General Consultant Discussion

90 Minds at ITA: After speaking with a few of you, Wayne and I have set a time to get together formally to meet at the ITA conference in Salt Lake City. A number of you wanted to attend the Sage meeting on Sunday afternoon so we settled on Breakfast on Tuesday morning at 7:00 am MST. I will work with Joann to get us a place to meet and eat that will be a little quieter than the general meeting room. Here is the agenda points we put together: Agenda: 1)Welcome Wayne Shultz 2)General discussion Anyone diversifying? (Any internal software selection projects?) 3)How is it working? 4)SaaS model anyone doing this? How are you making money? 5)Questions / key objectives from ITA meeting not meet? 6)Wrap up Based upon responses to previous inquiries, the following is a list of folks that I think are coming or have come in the past. If you are coming and your name isn't listed, please let me know. If you are on the list but not making the meeting this time, let me know that as well. Possible attendees Shawn Slavin Wayne Schultz Peter Wolf? Jeff Schwenk Gary Feldman Eric Anderson John Hoyt? Robert Wood? Therese Logeais Needless to say, we will have lots of chances to catch up and talk before, during and after the meeting. Thanks all.

Can somebody be the 'scribe' at this meeting and put a summary of the findings, especially around saas experience, here on socialcast? Thanks

@ShawnSlavin - That sounds like a great meeting and it should be very informative. I will not be attending this year. I just cannot justify the $4,000 joiner fee and the $900 x 2 conference fees plus related travel expenses. This is not to say there is not that much in value there. It's just my personal view that for approximately $8,000 in year one and $4,000 in subsequent years, I can apply that money to marketing programs or other business generating activities which will have a more direct impact. I've attended as a guest before and I encourage others to go and see what it's about. Just because I'm cheap, doesn't mean there isn't value for you!

@ShawnSlavin, you can add me to the list for breakfast on Tuesday.

@BobKohlmeyer, will do.

All, we have been given the Murano room to meet in Tuesday morning for breakfast. Simply go through the line to get your breakfast and then step next door into the Murano room. This will give us a private location to meet and talk. See you in Salt Lake City.

See you there!

The more I see of Sage and their attitude toward their knowledgebase the less I feel any of us has a secure future with them. This is a very timely topic of discussion.

I'll be there (possibly with Stuart Tholen, partner at Eide Bailly - who is our main salesperson for Sage 100 and NetSuite) Also, for you skiers, I just took from my front window - you can't see them but behind the snow covered trees are snow covered mountains!

Nice pic! Definitely interested to hear feedback about your Netsuite experiences.

I would like to add one more topic of conversation to the list.

Consolidation and consortiums: There has been a lot of consolidation and creation of consortiums in all the channels. In know we have several DSD members in the group, but Blytheco, Net@Work, etc. have all been pitching it. In the Dynamics channel there is the SBS Group, Tectura and others, and in SAP Vision 33. You also have Clients First and other groups which are more cross product. For those attending, I would like to know who has joined, who has considered joining, what works and what doesn't and why.

I am bound by an NDA (as are probably others). I can share general information - my opinions on these types of groups -- but am not able to share any financial details. I would if I could.

I know I'd be interested in that discussion (as much as possible without violating NDA). I took this pic ysterday from the 10th floor of a client's - it might be a better teaser pic for those of you coming into town

@Wayne - Completely understood and I would not be asking for any confidential information. Most groups provide some level of shared services the nature of which is not confidential. So for example, some provide centralized billing while others do not. Some love the removal of the function for a % of revenue while others prefer to keep billing control and confidentiality. The difference speaks to the level of integration, purpose of consortium and personal preference. I am more interested in learning how the different models improve performance. People seem to have joined for different reasons: - out of necessity (can no longer meet certification requirements) , - sales growth potential from branding and centralized marketing or - to attain skill sets they require but can not source internally (another form of growth potential) - to diversify product. I am not hoping to take the conversation away from the original purpose (this all started from a post on diversification), but to round out the conversation based upon the additional topics added which are all related to the same discussion of how can we improve our business based upon the current market conditions and our individual goals.

