received numerous requests for not just a cloud based program, but something that will be able to track and report on member contacts and involvement in a more robust way. With this in mind, Membership Management Services has come up with the answer to not just the question of the cloud, but how to track statistics that have never been tracked before.

MM2000+ is a new product brought to you by Membership Management Services; an integration between MM2000 and SalesForce®, the most powerful CRM on the planet. Eventually, MM2000+ will be able to replace MM2000, but in order to do so, modules specific for Synagogues must be built, all of which Membership Management Services is currently working on. Currently Membership Management Services has four Synagogues on SalesForce® already taking advantage of the reporting, communication details, and cloud capabilities of MM2000+.

Today we bring you another in our series of interviews: a sit down with North Peak Solutions President Brian Pickett, a SalesForce® Non-Profit CRM specialist. He is aiding Membership Management Services' move to the SalesForce® Platform.

Mike: Brian, thanks for taking the time to sit down and explore MM2000+ with me. Before we go any further, can you give me a little information on what a CRM is?

Brian: For nonprofits and membership organizations, "CRM" stands for "Constituent Relationship Management." These tools are designed to increase staff efficiency and improve member relationships by enabling best practices for engaging and involving members.

Mike: We've heard a lot about SalesForce® but are there any other CRM's out there in the world?

Brian: CRM's have been around for 25 years with an increasing number of businesses, nonprofits and synagogues leveraging them every year. The origin of CRMs is in the business world with the most well-known currently being SalesForce®, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Oracle CRM, SugarCRM, and CiviCRM. However, none of them come close to the power of SalesForce®.

In the nonprofit and membership management space, CRM products grew out of more limited donor management tools, such as with Blackbaud and DonorPerfect, or were adopted from the business world, as with SalesForce®.

The desire to use information flowing into and out of organizations to direct everyday actions or report on the successes and failures has made CRM applications a vital tool for efficient operations.

Mike: What do you think is the biggest asset that these CRM's offer to Synagogues?

Brian: The best way SalesForce® can help a Synagogue is through it's tracking ability. When I first met Jim (Gelles) he explained to me that Synagogues were looking for a way to track and report on every contact made; from email to phone calls to snail mail. Synagogues were looking for a way to better understand and analyze how and when to reach donors. With SalesForce®, Synagogues can take fundraising and member relationship management to the next level.

Mike: But SalesForce® is built for business isn't it? How does it translate to Synagogues, who don't have a traditional 'customer'?

Brian: It's true that members are not customers but in fact Synagogues place an even greater importance on member relationships than perhaps most businesses place on customer relationships. In that sense it's even more important for Synagogues to keep good records, stay on top of follow-up actions, communicate in a relevant manner and build a better understanding of member interests, skills and engagement.

Mike: How long have you been working with CRM products?

Brian: For 15 years, I have been working with CRM manufacturers and as an independent consultant finding and implementing the right CRM system for each client's needs. For the last 10 years I have focused 100% on serving nonprofit and membership management organizations with technology for CRM, websites, online transactions, email marketing, and advocacy.

Mike: Why SalesForce®? What makes SalesForce® stand out above the rest?

Brian: Quality and Value. As a CRM, SalesForce® is highly functional, reliable and cost-effective for Synagogues. Because Synagogues are Non-Profits, SalesForce® offers them 10 FREE licenses of their product. In addition, through the SalesForce® ISV (Independent Service Vendor) program, I have developed an application that makes SalesForce® specific to Synagogues at a cost that is much lower than configuring any other standard CRM for use at a Synagogue.

Mike: How are you working with Membership Management Services in developing MM2000+?

Brian: Peak Synagogue is a platform for engaging members. Participating MM2000 clients will be set-up with SalesForce® and have important MM data on member families, contacts and A/R appear automatically from MM2000. Staff will expand the profile on members including tracking interests, skills, relationships and events attended. Team members can easily communicate with one another, assign tasks or record notes in a shared environment (subject to appropriate permissions, of course).

The platform will be enhanced steadily for subscribing Synagogues. Subscriptions will include new features, ongoing training, client support and leadership on best practices.

We are also working on creating an Accounts Receivable Module as well as Yahrzeit and B'nai Mitzvah Modules. These Modules need to be built from the ground up, rather than pieced together through the SalesForce® App Store, as Synagogues run so much differently than any other non-profit organization.

Mike: How can MM2000+ with Peak Synagogues benefit Membership Management Services' Clients?

Brian: Synagogues will build better member relationships and operate more efficiently because they are sharing information easily, expanding what they know about members and tracking engagement efforts to know better what works and what needs improvement or scrapping.

Mike: Brian, this was great! Thanks for taking the time to sit down with me. We look forward to working with you in the future!

We know there are tons more questions; How does it work? What is the process like? Is SalesForce® as complicated as it sounds? Both Brian and Jim want to give you these answers. Brian will be holding a webinar on SalesForce® Thursday, February 13th, 2014 11 AM (PST) 2 PM (EST). Please click here to sign up. Space is limited and filling up fast! Have all your questions answered and realize how powerful MM2000+ truly is.

Next up, an interview with Jim to dig deeper into where Membership Management Services is going with MM2000+ and how to join the growing number of our Synagogue Clients taking advantage of our SalesForce® solution.

