As a trade show veteran and sales engineer, nothing makes me happier than attending a busy conference. It is a chance to network with clients, prospects, co-workers and vendors. It also provides a valuable resource for accelerated learning through educational sessions and intimate conversations about building solutions. Those conversations add up to gold, and help me to better understand nonprofit industry trends and needs of my clients and prospects.
This year’s Association of Independent Research Institutes (AIRI) Conference exceeded those expectations. It took place in La Jolla, California, the perfect combination of location and learning opportunity. It represented two firsts for me; my first conference at Serenic Software and my first AIRI conference. The latter being the most important because I was a bit of a fish out of water. Everyone knew each other from years past, and we were noticeably absent our usual attraction, Ryan Goodine. At some point, I just started saying, “I am Ryan!” and that really kicked off the conversation.
I learned a lot from the attendees and found it profoundly interesting what these researchers are doing; stem cell research on endangered species, using marine microbes to help fight cystic fibrosis, combatting degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and even the science of living longer through flossing and oral hygiene.
AIRI wasn’t all about shaking hands and asking questions, I sat in on the ERP Session with about 40 – 50 of my new friends. We were lucky enough to have three different large institutions talk about where they are in the process of selecting and implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP), yes they even defined it. Three topics bubbled to the top;
- The need for true fund/grant accounting,
- Limit customizations, and
- This idea of a fully integrated solution, connecting the backend (i.e. accounting) to the front end (i.e. researchers and scientists) from the purchasing department to human resources.
It was very informative, but there were a couple myths I would like to bust, such as Serenic is not scalable for large institutes and that there is not a solution on the market which meets the research industry needs out of the box. This helped to inspire our upcoming webcast dedicated to solving the problems of research institutions with Serenic’s fully integrated ERP solution, including our grants management tool AwardVision.
Close proximity to the beach provided an additional opportunity to see a natural wonder. The first night, we set out on an adventure to see waves crash into an explosion of fluorescent light, a brilliant blue glow. This phytoplankton algae bloom or red tide provided endless hours of entertainment and was a popular topic of discussion at the conference for the rest of the week. Next year, I know AIRI is going to be even better, and maybe Ryan will be there. If not, I will definitely ask him to record a quick video for us to share via our smart phones answering the question, “Where’s Ryan?”
Join me October 27, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. PST/2:00 p.m. EST as I guide you through our fully integrated ERP solution and answer questions. Serenic Navigator has Tier I functionality at half the cost and implements in a third of the time.
Please join us in welcoming James Romero back to Serenic. James is returning to lead our Channel Sales operation for North America. He was previously instrumental in launching the business development function here at Serenic, has managed two small businesses, and most recently, provided solution sales training for field personnel at Microsoft. While consulting for Microsoft, he travelled to over 35 countries including Russia, the UK, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
