Bestselling Author and Motivational Speaker to Keynote Explorations 2010

We welcome to Explorations 2010 Josh Sundquist, a bestselling author, motivational speaker, and Paralympic ski racer. Josh has spoken across the country to groups ranging from Fortune 500 companies to inner city public schools—to the White House!

Josh’s journey began at age nine, when he was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and given a fifty percent chance to live. He spent a year on chemotherapy treatments and his left leg was amputated. Doctors declared Josh cured of the disease at age thirteen and he took up ski racing three years later. He trained for the next six years and in 2006 he was named to the US Paralympic Ski Team for the 2006 Paralympics in Turino, Italy.

Not only is Josh an amazing athlete, but he is also dedicated to helping others.  He served a two-year tenure as the National Spokesperson for the Combined Federal Campaign, an effort that raises over $300 million dollars a year for charities. On top of that, he has been featured on the back of Doritos bags nationwide for being the founder of LessThanFour.org, the world’s largest social networking website for amputees.

Josh received a degree in business from the College of William and Mary and a Master’s in Communications from the University of Southern California. He has been featured on CNN, USA TODAY, and NPR, and his memoir, Just Don’t Fall, was a National Bestseller.  Josh currently lives in Washington, DC.

Serenic is very thankful and honored to have Josh Sundquist be the keynote speaker for Explorations 2010.  For such a large event that caters towards helping nonprofits succeed with their accounting methods and software, we couldn’t think of a better person.  Find out more information about Josh, and Explorations 2010 through the links below!

Serenic Software – Explorations 2010

Josh Sundquist’s Website

Josh Sundquist on Facebook

Josh Sundquist on Twitter

by Randy Copeland, Senior Consultant

I have worked with Navigator for seven years—five years for a VAR and the last two for Serenic Software. I had always heard great things about Explorations – our user conference:  the wonderful people you meet, the informative sessions and learning where Navigator is headed.

With my first Explorations in May 2009, I was eager to see if it could be as good as I had heard.  I was not only attending Explorations, but I was jumping in the deep end as a presenter.  Being a Serenic consultant, I have trained small and large groups my entire career.  I felt nervous trying to live up to the presentations I had heard about from previous Explorations attendees (for those who know me, not a common occurrence).  I had two sessions to present:

1. General Ledger – Views, Account Schedules and Analysis & Report Requests
2. Workflow & Approvals

All the sessions were aimed at training instead of demos of new features.  The training emphasis of the sessions and the One-on-One Sessions were what set Explorations 2009 apart from other software conferences I have attended. Based on my reviews, and the overall conference reviews, we accomplished our goal of increased knowledge.

I had a wonderful time at Explorations 2009!  Networking with Serenic users, partners and staff was extremely valuable.  It was important to be able to meet clients face to face after talking with them via GoToMeeting and other electronic tools.  I was able to spend time with our nonprofit clients, inquiring about their Navigator installation, and discussing their daily accounting challenges.  I also attended sessions where I learned new accounting software tips within Navigator.

Explorations 2009 was different from any other software conference I have attended, and Explorations 2010 looks to be even better.

The feedback from Explorations 2009 was taken to heart and I am glad we will have more Software Consultants available to troubleshoot with users in the One-on-One Sessions.  New sessions have been introduced and training will be enhanced with a consistent approach (I would reveal more but then what would be the fun in that?).  This year, I am going to teach Procurement.  In just two hours, I’ll be covering the process from requisition to purchase order to invoice.  Will be a crash course !

We at Serenic are all working to make Explorations 2010 a conference that you can say was, “the best software conference you have ever attended!” If you have not signed up it is not too late–register here. This is your chance to learn more about Navigator, where Serenic is heading, network with other users in your industry and get help with your daily challenges.  I look forward to meeting you at Explorations 2010.

Since the release of Navigator 2009, I have had on my task list the need to update our Serenic Navigator Decentralized Technical White Paper.  If you are familiar with this white paper, then you understand the implications of the new Dynamics NAV 3-tier architecture for the   decentralized deployment of Serenic Navigator.  The recent announcement of NAV R2 further reveals how Microsoft is moving Dynamics NAV into the “cloud.”  How does this impact your organization if you have already or are getting ready to deploy Navigator in a decentralized environment?

NAV R2 will basically eliminate the need for Citrix or Terminal Services.  As mentioned in the press release, “this allows for remote or roaming users to take advantage of the richness and Microsoft Office integration of the RoleTailored interface and the many integration features connected to local resources, such as the operating system and Microsoft Office.” As the underlying architecture for Serenic Navigator (Dynamics NAV) continues to evolve, the deployment options have become even more flexible.

