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Upbeat – Association CRM by Professional Advantage

Tammy Ven Dange
Vendor Brief Cover with Professional Advantage

Vendor Brief: Professional Advantage and their Association CRM solution Upbeat

Tammy Ven Dange of Roundbox Consulting chats with Dennis Dalla Costa, a long-time Business Development Manager at Professional Advantage, about the company and their Association CRM solution called Upbeat.

Topics from this interview with Professional Advantage:

In this interview, we learn about:

To read the full transcript, scroll down below.

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Tammy regularly helps Not for Profits make IT investment decisions.  Let her know if you need some help.

Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Association President, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today she helps NFPs with strategic IT decisions as an independent consultant. She does not take commissions nor sign partnership arrangements with vendors. 

Video Transcript (minor modifications have been made for clarity)

Tammy Ven Dange  Today I’m speaking with Dennis Dalla Costa, the Business Development Manager at Professional Advantage. And today we’re going to be talking about the company but also about one of their membership association CRM pipe products called Upbeat. Dennis, welcome. Hey, welcome.

Dennis Dalla Costa  Thanks, Tammy for having me today.

About Professional Advantage:

Tammy Ven Dange  First of all, can you tell us more about Professional Advantage.

Dennis Dalla Costa  00:31 Professional Advantage is a unique company. It’s privately owned by two directors, Steve Howcroft and Derek Rippingale.

We started back in 1989, Steve and Derek thought it was a good idea to have PC-based financial systems. And that’s that was their heritage. That’s where they started. Today, we’ve grown to a company of about 260 people in Australia have about 170 of those work in the Microsoft division. We have some other divisions in there also be like I said, about 170 of those work in the Microsoft division. We have offices throughout Australia, all down the east side of Australia and also in Perth.

And then we also have offices in the UK, and in the US. So, we’re an Australian-based company. We’ve got probably 20 people in the US, and we’ve got about a similar number of people in the UK. And then we’ve probably got 50 plus people in the Philippines that look after a lot of our marketing back-office stuff that we need to do through that area there. So overall, probably over 300 people globally. Yeah, so this could just grow steadily over time.

How Dennis Dalla Costa got involved with Professional Advantage

Tammy Ven Dange  Tell me how you got involved in Professional Advantage.

Dennis Dalla Costa  I’ve been a Professional Advantage, probably about 25 years; it’s a unique company. We’ve been told many times, especially in the IT space that we have work tenure of 15 plus years, on average. It’s good because we can go into organisations that we’ve had since the start, that I’ve sold since the start and tell them about the history of the company because they probably had about five or six turnovers in the meantime.

I started in the Melbourne office. There were four of us when Professional Advantage came to Melbourne. They were originally a Sydney-based company. They came into Melbourne, by acquiring the IT package arms of Grant Thornton chartered accounting. So that’s how we came into Melbourne.

We acquired that division and launched Professional Advantage in the marketplace, because at that time Professional Advantage was quite a very large reseller. But we moved off that system, and we moved on to a system called Great Plains.

Then Microsoft acquired Great Plains. And that’s how we started. So, I got I came in as a finance director, started off in the tax office, in large case audits, and went over to work for an Italian company, which was trying to work out how to get out how to get money out of Australia because we were quite profitable at the time through that process. So, I went to work there and looked after their Australian and Asian Pacific area.

And then the government decided to bring in another change of legislation, GST, and all this sort of stuff. And I probably was thinking about getting out of finance at that time. And a friend of mine from university had just joined Professional Advantage. He was the third employee in sales, and he had no idea about sales either, like I was when I started. And he said to us, why do you want to come across some change?

So, I said, all right, we went across, met Derek, and the next day, we were all employed, and there was four of us at the office. On my first day, I went into the office. It was just after Anzac Day. I remember that I walked in and there was no one there. I rang Sydney, and I said, “there’s no one here. Was I supposed to start today?” And they said, “Oh, yeah, you weren’t. We forgot. Everyone’s gone there to us to learn about this new product, Great Plains.” So, that was that was my introduction to Professional Advantage.

