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At our Dynamic Church Conference in May 2008 we were blessed to have Randy Draper, a business leader, lay leader at Fellowship Church, and dynamic speaker, give a keynote speech titled Accelerate with Passion. If you are feeling a bit down, stuck in a rut, frustrated with your current position or responsibilities, or just need a bit of inspiration then I strongly encourage you to take some time to watch Randy's message. I promise that you'll be challenged, inspired, and likely laugh out loud. Feel free to pass it along to others who might benefit from it as well.
I've embedded the video below, you can also access it www.vimeo.com/fellowshiptech (All of our future videos will be hosted at that address)
Enjoy and God bless!
Dynamic Church 08 - Randy Draper - Accelerate with Passion from Fellowship Technologies on Vimeo.
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 I'm frequently engaged in conversations about an individual's career through informal one-on-ones, mentor sessions, semi-annual checkpoints, or interviewing prospective new hires. Frequently one of the following statements are made -- "I feel limited in my current role", "I feel like I've accomplished all that I can in my job", "I need a new challenge", "Will this role allow me to grow?"
Taken by themselves the statements and questions are valid. There are times when someone is ready to be moved to a new role or promoted to new levels of responsibilities. There are legitimate instances where someone worked in a "dead end" job at their previous employer. However, it's been my experience that often the individuals making those statements and asking those questions are placing self-defined limitations on themselves based on the perceived scope and responsibilities of the role they were assigned within an organization. Or put another way, they are letting the size of the fishbowl (role) stunt their growth unnecessarily.
You shouldn't feel limited by your current role or situation. Joseph never let his circumstances or role limit what God had planned for him (Genesis 37 - 50). He didn't complain or "shut down" when things didn't go as planned. Instead, Joseph kept his eyes on the prize, working as for Lord and not men, and through prayer, hard work, dedication, loyalty, and a servant heart he was rewarded with new challenges and new responsibilities.
So I encourage you today to feel empowered in your role and responsibilities, whatever they may be. You can grow and make a positive and lasting impact regardless of your circumstances.
God bless,
Curtis S
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 As promised at the DC08 conference, the vast majority of the session materials are now available at http://www.dynamicchurchconference.com/sessions Some are unavailable because they didn't use slides during their session (e.g., Terry Storch) or we don't have access to the files... yet (e.g., PhoneTree). If we receive any of the missing files we'll post them immediately.
The materials from the Hands-on Training labs are available to download from the Education tab on the Experience community site.
Please note that some of the presentation slides will make more sense than others. We coached our staff and external presenters to minimize their dependency on their slides' text and bullets. Instead we wanted them to focus on their presentation skills and content. As a result I think we had some of our best presentations to date. However, as a by-product, the slides often only contain an image or just a few words. Perhaps next year we can video each session but with over 100 sessions and training classes that task is a logistical and financial challenge.
The three keynote videos / materials will be available in a few weeks once we're complete with the video editing (takes time to combine 3 camera angles plus PowerPoint slides and product demos).
God bless,
Curtis S
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Recently, I blogged that I
just didn't "get" Twitter. To me it seemed filled with updates from individuals
starring in their own movie "I can't decide between Fruity Pebbles and Cap'n
Crunch this morning -- it's going to be a long day". I just didn't need that
additional noise in my queue, even from close friends.
Then I attended Terry
Storch's session at our DC08
conference. He opened my eyes to the legitimate business uses of Twitter. So
who am I to question a Digerati?
So despite my initial misgivings a number of the FT Staff are going to dip our
toes in the Twit. There are many, but some notables to follow are:
Here's a tutorial for the newbies - Twitter in Plain English. Now if Twitter will just stay up.
God bless,
Curtis S
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Wow, what an experience the last couple of days! We kicked off our 2nd annual Dynamic Church Conference on Thursday and we’ve had an awesome 48 hours. And there’s still more to experience on Saturday.
I love our company’s unrelenting focus on excellence in everything we do.
I love the 65 committed, talented, caring people that work at Fellowship Tech.
I love the 366 customers and prospects that attended this year’s events.
I love the 18 sponsors / partners we had in our Expo this year.
