Welcome everyone to our nonprofit tech club Austin program. We are delighted to have Gina Gillette a square. Yes, am I pronouncing that right? Yes, yes. With us. And I wanted to just provide a little introduction to our program and to nonprofit tech club Austin. We've been going for really about 10 years off and on, started really going strong in the past couple years, especially since COVID when everybody was at home and so we got on zoom and that turns out to be a great thing that happened to us because we have had a lot of viewers and participants so here we go. We are part of a network of tech clubs across the nation and across the world in 10 nonprofit technology network, which is based in Portland but operates all over the United States is a partner and tech soup connect, which was formerly called net squared it's just gone through a name change this year. Those are two nonprofit partners and they provide support all the time, as we need it, and programs as a result of being a nonprofit project of course are free to everyone. We are entirely volunteer driven and managed, and we really aimed to help individuals and nonprofits seeking cost effective tools and techniques to help make their work easier and more effective so everybody is included. All job descriptions are included development officers executive directors it professionals and communicators in nonprofits we also we sometimes have small businesses attend our program so we really like that because we share a lot of really helpful information for them as well. And this is our slate, we actually wrote it out in a little poster format, just because we're so excited, we had such a great year, we're set up through December and looking really good, and we're in our second half now of programs we meet on the first Monday of each month at 630pm on. As I mentioned, we're all volunteer all of volunteers, you know have wide range of experience and backgrounds. They donate their time to share information on social to find speakers and to introduce speakers like I am today. Our guest speakers speak for free like Jim and so we really appreciate everybody pitching in for the greater knowledge of the nonprofit sector. And I urge everyone to support all these great people. Here are our organizers and I put their LinkedIn URLs on here because are welcome to join with them. If you have a question at any time, please reach out to any of us. And, you know, this will appear in the recording of course so if you need to follow up after the presentation tonight just get back on the recording. We also appreciate here in Austin startup hub incubator enthusiastic supporter capital factory is our local tech sponsor and they traditionally have provided in person meeting space downtown in Austin, and they do have a growing presence all over the city which is a good thing. And we've been really grateful for the space and even though with coven 19 we had to move online which turned out as I mentioned be kind of a good thing for us. They remained a sponsor and they helped promote us and we're included on the capital factory calendar monthly so you can find us on their website as well. Here are some links, you again on the recording return to this later and you can find us all over the place here and we may eventually adopt some new social media platforms but right now this is where we are present and these are partners as well. So, that's that now. Great. Introduce yourself. Yeah, love to it you know it's great so. As you mentioned my name is Jenna Dillett and I work with Square and I also am very happy about being the host of the TechSoup connect North Texas Community. I'm a sort of Dallas and broader community in North Texas and so we just started a little over a year ago and growing our community and it's been great to have Carolyn as a speaker to our club and to be part of this national international community of nonprofit groups meeting up and and getting better tools to to operate and you know try to not reinvent wheels right because there's plenty of wheels that have been invented. Well I'm really excited about this presentation today I've, I've given it a few times because I love the topic. And we're going to talk about relationships and in particular relationship advice and how you can get more from your technology partner because it's very likely that you can, whether you even have a partner yet or you've been through multiple relationships. It's something you can learn and reflection and other people's lessons can can help along the way. And so, as a reminder of who I am again, Jenna Dillett I'll be your matchmaker. So you, everyone can watch filler in the roof afterwards. I like to say about myself that I like people and I happen to work with software and I think that that's very true. And I think that's very true, especially with this topic and the experience with this topic. As Carolyn mentioned I work with Square, and we're a company based out of Dallas and serving international national community of nonprofit organization membership associations, and these are some of the software that we work in Drupal WordPress and we do an ACRM Salesforce line survey. We do hosting and maintenance, a long term support so we'd like to be ongoing partners. And I, I'm also happy to say that this has not been the first tech organization I've worked with and I think that that is part of the unique perspective and talking about this, and we'll get into a little bit about how you can do the same thing but in a lot of different ways and it's those differences that can be that perfect fit for one organization in comparison to another. And hopefully today we'll be able to kind of hone some of your skills and identifying some of those differences, so you can make a relationship or make a change in a relationship that is going to better fit and help your organization go down the road.  