Everything Online, Everything In The Cloud.

Mike:  I’m sitting down here with CEO and owner of Adar IT, Vadim Vladimirskiy, to talk to him about his company Adar IT, how it works, and what they do.  So Vadim, can you tell me a little about your company?  How did you get started? Vadim:  I started working with a company called Solus in 1999.  They provided traditional IT network support such as firewalls, virus protection, and other technical issues.  One of the major services Solus offered was data backups.  They would put all your data on a tape backup, helping customers maintain their data in case their computers ever went down.  In 2005 we felt there was a better way to do this. Mike:  So what made you want to make that jump? Vadim:  Well, there was one client we had who was doing backups via tape.  There were two sets of tapes that we gave them; one for cleaning the heads, and one for doing the actual backup.  The procedure was, every night, right before you left, you put the tape into the drive and backup your data.  The next day, if the tape popped out, you knew the backup worked.  If the tape didn’t pop out, you would call Solus and we would come onsite and fix it for you.  Once a week or so, you would take the second tape and clean the heads of the recorder.  Well, we got a call from one client whose IT system went down, and they couldn’t retrieve their backup.  We get there and it turns out the employee was putting the cleaning tape in everyday, instead of the recording tape.  It would pop out every night after it was done cleaning.  She figured since it popped out, the backup went fine.  I realized  there was a better way to provide a reliable backup service, so we started  Adar IT.  A lot of customers signed up as first time users, others did it to complement their existing backup routine. Mike:  But don’t you deal with other things besides just backups.  My understanding was that you provide the computers, too. Vadim:  We found that people had to upgrade their servers every few years.  Once they would go through all the upgrades, they would run into one of two problems.  Either the server didn’t have enough capacity as the company grew, and they would have to replace the server once again.  Or they would buy a server that had too much capacity thinking they might need it in the future, but not utilize all of it.  We decided the best solution was to provide a server with the exact amount of capacity they needed, with the option to scale up or down. Mike:  So you provide a cloud service? Vadim:  Exactly.  Except when we first started Adar IT, there was no term such as ‘the cloud’.  They called it ‘infrastructure-as-a-service.’  We provide the IT platform that runs any software.  In 2009 we started hosting desktops, as more and more people wanted virtual desktops they could access from anywhere, anytime.  What’s great about virtual desktops is that you no longer have to worry about viruses, hardware, or backups.  Adar provides full system backups to every single one of our customers every two hours. We even storethe backedup up saved in 2 different locations.  This is the norm for big enterprises, but for the small to medium sized business, this kind of protection was never available as it was too expensive.  Now we can offer what the big guys get, for the price of the small guys. Mike:  So you are a tech company? Vadim:  No, we are a service company.  Mike:  What’s the point of Adar IT?  I can do all my backups on DVD’s or thumb drives, why do I need a company like yours? Vadim:  The reason people come to us is because they don’t want to deal with the technical aspects of maintaining a server and backing it up.  Our customers just want it to work.  To use the words of Jean Luc Picard, they want someone who they can call and say, “make it so”.  People today don’t care what type of technology they are using; it could be Apple, HP, Dell, Intel, it doesn’t matter - they just want it to work, and that’s what we provide. Mike:  Who is Adar IT for?  Who is your main clientele? Vadim:  Our clients are mostly small to medium size businesses.  People want the flexibility of working from multiple locations; they don’t want to be tied to their office.  We also have quite a few virtual companies, which have no central offices.  Mike:  So is there a difference between Adar IT and being cloud based? Vadim:  Great question, a lot of our clients ask the same thing.  The difference between what we do, and what companies such as iCloud or DropBox do, is that we  provide full service cloud solutions for businesses. Mike:  So you are a server farm? Vadim:  We are more than that.  We aren’t a hosting company, we are a service company. Mike:  You’re the next generation of computer repair. Vadim:  Not really.  We see ourselves more as people who prevent the need for computer repair by providing them with the least amount of equipment possible, resulting in fewer repairs.  Mike:  What do you mean? Vadim:  We put in a ‘smart monitor’.  It has no hard drive, no operating system, it’s just a monitor with a few USB ports and a network connection.  Our customers plug their network cable into the monitor and it connects to our servers. We wanted to make this as simple as possible for our clients.  They don’t want to have to worry about how things work. Mike:  Do you see this as the “next big thing”? Vadim:    The future is going to more of a move to service based companies.  People aren’t going to buy hardware; there is a trend to move towards the cloud.  There’s going to be one big mainframe, with a bunch of dumb terminals.  More and more people are going to have the setup we provide, where all you have is a monitor with a few network connections, no local desktop.  Mike:  Finally, where do you see your company in five years?  Where are you going? Vadim:  It’s hard to say as technology is changing all the time.  But that’s not really our major concern, as we are a service company.  We use technology to empower small and medium size businesses and give them the same tools that large companies have.  Most of our clients are in Illinois, where we are located.  However, as connectivity gets better, we will see a lot of geographical expansion.  We are able to provide a superior level of service because we can easily gain access to our customer’s IT system.  That’s what so great about us.  We are where our clients are, because we do all the actual computing here in our offices. Mike:  Vadim thanks for giving me this interview.  It’s enlightened me a lot into where cloud technology is going.