A colleague sent me this article from CRM Outsiders blog which references a great Destination CRM Blog article about some innovative customer service from my former company, Gaylord Entertainment (that’s called a personal circular reference).

The point of the story is how Gaylord monitored a Twitter sent in their hotel about the authors desire for some cornbread, responded with a Twitter of where they could find cornbread, and then later, when the author stayed at a second Gaylord property, they were surprised by a nice selection of cornbreads and welcome by the Gaylord Hotels.

This is an example of the promise of great relationship management.  First, the ability to capture a real-time issue or need (in this example through social media), and second, to track that information over time and link it to other events (in this example a later visit to another property known by a good CRM tool).  

This is very impressive, especially for the size, scope, and multiple locations of the Gaylord properties.  Further, it highlights the value of social media and its interaction with great constituent management tools and how one without the other isn’t as effective.

The financial challenges many organizations will face over the next year will force some hard decisions. But I also hope it will bring some much needed clarity when it comes to technology.

The simple fact is that most organizations are using technology and locked in to manual time-consuming processes that are wildly outdated. The costs of this technology–both in terms of staff time and vendor fees—is, frankly, a waste. And it is waste that can be easily cut while improving operational and fundraising effectiveness.

The problem to date has many sources, but a line from a recent blog by Matt Asay captures the heart of it:

Open source is not an excuse not to compete. It’s a way to compete more efficiently, focusing on real innovation rather than everyone reinventing the same wheels.

Simple put, the proprietary model means that the technology most nonprofits use is a variation on features and functionality provided by countless other vendors. Each of these vendors has built this technology from the ground up. Simply put, that means the majority of development effort in nonprofit technology goes into “reinventing the same wheels”, either through expensive and laborious customization efforts or efforts to reach feature parity with competing products.

What a tremendous waste of time. Imagine if the competition between all the technology providers in our space saw the majority of effort going into innovation! Instead of seeing small step changes every few years and wild proclamations about how facebook and twitter integrations are going to ‘revolutionize’ your organization (really?!?), we would see true, genuine innovation that saves staff time, cuts costs and increases revenue.

For innovations that really are game changing, we need things like:

1. Technology that actively recognizes and classify constituents using the same language and rules as your organization. If you consider a major donor someone who gives $5000 in a calendar year and group them as part of the “Founders Club”, you should not have to run queries, hack custom fields and create complex codes to translate this into your software. The software should automatically recognize them as such the moment they give that 3rd gift that puts them over $5000 for the calendar year.
2. Technology should share information in real-time. With the advent of simple XML messaging networks, this has become inexpensive and reliable. Gone are the days of complex, expensive integrations between databases. Anytime there is activity or a change in data, a system publishes a message to the network in XML (this is the same language and technology used in Real Simple Syndication (RSS) and is also how banking and financial trading systems share information, so it is obviously secure). All your other systems connected to the network can pull down and update the information relevant to that system.

These are the types of innovations that matter. This is what we should expect from our technology. And the reality is that these innovations both exist and are likely significantly cheaper than what organizations are paying vendors currently.

We need to stop ‘reinventing the wheels’, open up our technology and commit to genuine innovation.

I am excited about our new enterprise reporting product, The Guru (you can read the news release here). Not just because it is a really cool new product that can report off any system and it is easy to use, but mostly because it is actually gong to save me time since we will be using it internally.

In fact, I decided to try and estimate the amount of time I have spent creating, manipulating, recalculating, reconciling and combining reports over the past 10 years. Conservatively, I would put it at around 1,200 hours. That is the equivalent of three work weeks every single year! Scary. And I would think most any fundraising professional, consultant, online manager, direct response manager, etc. is somewhere between half that to double that amount of time (depending on the emphasis your manager, organization or clients place on reporting).

The even more frightening thing is that most folks I have talked to in our space agree that most organizations do not do enough reporting and analysis. The number one cause of that is simple: it is too difficult and takes too much time.

If your experience is remotely like mine (both as a consultant and as a departmental director at a nonprofit), reporting historically went something like this:

STEP 1: Data Extraction – This is the joy of running database queries and reports from the various and sundry systems you need data from.

STEP 2: Manually Merge in Excel – This was one of my favorite tasks as we had to squeeze all that data, fields and metrics often labeled differently, into excel to create the report.

STEP 3: Check Calculations and Reconcile Numbers – Ahh, this was always the best part because, you just knew, that the number from one report that should match up to a number from a different report would not. Or an Excel formula would run a calculation—say year-to-date (YTD) giving calculated by adding the monthly totals—and it wouldn’t match the YTD total the donor management system was giving you. So, you invest a few hours in digging into the underlying data to reconcile the discrepancies (or cross your fingers and hope no one notices).