Tammy Ven Dange  You said you’ve been there 25 years.  I have met a lot of the other employees at Professional Advantage. And I can also testify that it seems like people are there for a ridiculously long time, especially in this atmosphere where especially people in the IT space are moving probably every two years. It’s pretty incredible to see such a company that can retain people even in this competitive landscape.

Dennis Dalla Costa  Yeah, look, I’m probably a testament to that. People do, and they want to advance their careers or whatever else. They do go to other organisations, but we’ve had a number of people that I know who then been out for a couple of years, and it will suddenly appear back at Professional Advantage working, which is great.

Tammy Ven Dange  Today, we want to talk about one of your products called Upbeat. But specifically, for those who are not familiar with the Dynamics product, maybe we should start there and just talk about what that entails. It’s constantly changing, I know even some names are changing. So, can we just start with that basic component there?

More about Dynamics 365

Dennis Dalla Costa  So Microsoft they talk about their cloud being the Microsoft 365 Cloud, which people would know as Office 365, and SharePoint and Teams and so forth.

They also obviously have the Azure Cloud, which powers everything underneath it.

In the middle of their business applications, if you hear Dynamics 365, that’s one of their business applications. Dynamics 365 has a number of what we call applications. And one is in the ERP or finance space of products, Dynamics 365, Business Central targeted for mid market type organisations.

And also then we have Dynamics, finance and supply chain, which is the Microsoft tier one ERP system. And then the ones we’re talking about, around the Upbeat product is the Dynamics 365, customer engagement suite of products, which sales, marketing, customer service, field service, and so forth. So that’s the platform that Microsoft have in this space of Dynamics 365. And obviously, it all ties itself up with its other applications, as you would expect with SharePoint, Teams, Office and so forth.

Professional Advantage, as we’ve done in the past, we’ve looked at the marketplace, understood where there’s a gap in the marketplace, and used that Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform to address a gap in the association or membership space.

Upbeat CRM

So, we built within that platform, using all the Microsoft technology and CRM requirements. But we built an intellectual property or a product within that platform called Upbeat, which is solely directed towards like membership organisations and professional associations, sporting groups, and so forth.

Tammy Ven Dange  And so, because it’s built off the back of Dynamics, it has these functionalities already built by Microsoft. But let’s talk about some of the specific functionality that you guys have added to that because a membership association has specific needs.

And it’s sometimes really hard to meet all these requirements. So I’m just going to go through a laundry list of things that are usually required. And let’s see, upgrade has.

Membership management?

Dennis Dalla Costa Yes.

Tammy Ven Dange Certification management?

Dennis Dalla Costa  Yes. Correct

Tammy Ven Dange  CPD points.

Dennis Dalla Costa Yes.

Tammy Ven Dange Events?

Dennis Dalla Costa Yes.

Tammy Ven Dange What about learning management?

Dennis Dalla Costa  Education is one of the enhances we’ve made over the last few years. But learning management, in the sense that our Upbeat product does not deliver the content. That’s where we link in with learning management systems, like Canvas, like Moodle, because they’re really in the marketplace to deliver content. And they do that really well. We tell them what, and we take back from them, what’s required so that, as you said to me, certification, accreditation CPD points are all recorded within our platform.

Tammy Ven Dange  One of the deficits I see in a lot of, I guess, an Association CRM space is the inability to link with email and SMS. Given that you’re a Dynamics product, can you do both?

Dennis Dalla Costa  Yes, seamlessly.

Tammy Ven Dange  And that’s needed. And what if someone has a finance system that is not part of the Dynamics ERP?

Dennis Dalla Costa  That’s fine because we have all our API’s and web services available that we are able to take information from other finance systems. So, we are able to integrate into those platforms.

More than half our organisations use the Microsoft finance systems, whether it’s Great Plains or Business Central. Now it’s becoming more and more people are upgrading to the cloud from on-prem and then moving to Business Central. So that gives you a whole application on the Microsoft Technology – from entering a member renewal to the balance sheet.