I love that one customer was so committed to coming to DC08 that when she accidently broke her leg the day before traveling to the conference, that she went to the doctor and STILL made her flight into Dallas!
I love that our customers are so understanding that when the hotel completely messed up the Internet connections on Thursday morning for our Hands-on Training labs but I still had one woman compliment us on how well the room looked!
I love that our technology operations team is filled with talented technologists – they went to Best Buy in a heartbeat, purchased miscellaneous hardware, then acted like MacGyver and fixed the Internet connection, bypassing the hotel’s inability to resolve it. It salvaged the hands-on labs the rest of the day.
I love that the sessions on our new RESTful API and Fellowship One Analytics were packed and got rave reviews. I believe that’s confirmation that we’re heading down the right path.
I love that I got to meet Cynthia Ware and Joe Suh in person. I also had the privilege of hearing them speak during each of their sessions. (I also love that Cynthia Ware is an OU grad – Boomer Sooner!)
I love that I got applause during my keynote - I love it even more that the applause had nothing whatsoever to do with me! They were praising the fine work of our development team – I was simply blessed to be the messenger.
I love that I got sit in Terry Storch’s session. He challenged us all to our core with some serious “What if” questions.
 I love that our company had Lincoln Brewster play a concert for our staff and attendees at Celebration Covenant Church. The church leadership, staff, and volunteers at Celebration are amazing servant leaders! We are very grateful to the church for hosting the concert.
I love that I got to spend over an hour with Lincoln Brewster at dinner Friday evening, learning more about him and his family. What an awesome guy – so talented and so “others” focused.
I love that our staff came up with fresh ideas at the conference like Power Start, an FT Store for shirts and other goodies, new ways to honor our sponsors, etc. And that most of the ideas were a tremendous success!
I love the energy and vibe of our conference. It’s an honor to participate in such an exciting and uplifting event.
I love that I get the privilege of working at Fellowship Tech. It’s awesome!
God bless,
Curtis S
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 About 2 years ago a new idea and company was born. Marty Baker, the
Senior Pastor of Stevens Creek Community
Church in Augusta, GA, had the idea for a new way to donate money to the
church. A way to reach out to his congregation in the way that they lived day
to day. He realized that fewer and fewer individuals carried checkbooks or even
cash. So "dropping their donation into the offering plate" was not something
that many of the younger members could relate to. So Marty began to observe
what people carried and used in their daily lives, at the grocery store,
getting fast food, at the mall, etc. The answer was Debit Cards. Debit Cards
look like, smell like, and feel like Credit Cards but the money is withdrawn
directly from your bank account.
So Marty experimented with building what looks a little like Check-in Kiosks that
accept Debit Cards, with an attached pin-pad device. A member or visitor to the
church can walk up to the kiosk, select the Fund to which they want to donate,
enter an amount, swipe their Debit Card, enter their 4 digit pin code, and get
a tax deductible receipt. It's a little like a reverse ATM in your church. J A big benefit of using a pin debit is
that that it only costs pennies per transaction.
Marty took the idea to market and launched a for-profit
company under the name Secure Give
about 18 - 24 months ago. As of May 2008, Secure Give has about 60 churches as
clients, including organizations like the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Hawaii.
New Partnership
We became aware of Secure Give shortly after the company
launched but we were admittedly skeptical about its acceptance in the church. In
recent months we've seen a real increase in interest from our client base
concerning Giving Kiosks so we're excited to announce our new partnership with
Secure Give.
The integration is pretty straightforward. Secure Give is
programming against our Data Exchange API to extract / synchronize the list of
Individuals the church has stored within Fellowship One. The church member
walks up to the kiosk and is prompted to enter their 10 digit telephone number.
If their member record is found, then the member proceeds and donates money to
one or more funds.
On a periodic basis (nightly / weekly) Secure Give will pass
the contribution records back to Fellowship One. We will then programmatically
import that data into Fellowship One, matching it against the appropriate
member record. If a transaction being imported does not match a member record
within Fellowship One (the member is new) then that giving record will be
posted to the Fellowship One unmatched queue. The church will then manually
match the record to an existing member or create a new household just as they
would for any unmatched contribution.