When I first wrote the decentralized white paper three years ago, the following options were available:

• Citrix or Terminal Services to deploy the NAV classic client
• Serenic Portal Services
• Data Backbone Replicator 4.21

Today, we have multiple clients around the world that run Serenic Navigator using these options.  One particular organization can open Microsoft Excel at headquarters, hit refresh and know the accounts payable balance for their Swaziland operating company.  They can do this daily.  Since the introduction of Navigator 2009 and with the upcoming release of NAV R2, completely new and exciting options are now available:

• NAV role-tailored client deployed using Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)
• Serenic Portal Services that now uses native NAV web services
• Excel templates utilizing web services
• RapidiOnline (formerly Data Backbone) Replicator OnDemand

Now more than ever, the technical challenges of deploying software across the world have greatly been reduced.  The toolbox has definitely expanded and we haven’t even mentioned SaaS J–yet.

Until next time…

My name is Celeste Bacon, I am the Training Coordinator for Serenic Software. I have been involved with Serenic‘s training program, now called SerenicEd, since I started with the company a little over eight years ago. When I began working at Serenic, Financial Management Implementation and Navigator Sales were the only two training classes offered, and, they were only available to partners once a quarter in Lakewood, CO. Now, I am very pleased to say, that we have several fund accounting classes scheduled each month, we are beginning to create more offerings for both partners and nonprofit clients, and we are conducting international classes in London!

The change that I am most excited about, however, is the addition of self-study training products. We just released our first self-study accounting class, titled Year End Processing. This hour-long tutorial covers the steps of closing the accounting periods and running the close income statement process. You can choose to run this training session at your convenience and if you need to leave the lesson at any time, you can pause it and pick up right where you left off. The Year End Processing self-study includes screen shots of the software to help you maintain context, and also includes embedded tutorials, which are little movies that illustrate specific processes. At the end of the training, there is a questionnaire to confirm whether you gleaned everything possible from the lesson, or if there are sections you may want to review again. I have to say, the response to this class has been great and we are all working hard to create more topic-specific products. In fact, the next self-study product which will cover Workflow, is already underway!

That is all for now…Be on the lookout for future announcements about new trainings, and feel free to contact me anytime at cbacon@serenic.com for more information or to register for a class!

We, at Serenic, were thrilled to once again be featured as an exhibitor during the 2010 InsideNGO Annual Meeting for finance, grants and contracts. As usual, it was a great time for us to connect with our users and attract potential clientele who shared insights and concerns about their current financial solutions.

This year’s meeting turned out to be great success across the board! Sessions for the 2010 InsideNGO included Stay Ahead of the FASB Curve, Cooking up a Sub-Award, and Indirect Cost in a Cap Environment. We also recently teamed up with InsideNGO to deliver a great webinar.  We look forward to many educational events with them again (and again!).

However, the most common obstacle faced by many of our prospective users  was the lack of integration between  financial software HQ’s and their field office solutions, who’s software often lacks multi-currency capabilities—thus, forcing organizations to use multiple applications to track their projects’ finance and awards. As you can imagine, this can be a real drag because many NGOs  end up having to duplicate their efforts, taking time away from work just to manage and sync their various software applications! Luckily, people were very responsive to our discussions about how Serenic Navigator can consolidate their efforts and overcome these challenges.

As it turned out, this year’s Microsoft World Wide Partner Conference happened to coincide with the InsideNGO Annual Meeting, giving top Serenic executives, like Randy Keith (President and CEO) and Chris Stevenson (VP of Sales), as well as members of Serenic’s Africa-based partner, TechnoBrain, to come out and press the flesh with InsideNGO attendees.

One of the attendees, Denise Graves, Budgeting Administrator at Jhpiego, actually won the $80 Visa Gift Card in our raffle—congrats, Denise! Use it wisely

All in all, the 2010 InsideNGO Meeting was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who attended the sessions, shared their experiences and discussed with us at Serenic their specific needs. It is through these kinds of constructive exchanges that we are able to improve our products in order to better serve you, the clientele.

Brooke and Ryan holding down the Serenic Software booth!

Brooke with Tanya Johnson, Finance Manager at Family Health International

The gentlemen from TechnoBrain, Ltd, our Africa-based partner! Left to Right: Thomas Cullen (VP, US Sales & Marketing), Manoj Shanker (Group CEO), Mahesh Patel (Chairman), Clint Cuny (CEO, USA)

Last week I was asked by a controller new to his position if the auditors would be easy on them because they were a nonprofit organization. I must admit I was really surprised by the question and calmly explained that no, nonprofits are not given a “break.” In fact, the requirements on nonprofits were onerous and especially complex if the NFP was receiving grants from any governmental organization.

I explained the alphabet soup of regulations including: GAAP, FASB, A-133, A-122 and so forth. I further clarified that he was also responsible for specific US HUD regulations, because his organization received HUD funds for housing. After a lengthy conversation, I felt bad for the new controller—his life just got a lot more complex in terms of accounting.

