I recently talked about the struggles associations face with #techdebt. Now let’s talk fixes. 🔧 Ideally, you want to avoid tech debt 📉 in the first place. This means understanding your current and future operations, estimating the maintenance load for potential tech investments, and working within a reasonable budget. 💰 But if you’re struggling right now, take action. ✅ Run an audit: Create a list of critical tech debt based on business impact. This formal analysis should be led by IT leaders.  Ken Knapton, DIT, CISSP, MBA's tech debt attributes are a good place to start. ✅ Pick the right solutions: If your legacy AMS is hurting you, consider advanced CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot (or a lower-market option). These are much, much better for big-picture ops and data analytics. ✅ Have the hard budget talk: Get buy-in from stakeholders (especially your CFO) by highlighting challenges, impacts, and solutions. The idea is to prioritize lowering TCO instead of going after the cheapest alternative. ✅ Bring in the right implementation partner: Ideally, find someone who’s worked with associations before and can provide no-BS recommendations on what should and shouldn’t be done (that’s our cup of tea at Aptaria, Inc.). ✅ Build a recovery roadmap: Base it on your audit, with specific timelines for sub-projects. Vague timelines almost always mean the change will never happen. Map out regular check-ins and progress reports will help keep everyone accountable. And document everything. Hey, what’s done is done. But the sunk cost fallacy is a thing, and the best thing you can do is to not fall victim to it. #TechDebtSolutions #TechRecovery #DigitalTransformation #LegacySystems #AssociationLeadership #Aptaria #ImplementationPartner #TechAudits #CRMUpgrade #SalesforceForAssociations #TechBudgeting #Salesforce #HubSpot #AMS

#IBMatDTECH : "Digitally Managing Emergency Response & Mobilization ... that's what we've done with the Emergency Preparedness Platform. So it provides that ability to manage all those resources that are restoring power after a major storm event. And in some cases this could be 25,000 people, right. So having the ability to track and manage those resources and everything that they do from a work perspective and where they're staying and expense perspective, is huge for a utility and will provide them the ability to pay their vendors more quickly and just to manage everything that goes into restoring power for their customers." In the run up to #DISTRIBUTECH24, I caught up with Joey Ramion, PMP, CSM, SA, #Salesforce Utilities Lead at IBM Consulting to find out more about how IBM collaborated with a US Utility to transform the processes for planning and mobilizing the field service teams deployed to repair assets and restore service, built on Salesforce. Joey will present on this topic at DISTRIBUTECH International on Feb 28th at 9:15AM in room W304CD. HT Ken Saunders, Malathi Srinivasan, Jessica French, Casey Werth IBM Research, IBM Consulting, IBM watsonx, IBM Institute for Business Value, IBM Industry Insider #IBMPartner #EnergyTransition #Transformation #CleanEnergy #Sustainability

📢 Proud moment..!! #SolutionPartnerDesignation achieved in #BusinessApplication ✅️ Superb work by the Business Applications team Nisar Shaikh Aravind N Suraj Kudos to you!! #REDINGTONX #MSFT #BizApps #SPD #Dynamics365 #ERP #CRM #PowerApps #Lowcodenocode

Looking forward to co-facilitating a session at the upcoming #directionsna event in San Diego next week. ->Why and how Microsoft partners should consider providing Managed Services<- With Microsoft's changes to the partner programs, Managed Services offerings become an important source of gross margin contribution for partners. Customers value having key skills filled by experts at a fractional cost. Its also so much easier to budget managed services versus lumpy professional services projects. Partners should love the recurring revenue model which has up to 8X the value of professional services revenue. Its also much easier to forecast staffing requirements, not to mention the fact that billing is in advance, not in arrears, it helps with cash flow. These relationships can also be much more strategic and sticky improving your net retention rate with customers. However selling and delivering managed services can require a different set of muscles than professional services: Think of managed services as a product offering. It needs to be packaged in a box with a scope and price. Think t-shirt sizing; S,M,L. Delivery needs to be managed more like a fixed price project. Stick to the SOW, get habitual about change requests, delegate customer actions, provide customers with a portal to request work and track progress. Billing is much easier, but dont forget to manage the renewal process! You'll need to put in a health check process at least three months before renewal. Put in a 'use it or lose it' policy otherwise you can accumulate work backlog.