Competitive Landscape
New competitors are cropping up in the giving kiosk area.
One of particular interest is Secure
Pointe. The idea and user interface is similar but their pricing and
delivery model is significantly different than Secure Give. We have provided
Secure Pointe all of the same information we gave Secure Give and expect their
integration to be complete soon as well.
Contact Information
For more information please contact either of the two
companies listed below. They will also be at our Dynamic Church Conference in
May.
==================================
Secure Give
www.securegive.com
706-228-3210
info (at) securegive.com
==================================
Secure Pointe
www.securepointe.com
Don Brock, dbrock (at) securepointe.com
Office: 336.993.4111 x. 305
==================================
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We’re pleased to announce our newest business partner, Profit Stars, a subsidiary of Jack Henry and Associates. Profit Stars will be providing a batch scanning and remote deposit capture solution for churches using Fellowship One.
Current Process
Many of our clients, especially larger ones, get hundreds and sometimes thousands of checks, into their offering plate each week. Before they can drive those checks to the bank for deposit they must first scan them into Fellowship One. As the checks are scanned into Fellowship One the data entry person enters the amount and visually verifies that the auto-matching process using the MICR code is correct. They also verify the activity, fund, pledge drive, etc.
Today, we only capture and store the front-side image of the check. A bit of trivia -- we have now captured and stored over 19 million check images! After scanning into Fellowship One is complete, they must then drive the checks to the bank for deposit. The church then waits for the checks to clear before they get access to those monies. Roughly 60 – 80% of the checks clear the next day, but checks drawn from smaller, more remote, banks may take several more days to clear. The diagram below illustrates the two step process of 1) Scanning into Fellowship One and 2) Driving the checks to the bank for deposit.
Our Interim Solution
After a long evaluation period we have chosen to partner with Profit Stars. With Profit Stars a church can use a batch scanner which can scan 30 – 100 checks every minute or so. The process is similar to the current one but with some big advantages. They open up Profit Stars, create a new batch, enter the total number of checks and total amount of money in that batch. They press go and the batch scanner quickly scans each check into the system. The church then presses save and moves onto the next batch.
But wait, didn’t I skip a step? What about entering the amounts, balancing the batch, etc.? The beauty is you don’t have to! Profit Stars leverages Courtesy Amount (CAR) and Legal Amount (LAR) Recognition technology to automatically read the written amounts on the checks. And for those it cannot read successfully they have a team of people on the back-end that will manually correct and balance the batch for the church. Next they convert those checks into either ACH transactions or Check 21 files for clearing. If all of the batches are scanned prior to about 6:00pm CT then Profit Stars will then make a deposit into the church’s bank the following morning for 100% of the total deposit -- even if all of the checks have not yet cleared (for qualifying churches).
Will you still need to scan the checks into Fellowship One? The software integration is still in progress. So if a church wanted to use Profit Stars now then they would have to scan the checks twice – once into Profit Stars and once into Fellowship One. Why start there? Well many churches are being pushed to use this technology by their local bank. So if the church is intent on using a Remote Deposit Capture solution, why not use Profit Stars instead? This will place you into a great position when integration is completed.
There are many churches that really want the security, convenience, and 100% next-day funds availability offered in this solution. They can complete the scanning into Profit Stars in just an hour or two and then can take as much time as they want to scan them into Fellowship One (since the deposit is already on its way electronically). The diagram below illustrates the three step process of 1) Scanning into Profit Stars, 2) Profit Stars deposits the monies into the church’s bank, and 3) Scanning into Fellowship One.
Final Solution
The integration into Fellowship One will be completed in an upcoming quarter. In this solution, a church that is using Remote Deposit Capture would only scan their checks once. The diagram below illustrates the four step process of 1) The church would scan into Profit Stars, 2) Profit Stars deposits the monies into the church’s bank, 3) Profit Stars will pass back to Fellowship One a file containing all of the check images, account/routing numbers, and amount, 4) We would then import the images and data into an interface similar to Fellowship One Contributions where the church could visually verify the activity, fund, pledge drive, and Household/Individual.
