We hope to see you at the upcoming CalCPA 2012 Not-for-Profit Organizations conference in Los Angeles on May 17th, and San Francisco on May 18th.  We are sponsoring the event and will be in attendance.  If you stop by our booth, Glenn Kroe can give you an overview of Serenic Navigator, built on Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and how the software empowers nonprofits.

The overall audience for the show is obviously CPAs.  As you all know, the role of a CPA can be quite diverse, from teaching and problem solving to advising and managing financials.  Nonprofits bring a whole new set of rules and complex business processes that can make the job of being a CPA even more challenging.  Whether you are advising on financial management or actually managing the financials, the right financial management system can ensure transparency and accountability for both budgeting and expenditures, ensuring you meet all requirements related to specific funding, grants, programs and projects.

Stop by and see us!

We’re happy to welcome a new partner to our Serenic Navigator reselling network, Catapult ERP. This Canadian reseller will help us further deliver financial management solutions to nonprofit, education and government customers in need of true fund accounting.

Catapult ERP is an information technology services company serving midmarket businesses and organizations in western Canada from its offices in Vancouver and Calgary. Its core strengths are implementation, consulting and managed services related to Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions including NAV, AX and CRM. The company was formed in 2007 as the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) practice of the Habañero Consulting Group, which is a Serenic and Gold-Certified Microsoft partner.

“Serenic worked with Catapult’s founders under the Habañero brand to successfully deliver our financial management solutions to Canadian customers,” said Serenic President and CEO Randy Keith. “We trust Catapult’s award-winning team will bring its exceptional ERP expertise and service to our partner network.”

Catapult ERP will help deliver Serenic Navigator nonprofit accounting software with a full suite of integrated financial solutions to nonprofit, education and government customers in western Canada.

“Catapult’s partnership with Serenic allows us to engage more deeply with our clients by providing expertise in fund accounting, grant management, donation management and human capital management,” said Catapult CEO Elliot Fishman. “These capabilities allow us to explore new opportunities with clients and prospects that we wouldn’t be able to do without our strong relationship with Serenic.”

Welcome aboard!

We are pleased to add NewoSystems Corp., SSi Consulting, and Stanley Stuart Yofee & Hendrix, Inc. to our Serenic Navigator network of reseller partners. These partners will help us deliver fully integrated software solutions to nonprofits, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the public sector in the Florida and the Mid-Atlantic regions.

“Serenic relies on its partners’ expertise and relationships to help broaden delivery of our financial management solutions to new customers,” said Serenic President and CEO Randy Keith. “We welcome NeoSystems, SSi and SSYH’s collective 60 years of experience with Microsoft Dynamics NAV implementations to our strong list of reseller partners.”

We look forward to our partnership with these great organizations!

Even if you haven’t met me, one look and you would see I’m an easy going kind of guy with a big smile.  I’m not overly tall, domineering or intimidating in anyway, so why won’t you stop?  I saw you eyeing my give-aways.  Do you think I’m a used car salesman ready to pounce?

While there are many goals to exhibiting, lead generation being one, my number one priority is for you to remember my company name.   Here are the three E’s exhibitors and attendees should follow to maximize the exhibit floor experience.

Engage-  I’d love for you to take one of my give-aways.  It’s the quickest and easiest way to get my company name in your hands.  A quick hello and I’m just interested in your give-aways and you can be on your way.  Or, take a moment and…

Exchange -  Some information about yourself and we will reciprocate.  We know you are on a break and we’re not going to try and sell you a complex financial management solution in that time.  It’s great to be out of the office and face to face with people.  It doesn’t have to be all business.   Most booth folks travel a lot and may know of a great restaurant or outing that could make your trip even better.  We also want to learn from you.  Share your business problems and pains.  Because after all are we not at the conference to…

Educate – ourselves.  Whether it’s about my company product or some other industry solution, we both might learn something new.  Hopefully, in the end you will be inspired to move onto the fourth E and…

Examine – what you have learned at your leisure and eventually continue the conversation with us.

What’s the worst that could happen?  You may have to spend 5 seconds opening up the follow-up email, thanking you for stopping by, and hit the unsubscribe button.

A special thanks to all the folks at the Christian Leadership Alliance Conference that stopped by our booth last week.  It truly is one of the friendliest shows we exhibit at with great conversations.  We ended up giving out many of our hip-hop laptop bags for those that took a moment to scratch and win.  Make sure you stop and see us at one of our many exhibits this year.  We’ve got good stuff….products and give-aways!

Microsoft recently invited us to participate in the xRM Acceleration Lab at their campus in Redmond, WA.  Two of our employees, Sikandar Memon (Senior Software Engineer) and Tom Dungan (Product Manager) attended the invitation only event.

Group Picture: Front row, 2nd from the left is Sikandar and back row, 2nd from the right is Tom

The five-day workshop gave us the chance to work intensively with the Microsoft CRM product and development team members and Dynamics CRM MVP’s.  It was an excellent opportunity for us to fast-track some solutions and approaches for our DonorVision 2011 product that we are targeting to release later this year.

We shared with Microsoft our DonorVision 2011 product and goals, and the potential value of our solution in the nonprofit and NGO donor management niche.  Serenic DonorVision 2011 is a constituent and gift management system built upon Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.  The integration with Microsoft Outlook was a hit with our focus group last year.