Later, when I got home, I thought about how financial controls have changed in my career—no jokes about doing T-Accounts on cave walls. I can remember when federal cash advances were actually cash advances.  Life was so simple: we would estimate the cash needs for the month and draw it all down. When I first started working for a community health center, we actually kept the finances in 13 column ledger books. Our first computer used Microsoft’s first spreadsheet program, called Multiplan, and then we moved to Lotus 1-2-3—life was good.

I also remember a few examples of why, at least in my opinion, the regulations got so extensive, and the requirements on audits expanded to include so much internal control compliance review.

In the St. Louis area, a vast network has formed as a result of the extensive need for nonprofit services. Most of them provide great services and managed their financials correctly, but a few were a financial mess.  Let me give you a few examples.

• Example 1: Organization A had two sets of books, one for the auditors, and one the Executive Director carried in the trunk of his car.  The police found the second set of books when he had a heart attack and crashed his car on the interstate.

• Example 2: Organization B was an early adopter of a new computer system. They didn’t test the quality of their back-up tapes and kept no paper trail of activity.  When their hard disk crashed, the organization lost all of their financial and client data.  It was no surprise that they went out of business.

• Example 3: Organization C used their CPA firm to first prepare the financial records and then audit them. I will never forget the audit opinion: “The audited financial statements bear little or no resemblance to the organization’s financial statements.” Can you imagine that happening today—and this was one of the Big Eight CPA firms, now called the Final Four or Big 4?

Yes!  Nonprofit audits are extensive and rightfully so; bankruptcies and the issues discussed above should not be allowed to happen and if the audit work can give the donors and grantors a level of confidence in the NFP’s books and controls, we are all better off.

A few weeks ago, I was in Copenhagen, Denmark to participate in the second Software Design Review (SDR) for NAV ‘7’.  The agenda is made up of multiple sessions where product managers and developers from Microsoft interact with select partners on functionality they plan to incorporate into future releases—a very iterative and productive process.  Unfortunately, I am unable to elaborate on the details of NAV ‘7’ , but the sessions did inspire me to write this blog.

I have been working with Dynamics NAV since version 2.6 when Dynamics NAV was marketed as “business your way.” Back then, Steve Ballmer made statements like, “I want to be Denmark.” This referenced the success of vertical solution offerings based on Dynamics NAV in Denmark, and therefore, a business model Microsoft needed to replicate worldwide.

After concluding the SDR, I really had to ask myself whether the current Microsoft Dynamics tag line of “People-Ready™” really does the NAV product line justice.  I kind of like the old messaging, as I think it better promotes the capabilities of NAV.  In fact, I predict that there is going to be an increase in the number of organizations not only using NAV as an ERP product, but adopting the underlying Dynamics NAV framework as a development platform.

Microsoft develops NAV based on these five basic values:

• Simplicity
• Productivity
• Continuously take advantage of Microsoft technology
• User experience leadership
• Rapid time-to-value

From what I could tell, NAV ‘7’ stays true to every one of these values. I look forward for when this version is available, so Serenic can continue to take advantage of the underlying NAV framework to further enhance or build new accounting software solutions for our nonprofit market.  Some really cool stuff is making its way into the underlying framework!

Until then, as a current (or future) nonprofit, NGO or public sector organization using Navigator, I might suggest that you consider expanding the vision of what this framework can do for you. Serenic and our partners have many nonprofit clients who have utilized the base Dynamics NAV framework within Serenic Navigator to incorporate functionality that displaced internally-built Microsoft Access, Excel or other 3^rd-party solutions, thereby enabling a more truly integrated overall solution—this premise being that you have a centralized development environment and can deliver a unified user experience (our most recent 2009 version made this proposition even more appealing).

I don’t know that people will be standing in line at midnight like they did when Windows 95 was released, but the future looks bright for the Dynamics NAV camp and I would suggest that any investment in the NAV framework will be supported well into the future.

With Explorations just around the corner, I thought I would talk a bit about the sessions titled “VOC”, which stands for Voice of the Client.  These sessions are pivotal in defining the features and prioritization of enhancements for future releases and they also happen to be my favorite.  We are right in the middle of a project that grew out of one of our VOC sessions and I’m so excited about it that I can hardly stand myself.  Actually, it’s my husband, daughters and neighbors that can hardly stand me and, now that I think about it, seem to be avoiding me.  I don’t understand; doesn’t everyone want to talk in great detail about the design and requirements for a budget planning module?

Here’s the background—We conducted a VOC at the conference in Long Beach in late 2007 where the topic was budget planning.  With more than 50 users in the room, we captured a list of pain points:

• budgeting process
• enhancement requests for the product
• relative prioritization of features
  • calculated lines
  • workflow
  • versions

Product Management left that session with enough flip chart paper and colored sticky notes to wallpaper an entire office—which we did!