That your tech partner is not meeting your needs, or you just got out of a bad relationship and you're happy to be solo again and doing everything house, or maybe you're satisfied. But you think it could even be better, even though you're satisfied or you could, you have seen it all because of all the relationships that you've had with different agencies and you should be co presenting there's. I expect that there'll be someone across all of those different points on the spectrum and how you're entering this topic today. And so why this matters is money, of course right so the hourly rates of technical consultants can typically be a lot higher than what maybe anybody is making from an hourly perspective in house. And but also people cost more than technology we know that so when you think about the people on your team, why these relationships matter. So your tech tools that you have, those are investments but more than just a money investment they also normally represent sometimes big process changes for exactly how it is that you get your work done. And that how the how you get your work done can really change your team structures, and even the culture of your organization and so there's so much that is tied into the tech tools that we use. And that's important beyond just the the dollar which is such the obvious. I also like to point out that we're live animals you know we're real people, and I know for each of us if we think about what the daily rhythm of our life is like. And I know for me I think about all those little moments, so I asked about a three and a six year old and at the end of the day we do sort of a roses and thorns right so we talk about the, the really positive parts of our day the hard parts of our day and all of those little moments and so, just like we're all live animals we're all real people, your tech consultants whoever that company is there's real people there that hopefully you're interfacing with to some degree, and all those little interactions that you have. Those each add up to make your day better to make that organization that person in that organizations day better and so that matters to right can we end each of our days feeling good about the people that we interacted with in the exchanges that we had. If there's one takeaway from all of this that I hope that you can have is that there's always another tool and that there's always another provider and so don't ever settle. And so if you're feeling dissatisfied, you can do something about it and hopefully. The talk today will give some of those tools and a checklist of sorts for you to know what you can do about it and how to approach it. I like to talk about my sister and this so she is a nurse that's her and my youngest son, and she told me about what one of her college professors said when she was studying nursing. And her college professor just encouraged all of the students in the class to never settle that there's so many different types of nursing. And that if you're dissatisfied or you don't feel connected to the type of nursing that you're doing, there's a different type of nursing. And so my sister has been an ER nurse. Pretty much her whole career and loves emergency care, which is a very different kind of care than other types of nursing and so that has really, that has really stuck with me. Or just like having an expertise in say thinking from a technology standpoint having an expertise in websites doesn't mean I know how to set up a sound system in a gymnasium right those are completely different technologies or you don't hire your roofer to be your plumber. And so there's there's a lot of the same things of the way we think about our technology partners of there's software differences, for example, so maybe you have an open source system so a system that isn't owned by any sort of institution you don't pay a licensing fee for it, and that there's a worldwide base of developers and supporters who are contributing to it versus a proprietary system that does have a subscription services and has a very different kind of update model. And so depending on what kind of system you even have that can be sort of the who's doing your roofing job the roofer or the plumber. So the way that you can even complete work in certain types of software is just different and so never settling but also understanding understanding what you have, and then because of that who is the best person to talk to because of what you have. I'd like to start with knowing what's what and who's who. And so let's pretend like you're just starting out and you don't even have a relationship yet with a technology provider and maybe you're in need of one or you do have one, but you recently took over the management of what it is that that partner is over and so I think it's a really good practice. To be healthfully paranoid, right so know where your contracts are, or at least make sure your boss knows where contracts are you can ask helpful encouraging questions right even if it's not in your job description to really care about or be over. So where are the contracts what are do you have copies of the current agreements are the agreements up to date have they expired is there any confusing language. Is there anything covered that you don't think you're getting so that's where that's where the writing matters and that's where you can ask follow up questions. Thinking about people in position so who are the main main points of contact, and what are their expertise. We're all trying to make other people happy, right and that can impact an individual's motivation. So, so if you have hired an agency. So that you're getting the benefit of an actual agency and not just one person and so the thing that I like to think about as kind of a trigger that I use is how often is our we statements used like let me talk to my team and how much of a team does that person have and it's I want to make sure and communicate that it's not at all a negative to have a individual consultant right so you don't need to have a full agency but also if you have hired an agency, are you able to have the benefit of an agency and the example of that is what happens if your main point person at the agency that you've hired, if they end up, end up leaving so there's a one, one thing that I encourage both the, all the organizations of course that I would be talking about what my role is at square as a software agency is what we are trying to do in house to make sure that we have a cross training plan, for example. So, let's say for the example, the