Agend Membership Portal

Tammy Ven Dange  And what about the portal for where the members will actually engage with the system? How do they do that?

Dennis Dalla Costa  We took a decision right at the outset that we needed to partner up with someone in the Australian marketplace, that understood websites, portals, and so forth. So, we formed an alliance. And it was just by chance, because they were already doing the websites and member portals at one of our organisations that started to deploy a product at SMSF Association – so Self Managed Super Funds, and we formed a really good relationship, we found it very easy to work with the with them.

And so we partnered up with an organisation called our Iugo, and they have a product now called Agend. And, and then all the plumbing or the integrations between those, those areas have been developed over time, and, as seamless API’s integration and so forth. So Iugo is probably in three-quarters of our association clients.

As of today, we’ve probably around the 30 odd clients, mid-market clients we’re talking about, and Iugo is probably in about three-quarters of those. So, the partnership is a very strong partnership, and it’s been going on a long time.

They provide everything that a member experiences when they come into the portal. They are very good at enhancing that experience so that a member feels comfortable coming into the portal. The information that’s coming into the portal is coming up from our back-end Dynamics 365 Upbeat, but they can move around those portals easily get find the information they want. Because that’s where the members are, they don’t want to waste time. So, they were able to take down content they need based on their accreditation or based on their membership, and all those sorts of areas all handled by that.

Professional Advantage’s Clients on Upbeat

Tammy Ven Dange  So how many clients did you say that you have right now?

Dennis Dalla Costa  Probably today, we’re probably around the 30 associations now. I’ve been in the IT space for a long time. And across all our products, but in this space, in the association space, Professional Advantage is now starting to be known as the platform of choice on the Microsoft platform. So we have had a lot of organisations contact us directly, wanting to move on to these platforms.

A lot of it’s word of mouth from those who work in one association and had a good experience with Professional Advantage. Not that we’re perfect, we make mistakes. If anyone tells you that there was a fantastic deployment, that there were no issues or whatever, they probably lied and moved on to the on to the next vendor.

But, overall, their experience has been very positive so that they’ve now recommended us to other associations. So, over the last 12 months, let’s say over the last 18 months, we’ve probably deployed close to 15 plus associations. And we still got a few lined up to start deploying soon, which is good.

Tammy Ven Dange  So what size organisation would be ideal for your product?

Dennis Dalla Costa  We’re probably looking at what people would classify as a mid Market Association, mid to high market. So in that in that range, we’re probably looking at associations, let’s say 3500 plus members.

Through there also, unfortunately, even the smaller organisations have exactly the same issues as the bigger organisations that you may have found working in the space. Unfortunately, they don’t have the budgets to be able to deploy solutions like ours.

But apart from just the membership, it’s when organisations need that breadth where they need strong membership management, many options around payment, our payment options and payment ways of going about events. Everything around an event or conference, anything around education, CPD accreditations, that linking in with Zoom linking in with teams. They’re the sort of areas that attract people to our application because we are quite a functionally rich application in that sense.

We got organisations that may have one or 2000, but they are financially well off as an organisation. And they want to take that next step. And they have to take that next step and to to increase their revenue stream. Because what we find in associations apart from just memberships now, they’re trying to increase their revenue streams. And the big area of increasing revenue streams now is through offering other things and then other things that are events now. It’s courses, training, they’re the sort of areas becoming a Registered Training Organisations (RTO). And that’s how they increase their revenue base. And a lot of them have to take that next step to be able to provide that to the marketplace. And that’s when they come knocking on our doors

Financial Reconciliation in Upbeat

Tammy Ven Dange  I think that’s a really good point, Dennis, because you guys are obviously able to do individual and corporate members. It’s that corporate membership relationship I find a little bit tricky in some of the other Association CRMs.

But one thing that I probably noticed from your solution more so than others, is how strong the financial side of it is, in terms of how it records payments, how it does invoices and how it works with the finances. It seems to be more native. Everything else seems to be more of an afterthought.