In a relevant aside, I just received the announcement for SLA (now the ""Strategic Leadership Assn"") spring retreat: Please join us in Nashville, as Rob Johnson and Ed Kless lead us through Killing Goliath, Raising David. To prepare your business to compete in the new old era of technology (mainframes and dumb terminals) it's imperative you figure out how to become a Goliath Killer. The fact is that being local, nimble, and highly focused creates an unfair advantage for your firm. The challenge for you is to is to un-learn and un-think the paradigms of the last 20 years, and to rebuild a business from the ground up. Hopefully, without having to go broke first. Killing Goliath Road Map 1.Break publisher dependency 2.Develop a ridiculously narrow market focus 3.Kill the Goose. Innovate Everything 4.Make partnering with customers to achieve their goals your only goal 5.Make lifecycle project management your primary marketing, sales and customer engagement model

Interesting. Is that risky for Ed to be talking about 'breaking publisher dependency?'

How to stop being an addict 1. Stop using drugs I obviously have no idea of the agenda but would not be surprised if it was : ""Stop relying on publisher margin - create your own recurring revenue source that you control

Here's the agenda - which looks interesting. Also interesting that they specifically title this to ""Turning the disadvantage of being small to your advantage"". Of course the definition of small is all relative. http://strategicleadershipassociation.org/slaalumni.com/retreat/

Interesting agenda. I like a lot of what it is saying with the exception of all of us following the same roadmap.

The only part of the agenda that creeps me out a bit -- and it could be the best part of the agenda -- is to sit listening to customers respond to questions. I'm wondering what type of questions they're being asked and if it's ""hey could you use some xxx report that details yyy"" whether the responses (which would be absent the true real world factor of budget and time) be helpful? Don't know.

@JeffSchwenk and I are probably going to grab some food/drinks somewhere downtown tomorrow evening (Friday). Anyone else going to be around and want to join us?

I'm in on Saturday -- am I rooming with anyone? I forget if I made arrangements. I'm there Saturday to Wednesday.

@WayneSchulz I'm guessing that the questions posed to customers would be more along the lines of ""how would you like to do business with us?"" and ""what can we do for you beyond just ERP consulting?

@EricAnderson my wife and I don't have plans. We are skiing that day and we should be back to the hotel by 5:30 pm.

Another Sunday party

I think technically we're still an Intacct partner, and Squatter's is a great brew pub - should we crash it??? Are you guys in sessions Sunday morning? I have a work party Sat night but I know some great places for Sunday brunch if anyone is interested. Shawn - I'll start another email chain with you and Jeff on Friday night (and anyone else that's interested).

@WayneSchulz these side deals with vendors get to be a PITA! NetSuite is doing an after party, Intacct is now trying to pull their people away for something separate, and I have a personal invitation to dinner that night from Acumatica. Everyone wants to get you separated from the heard so they can have your ear. BTW, you will note that Sage is missing from the list of vendors pulling for partner attention.

@EricAnderson I have a group of about 40 people going to hear the Tabernacle Choir at 9:30 am. After that I am free Sunday morning for brunch.

Sage has theirs from 2-4pm - which clears all the other time periods. I'm not sure if I am going to Sage's.

FYI - from Eide Bailly we will have Stuart Tholen, Dan Milne, and Scott Kost (from Fargo) attending the actual ITA conference . I will be available for any non-conference gatherings and liquor law navigation. I do plan on attending the Tuesday morning 90 Minds meeting as does Stuart Tholen.

Update: My flight on Saturday 12/7/13 has been cancelled. They re-booked me to Sunday AM when I can start the process all over again. I'm looking to see if I can get another flight today (Saturday). Presently the hold time to American Airlines is understandably 2 hours long. Update: Looks like I take my chances flying on Sunday (as I'm sure many other conference goers might have to). If my flight cancels Sunday I will have to decide whether to take another chance on Monday or to scrap the conference. The only person answering phones at the hotel is the bellman so I presume that the hotel is also swamped with reservation related calls. Update 2: I got through to the hotel - they moved my reservation to arriving Sunday. Hopefully there will be a flight that gets me there by then.

Cool info on delays by airline, departure airport, arrival airport http://www.flightstats.com/go/Home/home.do

Had dinner at a great Italian place 2 blocks from hotel last night (canella's I think). Highly recommend.

@WayneSchulz - Did you make it into the air????

with a few of you, Wayne and I have set a time to get together formally to meet at the ITA conference in ... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=""--==_mimepart_52a49109645f1_4345ef67878155ac""; charset=UTF-8

The last message looks a little messed up in social cast app on IPhone but shows a time of 10:45 in e-mail. Do you have a location in mind?

It looks goofy in the IE web view also. Can you repeat that???

Sorry I have very poor experiences with the mobile Socialcast. I am here . Room 372. Just got here.

Are you sitting with tom miller in the sage presentation?

Please post what you can, relative to NDA, about new product discussions

Gary has a good summary of Sage's presentation includ

Including pictures of some slides