STEP 4: Build the Charts – Now, most of you savvy report veterans have your report templates in Excel (or elsewhere) that usually include charts already built and reused. The problem seems to come (and it seems to come most every month) when you get asked by an executive or a board member to create a new chart that illustrates trends across X metric or to put it into PowerPoint and make it snappy. Either way, there’s another hour or two gone.

Just writing that (and probably reading it as well) is laborious. That is why I have seen more than one person burn out on the repetition.

Enter, The Guru. The Guru, naturally, does not solve every problem—data from different systems is still data from different systems and cannot be magically brought into reporting harmony. But what The Guru does eliminate is STEP 1, STEP 2 and STEP 4. It takes care of all of that for you using a simple browser based wizard through a four-screen process. It even makes STEP 3 above (Reconciliation) much easier by allowing you to jump back in reports (not start over) and change parameters…or even data sources! That’s pretty cool. No more open up separate applications and browsers and re-running multiple reports or, worse, writing SQL.

So, excuse my enthusiasm and natural bias, but I can say definitively that The Guru could have saved me at least 1,000 hours of time over the past 10 years. That is 125 work days that could have been more effectively spent focusing on the mission, with say 10 or so slated for a nice holiday given my efficiency!

Check it out for yourself at http://www.orangeleap.com/product_guru.html and let me know what you think.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has chosen Orange Leap as the platform to manage constituent relationships across the entire organization. For the details, you can read the official press release. Naturally, we are thrilled to partner with them. But, the most exciting aspect of this decision is how the selection process occurred.

Historically, organizations like MADD would have hired a consultant to develop an RFP and choose a number of vendors to participate in the RFP process. There would have been a couple of rounds in that process eventually ending with a winning vendor and contract negotiations. That process typically takes ~9 months from start to finish with an additional 6-9 months to deploy, test and go-live with the new system. That is a total of 15-18 months to select and deploy a new system.

MADD has accomplished all of this in less than 6 months and without the costs and headaches associated with hiring a consultant and developing a robust RFP. This has to do with the inherent efficiency and lack of risk in the open source model. Because Orange Leap is open source, MADD was able to download the software, install and test it within their unique business environment and then sign a support contract in less than 3 months. No lengthy and costly RFP process and complete risk mitigation because they knew the platform would meet their needs. They were not relying on vendor promises, referrals and demos. They knew exactly what they were getting and what to expect because they had already been using the platform or months.

In addition, our delivery model, which includes no up front costs for training, data migration or installation,  has shortened the deployment process to less than 3 months. This is significant when dealing with an organization as sophisticated as MADD, but it is a result of employing an open methodology that allows automation of core processes.

So, along with being thrilled MADD has joined the Orange Leap Community, I am even more excited that we were able to save them significant money, time and headaches before they even went live on the platform. That is the new model. As I said in an earlier post, throw away your RFPs and try before you buy! It is an easier, cheaper and more transparent process for everyone.

MPower is rebranding as Orange Leap!

We’re making this change to more accurately reflect our mission of delivering innovation and efficiency through bold technology to the nonprofit community (and frankly, we think it helps avoid brand confusion around the growing number of companies with mpower in the world and our good friends at NPower in the nonprofit community).

From our beginning, we’ve been dedicated to providing nonprofits worldwide with groundbreaking technology solutions for accelerating constituent management and fundraising.  A good example of this was taking our product open source last year to give organizations full flexibility with and control over technology while also driving down total cost of ownership.

You can learn more about the rebranding by reading our news release and Frequently Asked Questions, and also by visiting other areas of the new website at www.orangeleap.com.  Additionally, keep track of what we’re up to by joining the Orange Leap groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, and follow us on Twitter, too.

In March, we’ll be releasing two new products with support plans that are bringing innovation to a new level in the nonprofit community. And you can count on more innovation in 2009 and beyond. It’s what we do – bold and innovative technology at a simple and honest price.  So we want our name, logo and tagline to be as fresh, energetic and memorable as our software, support and services.

We’d love to show you the new products we’re launching in March.  You can schedule a demo by emailing us at riseandshine@orangeleap.com or by calling us at 1 (800) 562-5150.

We look forward to your thoughts and feedback!

This time last week I was at the DMA Nonprofit Federation conference in Washington, DC. Along with all the usual sessions looking at fundraising innovations, new media channels and last year’s success stories, cost-cutting and efficiency seemed to be the buzz words of the day. This is no surprise given the times, but what got me excited is that most people were not simply talking about classic cutbacks. Rather, much of the conversation was around new models of operating and how technology is allowing organizations to do more with less.

Naturally, interest in Open Source technologies was high. I actually led a session on “Demystifying Open Source CRM” along with David Michael Jeremiah of Turning Point and Brian Bitler of America’s KESWICK (You can download the presentation here).