Who does a church contact for more information?
For questions or more information, please email us at remotedeposit (at) fellowshiptech.com
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For those attending our Dynamic Church Conference (DC08) we will be providing a number of goodies. One of the freebies will be the official DC08 t-shirt. In addition, we’ll be offering some other fun “FT-Shirts” for sale during the conference. Our staff was given the opportunity today to pick out one of the shirts to keep. They’ll be wearing them on the 2nd day of the conference. We hope you enjoy them as much as we are! (Click on the images to zoom in) Special thanks to Shepherd Boy Creative who designed the shirts.
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The toughest decision I make each day is deciding what NOT
to do. Every day that I come to the office, I find that there is more to do than
can ever be accomplished. I inevitably have to close up my laptop in the
evening with some tasks undone and incomplete. I do my best to prioritize the
important over the urgent and can generally stay afloat. I've studied the likes
of Stephen Covey, David Allen, and others - they all have their merits.
Ultimately, you must come up with a system that works for
YOU, which may be a combination of many different tips and tools. I've tried everything
from Franklin Planners to One Note. Currently, I use a combination of Outlook
categories/flags and old-school note cards. That works for me, it may not work
for you.
But I came across a new truth recently. Well it's likely an
old truth that's new to me. I'd been focusing all my energy on the
prioritization of my daily tasks and project milestones. I was managing them
reasonably well. However, I never felt like I was making forward progress. I
was living out the definition of insanity "Doing the same thing over and over
again but expecting different results".
I sensed we were running in place and yet our organization
was growing at a record clip. So in reality we were not running in place, we
were falling behind. So I began to ask myself, and others, a series of
questions. I'll provide an example around "Process X"
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What is the business purpose for Process X?
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Why do we do Process X this way? Take the answer
to this question and ask "why" at least 4 more times based on those answers.
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Have you considered alternative methods to do
Process X?
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How would you change Process X if resources
(time and money) were unlimited?
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How would you change Process X if no additional
resources were available?
And lastly...
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What would happen if you stopped doing
Process X?
There's normally a valid reason why Process X is done and an
even better reason why it's done a particular way. However, it's possible that
the original business reason for Process X is no longer valid. Or there may be simpler,
more efficient, method to do the same thing.
Sometimes we live with broken and/or redundant processes for
so long we assume we still need them. They're sort of like our security
blanket. We must take time regularly to re-examine our processes, even the
successful ones, to evaluate their efficiency and most importantly to validate
their need.
One example from the past year at Fellowship Technologies
was time reporting. All of our people are salaried employees. We had everyone
enter their time worked each week into a web-based Time & Expense tool
called Quick Arrow. We began doing it because we wanted to track Paid Time Off
(PTO). We did this for almost 3 full years. As we grew the data entry and approval process became more
and more tedious and time consuming.
Eventually someone spoke up and asked the six questions outlined
above. We realized we could accomplish the same goal (record PTO) without entering
everyone's time worked. So we made a decision to NOT track the time for
every employee. We trusted them to do what's right. Now all we ask them to
record is their PTO if they took any that week. (We also still require our
delivery managers / consultants to enter their project-related time so we can
measure our efficiency.) But the vast majority of our staff are not required to
enter their time at all. This freed up our employees and our administrative
staff to focus on the business rather than busy-work. We might
still be doing it "the way we always had" if someone had not asked "What if we stopped
recording our time?"
I noticed Jason Powell doing something similar when he asked
the question "What if we turned off their office computers each night?" It's a
question not everyone would think to ask. And I see Fellowship Church doing this as they annually
re-evaluate the results of, and the need for, every ministry and event. There are
no sacred cows (ministries / events) at Fellowship Church.
So take some time this week, and on a regular basis, to consider
the alternatives to the "way things have always been done". Perhaps you'll
adopt the phrase "Just don't do it!"
God bless,
Curtis S
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 Haven't signed up for our Dynamic Church Conference
yet? Perhaps you've been undecided about attending or simply procrastinated and
are afraid it's now too late? Don't worry! Simply call us at 469-442-0100 and
ask for someone you know at Fellowship Tech. They have the information you need
to get $50 off per registration. Don't wait, contact us today! We look forward
to seeing you there!