Now, I know it seems like that was awhile ago, but that’s how product roadmaps work.  First, we had to deliver on our “Go Deep” product strategy for 2008, which was announced at Long Beach and culminated with the release of 5.00.02.  Then we had to incorporate the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 release into Navigator so we could leverage the new architecture, user experience, and integration points.  With that accomplished, we kicked off the budget planning project.

We are now well underway and this project is the cornerstone of our 6.00.01 release, targeted for the end of this calendar year.  We have already conducted a number of focus group meetings with end users and consultants to review our prototypes and validate the requirements; and the response has been extremely positive.  That brings me back to my original point, which is that the users who participated in that VOC session in Long Beach in 2007 played a significant role in assisting the product management and development teams in defining the feature set that is being so well received by users and consultants.  Your voice was heard.  You made a difference.

So, now I’m going to shamelessly plug my favorite sessions in the upcoming conference in September—there are going to be 3 of them—Come join me!

Nonprofit leaders know that being “transparent” is crucial to success in today’s world. We hear and read about the term constantly. But what does transparency really mean? Is it just filing your IRS 990 form on time? Is it adding more information on your website? Who needs to see what? Let’s take a minute to briefly look at what transparency should be.

First, let’s leave behind any resistance to letting people look at what your organization is doing. Why? Because in a very real sense, it’s their money. You’ve heard the word “stewardship”? It has to do with managing the resources of others and nowhere is this more true than in nonprofits. We get funds from the community and spend them on the community…so the community should expect to be able to see what we’re doing.

With that settled, let’s look at what transparency is: In brief, it’s letting people see what goes on inside the organization, how much of its mission it accomplishes, how much impact it has, how the organization’s money is being spent, and what its plans are. To get started, you should have the following items available to review on your website, (and in handout form if people prefer that):

• Your vision, mission, and organizational values
• Your last two IRS 990 forms
• Your last two audits
• Your current strategic plan (in summary if need be)
• Letters of accreditation (if that pertains to your organization)
• Biographical information on senior staff
• Biographical information on Board members
• Concise program summaries
• Outcome measures and their meaning with data for the past three years

Remember, this list is just a place to start. In almost every case, more is better.

The final thing to remember is that a policy of transparency starts inside the organization. You can’t be touting your openness if you don’t let staff and non-governing volunteers see what’s going on.

Transparency is good for nonprofits, since it makes us more accountable. More importantly, by keeping us accountable, it’s good for the people we serve.

–Peter Brinckerhoff (biography), a Serenic Software Blog content contributor

By Andrew Urban

I hope you did, as I just did, spent a great weekend with family for Father’s Day. I always love seeing them again and picking up right where we left off. I appreciate those relationships so much.

Enjoying the relationship is one of the main reasons I am in, and have stayed in a sales role all these years. Many people think of sales as a rough and tumble world of stress and deal making. To me, it’s about the relationships that I’ve been able to nurture with so many incredible people. The wonderful nonprofit organizations I’ve worked with over the years are great because of the people that provide the day-to-day services  to the community. I am constantly amazed by their dedication, hard work, and giving attitudes.

I remember one late afternoon reaching out to a now Serenic Software client, a city zoo, to go through a few benefits that the software was going to provide.  I didn’t realize that I was catching him in his car, with his entire family, on the way to a swim tournament for the weekend! After I apologized for interrupting his family, he asked me to go ahead and walk through the answers I had for him. The details of that specific conversation and of our software are lost to history now, but our Serenic solution was something very personal for him and for the people in the organization. They needed more than just an accounting software upgrade. We offered them the opportunity to enhance their business processes via our Web Portals. For example, bringing the various zoo departments into the purchasing process in a productive way, and native Microsoft integration to help leverage their existing Microsoft technology investment in SQL, Exchange, Sharepoint, and Office integrations. After a few minutes of getting down to business, I loved learning about his child’s competitive swim team, and how active the family was with the club. Hearing the giggles from the back seat, and the obvious love for his family in his voice, was an amazing insight into the man who I knew cared about the mission of his employer and finding the right solution for their organization. Lucky for me, he was also kind enough to share a bit of himself in the process.

When we meet, we’ll make sure to get address the business at hand, but it’s wonderful to know that the person across the table and I are both here to find a relationship that will be the perfect fit for the mission of their organization.

Common goals, cares, and a personal understanding of wanting to do the right thing for your own unique mission make each meeting I have feel so much more than a business meeting, but rather the start of good, quality friendship. I’m not saying we have to become buddies in order to do business together. That’s definitely hard to do all of the time; however, it can happen sometimes. A former customer, from over a decade ago, just sent me an email to share the news that he was about to become a Grandpa for the first time. I take pleasure in the fact that he thought of me with his good news.

I hope to reconnect or meet with you soon!