Tammy Ven Dange of Roundbox Consulting chats with Jan Tenenberg, the CEO of Vertic Consulting, an accredited Salesforce.org Impact Partner. In this video we talk about the company and the work they do with Not for Profits.
Topics from this interview about Vertic Consulting:
In this interview, we learn about:
- 00:00 About Vertic Consulting and its origins
- 01:57 What services does it provide?
- 03:00 Their ideal client for Salesforce
- 05:45 What about smaller Not for Profits?
- 07:05 Case management
- 08:01 Some of Vertic Consulting’s current clients
- 08:58 Healthcare clients
- 10:31 How to learn more about the company
Links & Resources:
- More info about the Vertic Consulting NFP services – www.vertic.com.au
- More about their Healthcare services – https://www.maica.com.au/
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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 with Vertic Consulting (minor modifications have been made for clarity)
Tammy Ven Dange Today I welcome Jan Tannenberg. He’s the CEO of Vertic Consulting, and accredited Salesforce.org impact partner. Jan, thanks for joining me today.
Jan Tenenberg My pleasure.
How did Vertic Consulting get started?
Tammy Ven Dange Tell us more about Vertic.
Jan Tenenberg So, Vertic got started about 10 years ago, and my business partner, Steve and myself, we started on the belief that traditional large-scale consulting firms weren’t doing it, right. We very much have the belief that digital transformations and IoT implementations are about the human experience, rather than the technology experience. We were a little bit confused about how our current employee at the time was running it. And so we thought, let’s try this on our own.
We sort of fell into the Not for Profit space from there more by accident than intent. And we stuck to it ever since. We have stuck to our principles ever since. And that’s how Vertic was born, and continues to live on today.
Tammy Ven Dange So you were working for another company with Steven before? Is that how that worked?
Jan Tenenberg Yeah, we worked for a large consulting firm, a traditional Microsoft partner, and everything was done the way it was done for the last 20 or 30 years. We were just a little bit bored of that approach. And we thought we could do better.
How many staff at Vertic Consulting?
Tammy Ven Dange I can completely relate to that. So how many people how many staff that you have now?
Jan Tenenberg At the moment, we fluctuate between 2025, depending on the time of the year that you asked me, but we somewhere in that bracket,
What cities do they service?
Tammy Ven Dange Okay. And what cities do service?
Jan Tenenberg We are Melbourned based. We deliver into Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland. We have clients in Hong Kong, Seoul and Taiwan.
What services does Vertic Consulting provide?
Tammy Ven Dange What services do you actually provide?
Jan Tenenberg We do everything from initiation to completion of the project. We tend to get involved in setting up the implementation to begin with while we project manage that, we’ll do the architectural stuff. We do the development stuff or do the Go Live stuff.
But it’s very technically focused. So, we tend not to get involved in change management processes or process-reengineering processes. We are more focused on implementing the right technology for the right use case. And within that context, we will go end to end.
Does Vertic Consulting only work with Salesforce?
Tammy Ven Dange And is it just Salesforce that you work with?
Jan Tenenberg It is now, yes. We started in Dynamics many, many years ago. We made the switch to Salesforce about eight years ago, and it’s been all based on Salesforce ever since. And any technology within that ecosystem.
What kind of client would you recommend for Salesforce?
Tammy Ven Dange Salesforce can be a bit of a beast at times with the flexibility of the product, meaning that you can configure it to death. This is sometimes is the major problem if you have someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Jan Tenenberg So I think you’re absolutely right, I think Salesforce has this mandate, just because you can. doesn’t mean you should. Because you can, in fact, do anything you want to. But that flexibility also opens us up to building the wrong things for the right use cases. So that’s actually quite a risk.
In terms of the ideal client, I think I would have two different thoughts on that one at the technical level and one at the business level. At a technical level, I would like to have a client who is competent in the concepts that we are trying to implement.
So , they understand the relationship between data, understand the relationship between systems, understand how information will flow throughout that process, and so forth. Not necessarily inform the technology but appreciate what is being implemented so that they can contribute in a meaningful way to the conversations we need to have.
At the business level, we very much gravitate towards organizations who are motivated from the top down. And so we’re talking about organizations who have C-level support, who have management support, and actually driving the engagement.
Where we run into trouble is where we find ourselves, having to drive the engagement and drive the plan and drive the implementation. If that falls on us, the project isn’t set up correctly, because the client really needs to be in charge of the journey, and we become one ingredient to the success of that journey.
What if the client doesn’t have a Project Manager or a System Administrator?
Tammy Ven Dange And really true. I do see projects where they don’t actually have a project manager for the client, where they don’t have even an administrator at times and they expect you to do pretty much everything.