example that someone takes a leave of absence or decides they really don't want to work with us anymore and so we lose a project manager need to hire another project manager and I mean, all the clients we work with would not suffer from that right they wouldn't then have a system that no one knows how to support but that's on us on the technology side being the technology agency to make sure that we're doing something internally with our own time that is making sure that everybody on our team is understanding how to support each of our clients and so there's not this, all of the experience and knowledge and strategy of your organization is put in your main point of contact, because that makes the investment that you have that much more risky, if that one main point of contact were to leave and so thinking about a question to a potential consultant or potential agency could be what does cross training look like internally or how do you make sure that if if the main point of contact I have leaves that then I'm not having to completely start over with somebody else on your team and that secures your investment. So that's the breakup clause so how easy is it to end the relationship so that's why having a copy of your current agreements matters so is it a yearly contract is it a certain days or months notice that's required is there some sort of refund that's on because of a deposit that you'll get back once the relationship is ended. Is there anything in the in the contract about who owns the data or who owns the software. And a lot of just knowing some of that landscape is a way to avoid a nasty breakup right to a nasty breakup can include a surprise invoice that you did not know was going to be part of trying to end services or needing to have a longer order to end services than what you were expecting so potentially having to sort of double pay for services if you're transitioning to another technology provider, but still have say three months that you're having to pay on your current relationship. So that's a lot of what's in that in that breakup clause of how can you in the relationship because what is the term of it, when do you have to give notice what sort of deposit do you potentially have on file. For communication norms, it's really good just like it is good to know who your main point of contacts is. It's also good to know how to communicate with that main point of contact or with the team that you're going to be working with so for example, do they have a project management system, or is email the best way or is there a phone number. Who does that phone number reach is that a generic person or is that your main point of contact. So just knowing what those communication channels is very valuable. A lot of these tips can also be kind of flipped back as a mirror on on your own organization in your own structure, you know what contracts or agreements do you have in place who are the main points of contact for the individual functions that relate to technology. How do you communicate together so there's a lot that is valuable externally when starting a relationship with a technology agency or maybe resetting a relationship with the technology agency that you're already working with. So there's also a lot that can be used internally to make everybody's time more efficient and effective. The final point on this one is just knowing about the emergency response so let's say you have a significant and very time sensitive concern do you have a means to escalate that to get that 30 minute to an hour notice is that part of an agreement that you have with them. If it's not part of an agreement, what would it look like to have that in place, or what would be examples of how the partner that you're working with, how they have been able to respond to other clients when emergencies have come up and I think part of this is also to hopefully get rid of any sort of fear or discomfort or that it's inappropriate for you to ask. I think that's one of the biggest questions to the technology agency because none of this is personal right this is all the paperwork these are all the checks and balances for how, how agencies run a business. And I know I personally really like the kind of competitive nature of software. So in the earlier slide, looking at I know the platforms that we work in for example, there's a ton of shops that specialize in WordPress and Drupal and Instagram so there's nothing unique about the software, for example at square that we work in, but it's how we work in it right that we like to think of as a differentiator. And so whatever systems you have, even if you've never heard of these, you have completely different systems it's very likely that there are multiple agencies that could be supporting you and that that's a good thing right because that should apply some healthy pressure to then on the agency side for us to make sure we have our act together and constantly modifying what it is that we're doing so we can better support our clients and so any any of these questions I would encourage you to be bold and asking them, and they're not personal you're collecting information in order to set a solid foundation in order to hopefully build a relationship that's going to be mutually beneficial. So next thinking about the pricing structure so the past was a lot about the different communication norms, the contacts with the languages. When we think about the pricing structure just like I mentioned that there's many many other Drupal shops out there squares a Drupal shop there's lots of other Drupal shops, we can all deliver work within the same platform, but in completely different ways right and a lot of those completely different ways can come down to how we're communicating differently or what our communication tools or practices are, but also what our fee structure looks like and so it's completely normal and likely expected that if you have, say a project that you want to implement a new donor database within your organization, and you start to collect bids from organizations from agencies to potentially partner with you to build that out. It'll probably be an apples and oranges experience because you may see very different pricing