Need some reasons to convince your pastor you should attend? Click
here to review 10 great reasons.
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This will likely be viewed as the rant of a person that is not willing to acknowledge that he can see the crest of the “hill” and is looking middle-age squarely in the eye. Regardless, I feel compelled to comment on the noise that surrounds us and how it would easily consume us if we didn’t make a conscious effort to manage it.
We’re all familiar with the myriad communication methods we now have – Mobile phone, Email, Chat, Instant Messaging, Text Messaging, Blogging, MySpace, and Facebook. Amazingly, someone didn’t think that was enough so a couple of years ago they developed Twitter. Personally, I’ve used them all… all except for Twitter. That’s one I just don’t get. God bless you if you leverage that tool. But honestly, I don’t care if you just took out the trash or gave the cat a bath. I know, I’m sure there are more valuable uses but for me it’s all too much.
I wish I could say that I came to this realization first in my own life, but that wasn’t the case. It came to me while observing my 16 yr old son’s school study habits. For him we held out longer than most, he was 13 before he could use instant messaging, 15 before he had a MySpace account and cell phone, and 16 before he had text messaging. And as you might have predicted, we gave in far sooner with our next child, she has all four and she’s only 12!
All I can say is thank God for unlimited text messaging plans. When they got their accounts the flood gates opened. During the first month my son sent over 1,000 messages! I can’t recall the last time I saw him talk on the phone.
What does this have to do with study habits and God? Well he was struggling this year with some Advanced Placement courses. I patiently explained that the formula for success in school is as simple as:
(Study Habits + Time) * Course Work = Good Grades
As in most any formula there are some constants and some variables. The constant in this instance is the Course Work. I seriously doubt that his teacher will change or the assignments will change. What he can change are the first two variables, Study Habits and Time. As I observed what he called “studying”, he was constantly distracted by instant messages on his computer and text messages on his phone. It seemed so obvious to me what the problem was. As I was explaining this to him (impatiently this time) it occurred to me that I was looking into a mirror reflection of my own life.
Over the last several years I’ve sent an average of 170 emails per week. I receive many more multiples of that into my inbox. That’s just my Fellowship Tech account. Add to that my personal Gmail account. Then tack on my Google reader, my voicemails, and this blog. Now overlay that with my prayer life, family time and time spent making business critical decisions. My formula was also broken, just like my son’s.
I don’t believe these new communication tools are “of the devil” but Satan can use these things, just like the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause, to distract us from true meaning, from God’s purpose for our lives, keeping us from reaching our full potential.
So the reminder to myself and to you is to “keep first things first”. Take time daily in God’s Word and most importantly take some quiet time to meditate on his Word and simply “be still and know that he is God”. Do this consistently and I know your decision making and effectiveness will improve dramatically.
If you’ve struggled to find time away from the noise and found an effective way to manage it and place “first things first”, please share the secrets of your success with others by posting a comment.
God bless,
Curtis S
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Dynamic Church 08 is Fellowship Technologies' annual user and developer conference for our church partners, prospects, and business partners. There are many, many reasons why you don't want to miss this year's conference, here are just a few:
- Meet and interact with the entire staff of Fellowship Technologies; You'll get to meet individuals we lovingly refer to as "Bevo", "JP", "Drez", and "The Cooler".
- Connect with friends and make new ones in the rapidly growing community of Fellowship One users; Learn how to join an existing Regional User Group or start a new one
- Hear from our keynote speakers:
- Jeff Hook, CEO of Fellowship Technologies, will discuss our company's vision
- Curtis Simmons, Sr VP of Fellowship Technologies, will demonstrate new features and outline our roadmap
- Randy Draper, a business leader and gifted communicator, will encourage and challenge you to be all that God created you to be
- Take advantage of the optional pre-conference called ‘Power Start' with six different, in-depth, personalized training classes
- Select from 72 sessions, 60% more than last year, across seven different tracks, each clearly delineated between Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced user levels; Guest speakers this year include:
- Attend one of the 26 hands-on training labs, 50% more than last year, each clearly delineated between Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced user levels
- Participate in a two-hour block of dedicated Q&A time we call 'Ask the Experts' with the entire staff of Fellowship Technologies
- Leverage the free wireless Internet throughout the conference facilities
- Enjoy the free two hour live worship concert featuring Lincoln Brewster!