Microsoft named a Leader in 2024 Gartner™️ Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms! 🎉 Microsoft Power Platform is a leader for the sixth year in a row for its comprehensive low-code solution that spans application development, process automation, external websites, and intelligent agents. See the magic quadrant in the blog below👇 🔗 Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/ggkKgbef #msftadvocate #powerplatform #magicquadrant #microsoftadvocate #Microsoft #future #technology

Is your digital transformation project at risk due to key employees leaving? Exending the contract of the project champion is very important for the success of the project. Before you start the Digital Transformation project make sure you have a reliable team who will be available throughout the term of the project or else this will cause a lot of delays to the project. This is one of the strategy that can prevent delays, maintain continuity, and ensure your project is a success. #DigitalTransformation #ProjectSuccess #EmployeeContracts #BusinessGrowth #ERPinsights #shakirerpvlog Octaware Technologies | Microsoft Partner

🕛 Are you an organization with a large backlog of IT requests that must be prioritized and then approved and funded? 🤔 🕐 Do you use #spreadsheets to manage them? 😫 🕜 Are you always "requesting information" #rfi on which #technologyplatform meets your #requirements OR unsure if you made the right decision on platform selection?? 😬 Introducing..🚨Center of Excellence (COE) Intake and Review Accelerator 🚨 Key Features and Benefits 🚀 Defined Intake and Review Process This Accelerator establishes a clear and structured intake and review process for application requests. This ensures that every request is handled systematically and reduces the likelihood of errors and omission of information needed by reviewers. Users can easily submit their requests through a user-friendly interface, making the process accessible to all employees regardless of their technical expertise. 🚀 Internal Review and Recommendations When a request is submitted, it is queued with reviewers and automatically initiates an internal review.   ♣ The internal COE Intake application gives reviewers: ♣ A dashboard to track requests and their status ♣ A workflow to evaluate project viability ♣ A rules engine that helps reviewers determine the best enterprise application for the business use case without extensive customization. 🚀 Enhanced Collaboration and Decision-Making The Accelerator fosters collaboration between different departments and teams within the organization. By centralizing the intake process, all relevant stakeholders can access and review application requests to facilitate better communication and decision-making. ♣ The structured review process helps in capturing all relevant inputs and feedback, ensuring that the final recommendations are well-informed and aligned with organizational priorities. ♣ The COE Intake and Review Accelerator is recommended for organizations looking to optimize their business/IT application request process. By providing a structured, efficient, and collaborative approach to handling requests, this Accelerator helps organizations save time and resources while ensuring that the most appropriate business solutions are recommended. #ideatoapp #missionaccelerator #digitalacceleration #timesavings

Dana Willmer at PartnerEconomics gave me permission to share some data from their recent webinar. Really insightful stuff. The best benchmarking data available for #dynamics365 partners. A few things that caught my eye. From a different response on the report, Top business worries are related to service talent. 1) Finding them, 2) Getting their utilization up, 3) Cost. Ironically, the top performers clearly dont have those issues. The SaaS based businesses crush utilization numbers, while still having a much higher cost per employee. But their revenue per employee is so high, it really doesnt matter. Propped up by repeatable revenue (ex. software/IP) I'm biased but I think this proves a couple things I've been saying for almost 20 years. Microsoft partners can break their T&M project based revenue dependency and will be better for it. They can adopt a SaaS style business with low COS and high OPEX. Drive as much as your revenue into subscription/recurring contracts and find a way to deliver ongoing value over that term. Its possible even if you don't have IP. Your business will be way more valuable for it.

As software purchasing becomes more complicated, organizations need a streamlined platform to efficiently manage their software assets. The #Microsoft commercial marketplace plays a crucial role in balancing speed and agility as it offers a one-stop-shop for businesses to procure and implement software offerings. 💰The benefits are clear! According to Forrester, Microsoft commercial marketplace delivered customers a 587% ROI with a payback period of less than six months! 🛒 Read the Total Economic Impact study for more insights on cost savings and business benefits enabled by the Microsoft Commercial #Marketplace. [link in the comments below] 👇🏻 Geraint Thomas Karina Pereira Kadir Sener Justin Alderson Alina Irma O. Maggie Sorek Nick Christodoulou Tamer Elhamy Gulcin Savci Arslan Diana Teodorescu Marina Alimova Abel Iacovides

To unlock the full potential of your business with the optimized M365 investments, read this POV by Ashutosh Agrawal and Hariprasad R. M365 offers a suite of tools designed to elevate your team’s performance and stay ahead in the digital age of optimization.