structures that can make it hard to compare and so if you kind of use a list of looking for. Okay, are there any kind of one time initiation fees which would be different than say a deposit. So a fee that you are paying to the agency that you are not going to get back because that's just sort of a one time set up fee for example, versus a subscription fee that you get maybe a set amount of services. And you play pay a flat rate for every single month, even if you're using say more services in one month fewer services the next month. And that's a little bit similar to kind of having a retainers or a deposit on file that then you can kind of pull against of the services that you use and then the way that that time or those services can be tracked against money that you already have on deposit or on file with the agency. So another big difference in how agencies can work is whether they work under fixed price or time and materials. So for example, at Square, we do not do a fixed price projects we do time and materials so I like to think of that on working time and materials, that it means that we talk about money a lot more, but it gives you a different kind of control over your money. So a fixed price project would be that. Okay, you name this new website for $5,000 you get to have this new website. That's the, that's the full amount that you're going to pay so whether or not for that agency, that agency ends up able to deliver that website to you and the cost for them of only $3,000. So maybe that's their $2,000 profit or it was a, it was a poor estimate and it actually takes them $15,000 of their costs, you still only pay 10. So in comparison to time and materials, it would be how much it takes and so you'd still get an estimate and it would likely look more like a range. And so maybe it would be eight to $12,000. And then if it comes in at five, you pay five if it comes in at 15,000 you pay 15, but so the communication and the checkpoints are likely going to look and feel a little bit different between something that is a fixed price proposal versus a time and materials proposal. So if you're talking with agencies, it's really good to understand, especially if you're getting bids from multiple and they work in different ways. It's very good to understand, especially those communication norms and check ins and how much control you have and visibility into the time that's being spent and what is delivered, because those two models are very, very different. And from the technology perspective, I've, I've worked in both models and so even from the implementation side I know the differences that exist and there can be a better fit for some organizations within one of those models and other and it really just depends on what you need, which is why there are so many different business models out there supporting the exact same software. There's a lot of pricing structures that can also have a variety of add ons. So let's say this is our base package of services and if you also want, say SMS messaging text messaging or if you also want to use outbound mail services or have some sort of marketing campaign support maybe those are fixed add ons that could be paid on at a subscription base so maybe monthly or maybe it's a one time and so the pricing structure is what can make two agencies that work in the exact same software look completely different where this is an apple and this is an orange. And so knowing, knowing what your organization is, and what kind of communication and involvement, say your boss or your board of directors, what they are expecting can help inform which of those fits is going to be better, because there's nothing inherently good or bad in terms of making one of those better than the other. That's why both models exist or all these options exist. So understanding the differences and how they best relate to your organization is, is what, what will make you able to make the best decision. So one example I like to think about is the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers. And I know in the past they used to have some language and their contract and they use software that is all open source meaning that there's no one that owns the software. And they had some language in a previous contract that it was a kind of a guarantee language that their system should work as it was intended or built. And so that ended up being very tricky language because when the, the technology partner who's serving this organization and their technology partner in implementing new functionality or training them on functionality. They're doing that within software that they don't own as the technology agency, they're developing within it. And then something happens to break within the software maybe there was a new update but it's supported by kind of a worldwide base of developers and there's kind of a core team of developers that are fixing it, but it's not in that wheelhouse of, of that agency to actually fix that that's where kind of the software type that you have can make a big difference. It's something like a patch. So basically something that fixes the issue that could be sort of applied within the system. Sometimes that patch that would be needed hasn't been developed yet. And so organizations will sometimes either have to wait or finance for that to be developed in comparison to if it's a proprietary system, kind of putting the onus back on that one entity that has the kind of the controlling power of most things about the software. And so, from a, from a language perspective, that was poor language in a contract that didn't really fit the model of what the way open source software actually works. And so, so there needed to be some reeducation and a change in model on the, on the side to make sure that it's clear really what is billable versus really tricky guarantee language that from a technical agency standpoint that doesn't back up and then that means probably spending too much time for free, which then puts a relationship at risk right because everybody needs to be able to pay their team. That's a that's another reason why knowing your contracts knowing the kind of system that you're using and just asking questions when you