Early bird pricing for the conference and the hotel ends April 15th, 2008 so make plans now to attend this exciting event. Registration details, full conference schedule, and hotel information are available at www.DynamicChurchConference.com. We look forward to seeing you there!
God bless,
Curtis S
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In my role here at Fellowship
Technologies I come across hundreds of church websites, some are good, many
are not so good. I won't critique any specific sites but I will point out what
I feel is the most common mistake.
I believe the major mistake that well intentioned churches
make with their website is that they fail to understand the site's purpose. The
church's website exists for two primary reasons:
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Outreach to new visitors
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Tools and information for regular attendees
Just like public speaking, the first rule of web design is "know
your audience". However, when communicating in person you can adjust your
message, your tone, your facial expressions, and your body language based on
the real-time feedback you are receiving from your audience. With web design
you must make some assumptions about your target audience and then allow them
to selectively determine the information they are seeking.
Admiral James
Stockdale began the 1992 Vice Presidential debate with the now famous, or should
I say infamous, line "Who
Am I, Why am I here?" Had he answered his own question then people would
have learned that he was an intelligent, courageous, decorated, war hero. Unfortunately,
he never got to fully answer that question, and that opening line led to his portrayal as confused and out of
touch.
What does this have to do with a church's website? Place yourself in the role of the person
visiting your website for the first time and ask yourself "Who am I, Why am I
here?" Then organize the site's information around the answers to those
questions. If you visit a well designed university website their navigation and
information is organized under the headings such as Prospective Students, Current
Students, Parents, Alumni, and Faculty. These diverse groups are seeking
different information and the site easily directs them there based on Who they
are, and Why they are visiting the website.
Similarly, the church website should be organized so that
someone unfamiliar with the church can easily learn more about the church, its
teachings, and MOST importantly the phone
number, address (with map) and service times. It is unbelievable how
difficult some churches make it to find this critical information. Many hide it
under a menu labeled "About Us". I believe the phone number, address and
service times should be displayed prominently on the home page and either in
the header or footer of every page in the site.
Likewise a regular attendee should be able to easily find
the information they're seeking. They are likely visiting your site to perform
a function like find a small group, learn more about an upcoming event and sign
up for it online, or perhaps donate money via an online giving function.
In summary, remember that just because you have an exciting
new series or you have a great photo of your pastor doesn't mean that needs to
be the focal point of your site. Make it easy for those visiting your site to
find the information they're seeking so that they can ultimately be plugged into
the church body and find the Way, the Truth and the Life. Otherwise your website will be as misunderstood as Admiral Stockdale.
God bless,
Curtis S
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I recently read an article in a Christian technology journal called
An Introduction to SaaS in which the
author defined the term Software as a Service (SaaS) as "an application designed to be accessed on the Web rather than installed
on the user's workstation. Though the software is Web-based, it is not
browser-based. Instead, the software provider develops a thin client
application that the user can download one time to their workstation."
I found that definition to be far too limited and partially
misleading. So what is the ‘true' definition of the term "SaaS"? Well the
definition has come under debate as more and more competitors enter the market
with various flavors of software delivery. Simply searching Google for "what
is saas" will return a plethora of articles that debate the topic from
every angle.
The most basic definition of SaaS is simply "a software
delivery method that provides access to software and its functions remotely as
a Web-based service" (Webopedia)
or "a software application delivery model where a software vendor develops a
web-native software application and hosts and operates the application for use
by its customers over the Internet" (Wikipedia).
Neither clearly defines a particular delivery model
(browser-based, thin-client, etc.) nor specific underlying architecture (multi-tenant, single
instance, etc). Fair enough... there are many different ways to do similar
things. Here at Fellowship Technologies we leverage SaaS companies for
everything from Sales & Support (RightNow)
to Time & Expenses (QuickArrow) to
Accounting (Intacct). Each of these SaaS
companies leverage slightly different delivery methods. Whereas QuickArrow and
Intacct are purely browser-based, RightNow is a thin-client that you must
download and install on your local PC.