What would you say to a client like that, that maybe is fairly small and doesn’t currently have a system administrator or potential client like that? Would you want to take on a client like that?
Jan Tenenberg I would think that an investment needs to be made from the client. And it doesn’t have to be a technical administrator., I think the technical roles can be replaced. I think the technical roles can be commoditized and outsourced.
What can’t be replaced is the drive for the business to want to make the change to begin with. If there’s a real need to change digital systems, then the investment needs to be made at the management level to implement those changes. Otherwise, the motivation isn’t high enough for there to be success.
And so we would probably be reluctant to engage with a client who doesn’t have a project manager, who doesn’t have a driver behind the wheel. The more technical roles we don’t care too much about because we can fulfill those.
What about smaller Not for Profits?
Tammy Ven Dange Now I know a lot of the smaller nonprofits will look to Salesforce because they’ll get 10 free licenses if they’re a charity. That also means that they probably don’t have any staff to begin with. Do you have a size recommendation for the implementation of Salesforce? Or is it literally that senior support?
Jan Tenenberg It’s more use-case driven, I would suspect. So, if we go to use cases like fundraising, for example. Many, many parts of fundraising are very commoditized, particularly for smaller organizations.
There are only so many ways you can put a donation page up, only so many ways you can receive something and collect money.
And so we’ve commoditized and productized, a lot of those functions so that we can be quite quick and quite rapid in our in our implementation for smaller guys.
Whereas if you look at a different use case, like memberships or associations. Memberships are managed quite differently across a number of associations. So, whether you’re small or large, you’re going to have a unique set of requirements.
Then it does hurt you a little bit more to be smaller. Whereas in fundraising, it probably doesn’t matter as much. So, I would suspect that it’s more use-case driven, then size-driven, so to speak.
Case Management
Tammy Ven Dange I think you do case management as well as that?
Jan Tenenberg We do. Yes, again, case manager is a really good example of, there’s likely going to be unique processes within an organization that they are going to want to go through because that’s what sets them apart from everybody else.
So yes, without investment…and that doesn’t mean financial investment by the way, that could mean intellectual investment, that could mean feeding into design feeding into ideas feeding into process.
Most of the time, it’s more intellectual and time investment than it is financial investment. Because the more thinking we can do, and the more design stuff we can do and be intelligent about that, the less technical work we have to do. And the less technology debt we’re going to have on the other side.
It’s actually all the success of an IT project, most of the time has very little to do with technology.
Vertic Consulting’s Current Clients
Tammy Ven Dange Who are some of your your current clients.
Jan Tenenberg In Victoria, one of our largest and most known and loving clients is the Good Friday Appeal. They raise about $18 to $22 million a year on Good Friday for the Royal Children’s Hospital. We have been supporting those guys for seven or eight years now. They are just the loveliest bunch of people. And it’s just an exciting day for us.
We work with RSPCA, a fair bit across the country.
Then there’s some other charities like Redkite, who are a little bit smaller, but still very, very meaningful, that deal with children with cancer and support to families.
So there are some really meaningful organizations in that bunch. And, in fact, we find that most of our clients, because of where we work in the sector we’re in, most of our clients have a really relatable cause that we can buy into.
Healthcare sector
Tammy Ven Dange Is there anything that you guys are working on right now that you want to share?
Jan Tenenberg Other than, you know, traditionally Vertic has been about fundraising. We are diversifying to healthcare quite a bit now. We have for the last two to three years. We have productized connections with NDIS and aged care and HCP packages and scheduling rostering in the healthcare space.
And so, we finding ourselves in that sector more and more. Also, if you’re if you’re going to follow us and our journey, I think that’s where we’re going to take it more and more.
Tammy Ven Dange There’s certainly a lot of opportunities in that space. I’ve done some projects myself in the NDIS CRM selection process and it is quite unique requirement for Australia.
It’s good to know that there’s more specialized providers that are looking into how they can service that market.
Is there anything else you want to share, Jan?
Jan Tenenberg Just commenting on what you just said. The NDIS and aged care space is such an important space, also just like Not for Profit is, because there’s about a half a million people with care needs in the NDIS alone.
And the aged care market is about four to five times that size. That’s a lot of people needing assistance and support from providers.
So, us helping those providers be better, fulfills the same moral ethos that we have within Not for Profits to help Not for Profits and charities do what they do better. So, we are still sticking to the core of what we started with about 10 years ago. We’re really proud of that.
How to find out more about Vertic Consulting
Tammy Ven Dange If people want to know more about your company, where should we send them?
Jan Tenenberg Yeah, so you can send them to two sites: vertic.com is our primary site, and then our healthcare offering is at maica.com.au.
Tammy Ven Dange All right. Jan, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.
Jan Tenenberg Pleasure.