don't understand no reason to ever apologize, just get clarity and if the answer doesn't make sense, ask again in a different way and make, make people spend the time to answer your questions, because again that's another way to build a solid foundation. So now let's think about your organizational structure so you, you've had all these agencies you've looked at this, this fruit basket your bananas your apples your oranges they're all different. And then what, what is your organizational structure I like I like this graphic of the real organizational structure of kind of, you know how we all blur and work together. So, kind of the next step, and whatever your role is in this process so if you're seeing say your boss or a co worker, leading this process, or you're leading it or you've experienced it in the past, or you have a staff member who's leading of get buy in and see where buying is happening. So like I mentioned in the beginning technology this conversation matters because it's money on the table but it's also because these are the systems that allow you in many ways to do your work to show the relationships that you've built and record those for the next generation of staff that will be working for your organization there's no need to try to download somebody's brain, because hopefully with a good theorem system or good note taking a lot of that history and context and relationships has been stored somewhere. And so understanding who is impacted by the technology you are working on. And then the consultant that you are hiring so making sure that you're getting folks at the table that are going to be impacted. And how are you going to be working together. And so I like to think about the rules, for example, we work with a lot of organizations in supporting their CRM system so whether it's for event management or membership management or donor management, having the internal structures and rules for when we create a new group. This is how we name that group that that kind of process that's very distinct for one organization is going to look completely different for another organization. They're naming structure for how they name groups should be different because of the way, maybe for them they have sort of three distinct teams working in the CRM system for another organization. Maybe it's five distinct teams or maybe it's one person who's doing all of it. And so all of that does need to be different and should match your work and getting those voices at the table as early as possible. Can help set everybody's expectations and just have a greater buy in so the delivery is something that people are expecting. And then the that management of change can also be easier to then ideally expect more from your software right that I it can likely do more than it is now. And that just takes some elbow grease and reading documentation some being bold to ask questions and seek out help, and you probably have a lot of the, a lot of the tools that your fingertips with the systems that you already have with that additional digging and buying an excitement from your broader team. This is another example of an organization we work with, where they have very distinct teams that do very different things as a lot of organizations do but of course they're using the same systems. And so one of the ways that they have handled that internally is having a kind of a scope of work or SOW structure that defines the work that needs to be done, and having an estimated hours approved for that. But then those conversations and those SOWs being organized in such a way that the teams are coming together. So when we meet with this organization, for example, we're not meeting with just one team, like they have the marketing team and a survey team. We're just meeting with the marketing team. The survey team also needs to understand and know what it is that we're doing with them because it's within the same system. And then that can also help with prioritizing what what matters and what needs to be done first, especially when there's going to be an overlap of functional use in the system. And so. I really like that example of the your technology partner. You can also use them as an excuse to have your teams communicate in a different kind of way, just because that's also a way to save time, right. If you're doing more of your own project management internally, in terms of how you're going to use the systems, why you need them to function in a specific way. Those are just going to be more questions that your technology partner is not going to have to ask because you're coming to them with this is what we need. This is how this other team is likely going to use it. And here are some times that we'd all like to meet with you to understand any questions you have. That's much more organized than starting from scratch and having the technology partner wonder is everybody at the table that needs to be at the table. Because that is hard on the technology side to the technology partner side to have. We don't want to feel disappointment right we don't want our clients to be disappointed or or for us to discover that an entire team was left out that we didn't even know existed at an organization. And so there's a lot of questions that a good. The project manager at a technology partner should be asking to help make sure you're getting everybody at the table, especially at these initial and key decision points. So expectations can be managed because the happier everyone is at launch. The better it is right then you have a showcase and an ability of a case study or to help with the sales process for the technology agencies so they can maintain a strong and stable business model to serve you and other organizations. So you've signed the contract you found the right partner you've got a bunch of buy-in everybody's excited at the table. And so now what so I think of this as interaction tips. And the first thing is getting it and writing thinking back to that that healthy paranoia right I think of it I tell my team I want it time stamped and what they know what I mean by that is you set it on the phone but did you follow up and also say it in an email. I like to be able to reference back to decisions that were made, and especially when, as is often the case, you have multiple things happening at once, and when you have say a larger technology project. It often doesn't get to be your full time job, you still have your full time job that you're doing and you have this kind of this one time five month project that you're also working on at the same time that you're having to fit in.  