Dennis Dalla Costa  And that was a deliberate solution architectural decision we took. Our solution architects in this area, which have been working in this space, now must be, we must be 10 plus years that we’ve been developing this product. We started off developing a very large AFL club. That’s where we all started.

And where a deliberate decision we took because we were supporting a lot of associations in their finances back then.

They had other front-end systems that were doing their membership and so forth. But all those systems then got muddled up. They tried to become a finance system and they were not a finance system, and so forth.

And where a lot of the issues were happening was, when you send out a renewal, to renew your membership, it’s just a renewal. It’s not a financial transaction yet, but they were bringing those sorts of transactions into the finance system.

Then you had a GST implication. And then, if they didn’t take up renewals, all the credit issues, impacted your BAS statements. So, we took a deliberate decision that anything that we pass from the CRM, or Dynamics 365 and Upbeat to the finance system is a financial transaction, a completed financial transaction.

So we have our transactional engines. That’s what Upbeat is. It’s a very powerful transactional engine is handles all of that area around renewals, payments, payment gateways, and be able to provide the financial position of a member.

Tammy Ven Dange  I don’t think people that don’t understand finance really understand how important that is. It’s like putting a bunch of debt on your balance sheet, because people haven’t renewed. It is something that seems like something so minor, but the reality it causes a lot of manual workarounds in the background by the finance team to try to fix that every month, every year.

Dennis Dalla Costa  I’ve tried to explain it to a couple of finance accountants who said, “You guys need to ensure the invoice comes out of the accounting system.”  We’re saying, well, no, it doesn’t. This is where this is (in Finance system)) where you’re working day to day. This is where your membership management team is working (in the CRM). This is where it’s all happening. We will just need to pass into the finance system. What you need to be able to do is report for the business. You don’t need to generate it all out of the Finance system, because we’re doing it out of here.

Reporting in Upbeat

Tammy Ven Dange  Let’s talk about reporting. Because that’s another reason why people are always confused about where things should happen in the CRM or the finance system. And because sometimes a CRM doesn’t provide them with enough insight, they end up going back and forth to the finance system and expecting to find the reports there. Let’s talk about the reporting Dynamics. I think that’s significant.

Dennis Dalla Costa  If you’re working within the CRM space, we can create whatever reporting you want in that the CRM space, using the standard reporting they got there or just put it using Power BI, which comes with the total application through that process.

In the finance area. Normally, the reporting in a finance area, outstanding accounts payable, balance sheets, that sort of area for the financial aspect. And then we have organisations that need to bring data together to get that total operational reporting that they need.

All that data could be sitting in our Dynamics 365 Upbeat. It could be sitting in their finance system. It could be sitting in the learning management system. There could be other systems within the business that are critical for that operation to happen. And so we’re able to bring that data into a central area using Microsoft Power BI, and then provide that that real-time analysis type reporting to organisations, and it’s there.

And what we’ve found is, and I was just talking to a large organisation yesterday, that what they were getting told by people prior to our systems, and now have our reporting tools sitting across the systems, it’s sort of giving them a different perspective of where the business actually is.

That’s the power of the Microsoft Power BI tool. But the tool is just a visualisation tool. It’s making sure that people like ourselves or in their internal IT people who manage the data and so forth, understand how to bring that data together.

Tammy Ven Dange  Well, it’s certainly hard when so many of these people are using spreadsheets to identify their KPIs and to report back to the management, and so you can understand why there might be mistakes. But I would assume that within Dynamics, you actually are able to report on real-time data.

Dennis Dalla Costa Yes

Upbeat Roadmap

Tammy Ven Dange  What’s on the roadmap for Upbeat?

Dennis Dalla Costa The main ones we’re working now are making sure we were integrated into a number of these LMSs, or learning management systems that are out there, making that available, integrating into other tools like Zoom and others works with delivered for, because not everybody uses Teams in terms of events, and whatever. And just making the making the application more effective and efficient as people are processing through the application.