Thanks to Microsoft for inviting us.  According to Tom, “This was an awesome opportunity to learn some best practices and build relationships within the Microsoft CRM partner community.”

Conference season is underway and Serenic had their first exhibit of the year at the Association of Fundraising Professionals 49^th International Conference on Fundraising in Vancouver, BC.   It has been a number of years since Serenic has been to this conference and we were excited to return with the pre-launch of the all new DonorVision II.  As a former director of development and fundraiser, I was especially excited to be amongst my peeps to share Serenic’s latest and greatest product, effectively linking development/fundraising departments with their finance department.

We had a lot of fun with scratch and win tickets at the booth with some great give-aways.  If you plan to see us at one of our upcoming conferences you will have to be sure to stop by and check it out.  We have really nice Hip-Hop laptop bags, pictured on the table, which you will have a chance to win.  Participants simply grab a ticket off the table and scratch-off the stars.  If you find a picture of a donor you win a laptop bag.  If you find a picture of a gift box you can choose from one of our many great give-aways.  We made up a new rule in Vancouver since so many people really wanted the laptop bags, you can scratch a ticket each day you come visit us at the booth!

We’re glad to be back at AFP and look forward to seeing even more folks next year at the 50^th annual event in San Diego.  In the meantime here is a link to a flyer on the new DonorVision until the official release.

Explorations, our accounting software user conference, is returning to Denver at the end of this month and we’re excited to show off the city!  Denver is known as “The Mile High City” due to its official elevation of one mile above sea level. Its history started back in 1858 with a gold rush that later stirred the slogan, “Pikes Peak or Bust!”

Our host hotel, the Westin Denver Downtown, is located in LoDo (lower downtown). The Lower Downtown Historic District was formed in 1988 and successfully granted historic status to 127 historic structures. LoDo has become a destination neighborhood because of attractions like Coors Field, breweries, clubs, restaurants, art galleries, stores and other businesses.

Explorations provides financial management software training and networking for our nonprofit, NGO and public sector users.  In addition to the training, we also want to have some fun!  So we’re heading to the newly opened Howl at the Moon to eat, drink and sing Proud Mary!  Howl at the Moon boasts the “The World’s Greatest Rock ‘N’ Roll Dueling Piano Show!”  We’ll sing, maybe dance, and laugh with musicians performing favorite songs from the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s, and today on pianos, guitars, and more. From Lady Gaga to Bon Jovi: you say it, they’ll play it. The live music show is centered around audience participation and two dueling pianos, so we’re all building our song lists and planning our roasts!

Here’s to a great conference and send us your favorite songs!

One of our partners in Africa is hosting a live seminar on Tuesday, 27th March, 2012 in Abuja. At the event, Signal Alliance will demonstrate Microsoft Dynamics and Serenic Navigator products to accounting professionals in the public sector.

As we know, transparency is critical for reporting, tracking and collecting funds, awards and grants for every nonprofit and NGO. And the right technology can help nonprofits and NGOs:
• Streamline workflow processes
• Enhance productivity
• Follow strict reporting guidelines

Those who join Signal Alliance can expect to see product features and capabilities as well as a technical demonstration of Microsoft Dynamics and Serenic Navigator. Attendees will walk away knowing why Serenic Navigator is the best solution to help achieve financial accountability in public sector states, agencies, ministries and departments.

For more details, contact Motunrayo Kuola at Signal Alliance.

I’m excited to report that Serenic was recognized by the Microsoft Dynamics US Partner Team as the top ‘Customer Add’ producer YTD through February, 2012, during this year’s Convergence.   The award was presented during a “Volume Partner” breakfast held Monday morning, when five partner awards were given out across several categories (e.g. ISV, Cloud Computing, etc.).  Needless to say, I was thrilled to accept the award!

The short video shows Dan Brown of Microsoft talking about AwardVision, our grant management software, which integrates with our fund accounting solution, Serenic Navigator.  Serenic Navigator is available in the cloud and is powered by Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

So, congratulations to everyone in our company for all the respective contributions in earning this award for Serenic.  In my eyes, this represents yet another illustration of our success as a leading partner with Microsoft and, most importantly, being the leader within the nonprofit and public sector target markets.

We’re one big team here at Serenic; everybody in the company has a hand in all of our awards and should share in the recognition.

This crystal looks quite nice on my credenza, but I guess I’ll go ahead and ship it off to headquarters so it can reside in its rightful place.

We’re going to be at Convergence next week and are looking forward to engaging with some new partners and also connecting with key leaders at Microsoft.  It’s always important to us to understand more about the evolving vertical strategy for the Dynamics family of products.

What’s especially exciting for Serenic is our product is being spotlighted during a ‘Dynamics NAV in the Cloud’ session that immediately follows Colin Powell’s keynote on Monday.  Talk about a tough act to follow!  The cloud session will be highlighting the new Azure cloud platform being introduced by Microsoft.  It will further dive into how NAV 7 (and Serenic Navigator in particular) are being constructed to take advantage of the new user experiences being developed and cloud computing in particular.  Needless to say, it will be exciting to see our product displayed in front of hundreds of people during the early stages of the conference.

We hope you all will attend the cloud session and send us your comments!