If you get it and writing, that's going to be a lot easier to transition and communicate this is what the plan is this is where we are within the deliverables, and also hold your technology agency accountable and make them earn whatever that rate is right because like I said in the beginning, a consulting rate for from a technology agency is likely going to be higher and for good reasons than what someone maybe if you're if you're in a sense pain someone internally that's that rate full time right that would be there'd be a very different kind of rate for what an internal recess should be. The other thing is is looping in others. This helps to share responsibilities and ensures engagement. And so that can make sure that you're giving your boss or you're giving your coworkers or other team leads and update on the project. They don't even need to ask for that right you can you can do that in advance and have that as part of a standing full team meeting that happens weekly or monthly or whatever your internal communication rhythm is looping and others communicates the value that you're of the systems that you're working on I think because of COVID we all know and appreciate the value of what our technology does for us in a different kind of way in terms of communication because of the remote nature of how everyone can still thrive because whether I'm not in three dimensional or on a camera my brain still functions right I don't need to be in person for my brain to not function for my brain to function correctly. So looping in others ensures that that they're engaged. Also thinking about the learning curve so. So part of keeping others engaged and sharing responsibility is that we're not always good at explaining the value of what some things are that we bring to the that technology brings to the table. And so understanding the end result of why you're wanting that project or why you're wanting that new functionality in the first place connecting the why for for the work that's being done can help everyone think critically down the road for what could come next and also make sure that you're spending money in a way that it really is bringing value to your organization it's not just something that you happen to see some sort of article on that looks like the cool new tech thing. Well if it doesn't have any relevance for your organization that's probably a poor investment for your organization and ideally, a really good technology partner would ask some of those critical questions to, because they don't want to just burn money because at the end of the day, some executive director some somebody is probably going to notice why are we spending so much on technology. We're not getting any difference or value in the work that we're doing. So that's where there's a, I think of that as the healthy tension that ideally would exist between an organization and the technology partner that they have that both are asking hard honest good questions of each other, and none of that needs to be thought of as offensive or too personal or you're just trying to have the best and most honest relationship and hold each other accountable to the work that you're doing together. The point of doing that is troubleshooting and I'm going to get in a little bit to the weeds of troubleshooting better which relates to the kinds of communications you can have with your technology partner. But first I wanted to also share about in the so they're the international mountain bicycling association. And what I like about them is, and it relates to looping and others is that at a regular interval they have two board members that are actually part of the calls that they have with us. And I know that that only that would only work when in some organizations right in other organizations that level of involvement would be sort of inappropriate or beyond, beyond what is appropriate for that organization and what the is, but for in the that has worked really well and what what that is allowed is having two of their board members jump into the weeds of these calls where we're talking about the specific things in the system that we're troubleshooting, or the new functionality that we're implementing. All of that has significant value because they're getting to know a little bit about the team, right which is different than the executive director they're seeing some of the team that their executive director is managing in action. They're seeing how we, the technology partner are communicating back how we're prioritizing, they're able to ask questions in real time about the system, and kind of push the edge of what's possible and have a voice in that space as well, but also they don't have any of that decision making role right it's a very defined role that they have on that call. But the ability that has especially in a remote space for board members to be up to date, and spend valuable time and contribute their skill set to the organization and for the staff to feel really supported, and that their board really understands and knows and cares about technology. That's a significant relationship investment of how people are spending time and so, whether that is other members of your team and it's not a board or it's an external advisory group so maybe they don't even need to be more members maybe you have kind of a tech council that is supporting your organization. Some of those folks can be such a great way to have new volunteers that bring a lot of value to your team. And it also helps spread that awareness about the value of the work that you're doing and also the stability of the relationship that you're working within. So now, now to jump in the weeds of troubleshooting. And this is just because I fielded a lot of emails with very confusing questions in them over the years and so I wanted to