A cursory review of
articles on the Internet yields some common threads -- a ‘true' SaaS utilizes "a
single production environment to support all customers" or put more
succinctly "single instance, multi-tenant." The evolution of
SaaS from the Application Service Provider model (delivering hosted client
applications via tools like Citrix) to today's model of web-native, multi-tenant,
applications also reinforces this concept.
Regardless, I believe the key consideration is this -- are
all SaaS delivery methods considered equal to both the provider (scalable,
efficient, profitable) and the end user (ease of use, accessibility, cost)? A great article on this topic can be found at
SaaSBlogs.com:
What is SaaS? The Answer is Rooted in the
End User. In the article, the author contends that the best way to define
SaaS is from the end user's perspective -- are their needs satisfied by the vendor's
chosen delivery model? However, the end user must also consider the viability
of the vendor's model. The author goes on to state that "the most successful
providers will leverage multi-tenant, single instance because it provides
maximal efficiency and value derivation."
So when evaluating companies that promote "hosted" or "SaaS"
product offerings consider the following:
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Does the
software require that it be installed on your local computer? A pure
browser-based solution allows you true anytime, anywhere access regardless of
whether it's your computer at work, your spouse's laptop, a public computer at
a local library or coffee shop, or perhaps even an iPhone. All you need is a web
browser to get up and running.
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Does the
application run equally well on PC and Macintosh computers? Macs are
becoming increasing popular, especially in churches. A pure browser-based
solution built on web standards will likely run on both.
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Is the application
easy to use? The application should be written with simplicity in mind, it
should be as easy to learn and use as Amazon.com.
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Does the
application leverage web-based tools and interfaces or is it simply a client
application redeployed onto the Internet? A native web-based solution will
take advantage of web-based concepts like tagging and linking and it will
leverage technologies like CSS and AJAX to deliver a rich user experience
without degrading performance.
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Has the
vendor developed the application from the ground up with the SaaS model in
mind? A firm foundation is essential in order to provide the right
security, scalability, reliability, performance and efficiencies that are the
key elements to a successful SaaS offering. The proper database architecture
(multi-tenant), application architecture (web-based from top to bottom), and
systems infrastructure (data center, monitoring tools, etc.) is essential.
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Does the
vendor provide true "no-touch, no cost" upgrades at regular intervals to their
browser-based and thin-client products? A key factor is a SaaS company's
ability to deliver regular upgrades to features / functions, and rapid fixes to
any issues that arise, without requiring the client to manually download or
install the updates.
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Does the vendor
provide an API to extend the core functionality of their product offering? Another
success factor is the ability of the vendor to provide an Application
Programming Interface (API) so that clients and business partners can write
custom add-ons and applications to extend the product's core feature set.
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Do you
believe the vendor is on the right technology path to succeed in the new
Internet economy? A new economy is rapidly forming whereby vendors
seamlessly connect to one another to form a mash-up of applications that ultimately
increases the value to the end user far beyond what one vendor can do alone. Examples
are Google, SalesForce,
and most recently FaceBook.
It is imperative that the vendor is building on a technology platform that can
allow them to compete and thrive in this new economy.
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Is the
vendor's SaaS delivery model their core competency or is it simply one delivery
option among others? A wise saying is "focus on doing one thing and do that
one thing very well." A pure SaaS company focuses 100% of their time and
talents from Development to Sales to Consulting to Support on delivering and
improving their product offering.
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Does the
vendor offer Support options that complement their SaaS delivery method? Because
a SaaS application should be accessible anywhere, any TIME, and that
availability is the responsibility of the vendor, then the vendor should
provide extended support hours to meet the expectation of availability 24 hours
per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.
While there are many methods to doing similar things we
believe you'll find some significant differences between the various Church
Management Software (ChMS) vendors if you do your homework. We welcome such
questions about our own product, Fellowship
One, and will patiently answer any questions you may have.
God bless,
Curtis S
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