One of the things I stressed in the presentation was that open source software is not inherently better than proprietary software. Rather, open source software is simply a model for developing and delivering software. But the open source model is proving to be an inherently more effective way to build and distribute software.

The analogy I made was with You Tube and Wikipedia. Both are a new and open way for creation and delivery of video and topical information. Both forgo the old ‘top-down’ model and instead leverage the creativity, knowledge and contributions of millions of ‘amateurs’. And, crucially, both are reliable, trusted and used primarily by people who may never edit or contribute something themselves. In those aspects, they are analogous to how open source software works. David and Brian then walked our session through what that has meant for their organizations in concrete terms. The new model is not only exciting, it is proven.

In all the engaging conversations I had with folks at the conference, I realized people are really beginning to understand this model, not only because open source saves them 40-70% in total cost of ownership, but also because they are getting better–often much better–software. In difficult times, we are forced to adopt new models and innovative approaches. The net result can be a better, more effective way of operating.

The below video is an excellent reminder of how quickly and powerfully the world is changing.

After watching this, I had a few thoughts relating to nonprofits and technology when they showed that final question, “So what does it all mean?”

• Flexibility and adaptability are key
• In the coming years, many potential donors could increasingly be foreign, speaking English as a second language, with differing cultures and values.
• With such rapidity of change, a personal connection and individual human stories become more vital than ever.
• If your systems, software and processes are not agile and adaptable, they will be obsolete.
• No one can predict what 2 years will bring, much less 10. Couple that with the proliferation of communications channels and we begin to see that there will be no ‘dominate’ channel. Facebook and Twitter are not the future, but are important so long as people use them to communicate.
• The Internet is not a channel, it is a technology for information and application sharing based on a protocol that contains countless communication channels.
• The nature of human beings does not change nor do basic needs (survival, love, purpose, creativity), but the avenues and means of meeting those needs is changing more rapidly than ever before in human history.

In one sentence, the agility to be continually learning and innovating is essential in the 21st century. New models are emerging everywhere and old axioms, though still proclaimed, are already dead.  If your processes, systems, software and operational ethos are not dynamic, open and collaborative, you will not thrive and may not even survive. But, if they are, you will not only be successful, you will be a catalyst in one of the most exciting moments in human history.

I recently read an excellent dialogue on WSJ.com between the founder of Wikipedia and the editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica. It was a good exchange and one in which both sides made valid points. Jimmy Wales, the founder of  Wikipedia, made a point that resonated particularly deeply for me: “We are open and transparent and eager to help people find criticisms of us. Disconcerting and unusual, I know. But, well, welcome to the Internet.” 

This is the heart of the new paradigm, not just on the Internet, but in technology, business, politics and more. No product, movement or idea of any consequence has ever been beyond criticism and, as a result, improvement.  There is no such thing as perfection, especially when it comes to software and technology.  

That is why my ethos and the culture I am thrilled to be a part of at Orange Leap is one that mimicks Mr. Wales. We are open and transparent and eager to listen to criticisms of us and our products. Disconcerting and unusual, I know. But, well, welcome to…open source.

Open source is founded on the belief that criticism, transparency and collaboration is not only constructive but essential to produce the best possible technology. The user eOrange Leapment and freedom that comes through community and open access to products and their underlying source code makes the products better and organizations more effective. Most companies I have worked with under closed, proprietary models invested huge amounts of energy in deflecting, distilling and drowning criticisms of the company or the product. Our goal is to invest that same energy into listening and jointly improving weaknesses and meeting needs. 

I learned the term ‘constructive criticism’ in grade school. I have attempted to live by it in my adult life. Personal improvements come from listening, responding to and working on those things others point out. For some reason, most software companies have never understood that. From talking to their marketing people or sales reps, you’d think their software was saving the world and flooding organizations with money, constituents and results simply by using it. If an individual talked that way, I think the appropriate designation is pathological narcissism.

So, please, criticize away. We need it. It makes the software better. But remember, we are open source. So, if you find a problem and have a good way to fix it, we are eOrange Leaping you to do just that. Think you can do it better? We’re counting on it!

Gartner recently came out with a new report on open source software adoption . The wholesale adoption of open source software (OSS) across the enterprise seems to continue unabated. The firm found that 85% of companies are using OSS somewhere in the enterprise and that the remaining 15% plan too within the next 12 months.

Considering the looming recession, it is no surprise that respondents “consistently said that lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and reduction in development of cost-prohibitive factors were major factors for selecting OSS.” 

The simple fact is that open source software, with functionality that meets or exceeds that of older proprietary brethren,  allows you to focus your dollars where they are most needed: customization, marketing/fundraising, and service delivery. It no longer makes sense to invest significant money upfront for software licenses. Invest in what drives results.

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