Then we always have new requirements and new functionality that organisations ask for. And then we review that, and we and we make the decision. Is that something that everyone can use? And if it is, we incorporated in the new release of the application? Or is it something that’s just specific for that organisation? Then we just build that for them

What we’re hearing from our clients, it’s very functionally rich across all areas. So, it’s just improving what we’re doing and enhancing certain little areas.

Tammy Ven Dange  And how often do you do releases?

Dennis Dalla Costa  We follow Microsoft’s release pattern with our updates. Microsoft releases two large releases twice a year. In the meantime, also, we have what we call our minor releases, which may have some additional functionality, which may have some fixes that we needed to bring in because there’s been a bug detected somewhere. That sort of area gets released, as needed. But then we have those two major releases that follow the Microsoft roadmap.

Other Services by Professional Advantage

Tammy Ven Dange  Well, I know that Professional Advantage does more than just Dynamics. You guys offer other services. You’re specifically a Microsoft shop?

Dennis Dalla Costa  That’s right, the majority’s is a Microsoft shop.

Tammy Ven Dange  So, what other services do you offer?

Dennis Dalla Costa  If we break down Professional Advantage into business units, we have a very large SharePoint practice. But that SharePoint practice is also part of the whole, what we call, our Office 365, Teams, that whole integrated platform through that process.

We also have a large Azure division – so taking applications from on-prem to the cloud. We’ve just done a very large, Not for Profit, where we’ve moved, 5000 plus exchange accounts from prem to cloud and that sort of stuff.  We also offer a large managed service area. And the big area that we’re having a lot of demand for is around security and cybersecurity. So that all ties up in what we call our IWIT.

Then we have the other divisions around a corporate performance management division. So that’s when Excel doesn’t cut it anymore for budgeting, forecasting, and modelling. We have other applications that integrate into our ERPs and financial systems and so forth, which provide modelling and forecasting and insight. So we have tools like Solver, Kepion that handle that sort of areas.

Obviously, we do we do CRM, standard CRM, not just in the association space. We have a large CRM practice in that area. And then the other big area, which is their big growth areas around reporting, so everything around Power BI.

Organisations are coming to us that they’re not even using our applications. They just know PA can deliver reporting. And they’ve got a report initiative to address, and that’s our data warehousing, data lake, the Power BI teams that handle that sort of stuff like that.

So they’re the sort of divisions that were there. And we’ve got some other divisions around process management, and so forth. But they’re the main areas.

Other industries Professional Advantage serves:

Tammy Ven Dange All right. Well, Dennis, is there anything else you want to share?

Dennis Dalla Costa  Yeah, look, like I said, we pick a vertical, and we are fully dedicated to that area. We have dedicated teams, not just the Association’s membership spaces.

One, we’ve also verticalised for CRM is in the labour higher staffing industry, very big in the US in that way. I think we’ve got 20 of the top 100 US recruitment companies on our platforms. So again, it’s a totally integrated platform right through on the cloud, all built on the Dynamics 365 CRM platform and verticalised through that.

Tammy Ven Dange  I’ve certainly interacted with your company a few times with some clients. So, I’ve had some great experiences and can attest to that.

How to contact Professional Advantage:

Tammy Ven Dange If people want to know more about Professional Advantage or to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that?

Dennis Dalla Costa  They could do three things. The website www.pa.com.au.  The other one is info@professionaladvantage.com.au. Or they can come directly through to me, which is dennis.dallacosta@pa.com.au. Either way, we’ll get back to you.

Tammy Ven Dange  I think you also have a website just for Upbeat?

Dennis Dalla Costa  Yes, we’ve got one called we’ve got www.upbeatmembership.com

Tammy Ven Dange  Okay, so if you want to know more about the professional association solution at Professional Advantage, that’s the place to go. Thanks for sharing. I appreciate you letting us know more about Professional Advantage and your Upbeat solution. And we’ll make sure that people know more about it too.

Dennis Dalla Costa  And thanks, Tammy. Thanks for inviting us. It was a pleasure.

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