just remind some of that troubleshooting on and and some of this is starting from an assumption that you're thinking about some issue in your website, or your CRM is acting funny. So the software this these are software issues. So describing your problem, what were you doing specifically when this happened, and what did you do to get to the place that now is gone awry, you know what were you clicking on to get there and then what happened. So is there a specific message. Can you take a screenshot of it. What made the thing that happened unexpected. The example that we would often get is that the donate pages broken period right period send. Well what does broken mean if I go to it the page loads. I could press a donate what what about it is looking broken. I know sometimes that means that language is off right sometimes someone is sending that to me and really they just want to change the language on the donate form, or they want to change the donation options. So the next things that you can do is testing your access so does it look the same even if you're in the same browser so maybe you're in Chrome, or Safari, or, or Firefox, is it functioning the same within those, within those spaces, or is if your website is broken access your website can you access it from your phone. So is there something that's actually happening with your internet connection that your phone being on satellite isn't having, and that sort of the internal troubleshooting is there anything happening for first. So timing trends is this does this always happen at 3pm, no matter what like is there some sort of weird thing that this happens every single day that's good to know about. How long did the issue that you experience lasted was it sort of just one little hiccup, like one little blip, or is every time you press reload on a page is that same issue, popping up and so the things that you can share are taking screenshots, copying pasting the URL that you were at doing the quick 123 steps of first I went to this page then I went to this page, then I did this thing and this this weird thing happened, kind of laying out those steps of what it is that you were doing and what you were expecting, and all of this, what it does is it saves time so depending on what your support relationship is right so maybe, no matter how much lack of detail or detail you add, maybe it doesn't affect what you're going to pay because of that different business model and pricing structure, but in other circumstances, if your technology partner isn't having to hunt a lot of this down themselves and making guesses at what might be wrong. Then that increases your ability to communicate right and likely the problem is going to be solved much quicker because it's understood much quicker. And so there's a lot that an agency they need to ask that healthy tension right the accountability back but there's also a lot that you can bring to the table. When you're wanting something to function different than it is or something to be fixed or resolved or modified to be different than how it is now and the details for how we communicate about that. Right, so now, now that we know how to troubleshoot and we have these great relationships. How do you figure out what you need. So, I think of this as the defining your functional requirements and I put functional requirements and parentheses because I know I've experienced often, there is, there can be an expectation that a nonprofit main contact who's going to be the main with the technology agency has the answers already of how the thing needs to work, and that is not your role. It is not your job to define the technical requirements of how the thing is implemented. If you want, if you want a blue toothbrush, it is the toothbrush manufacturers job to figure out how to make that thing blue right you don't need to tell them how to make it blue it just is important that it's understood. So that's what success looks like, and what the end results should be and so a good example of this is user stories.  Well that defines kind of a functional experience for what that user should see, when they take out their phone, and they go to a donate to make a, an auto renewing donation and they should get a receipt so I can think of from a technical perspective, the different pieces that would need to be involved to achieve that workflow.  What should the user experience be what should that story be that kind of narrative of that person using the site. What are those expectations and then sharing that with your technology partner, then they can fill in the technical specs this the technical requirements in order to achieve that user story that need to be the other, the other way around. It's also a good practice to share what you don't want, right, and an example of that so I often like to collect examples of websites or systems, or online experiences that an organization really likes so show me other people's websites that are an inspiration to you. Also show me systems that you really don't like, or that made you feel confused. And then it's can be my job to figure out okay I'm seeing some of these differences because for you to understand. This is why I didn't like that that can be a little bit harder to tease out sometimes but if you share enough examples. Then the technology partner will hopefully have enough experience to be able to understand and see, and a quick glance or with visuals, why something is better than the other and that can really inform and really help the final delivery that's given to then your team. So this is a is a really great example of this so we did a pretty big project that took over a year to implement where we kind of threw in a sense like kind of everything up in the air right so they had these proprietary systems that we were replacing with standard open source tools. So management and ongoing maintenance could also be standard and done by multiple people. So because of the kind of the unique and custom nature of their previous systems. It was just one or two people that were ever able to complete an update or new kind of the backstory of how the system really worked. And that was starting to get really costly. So this is the sort of thing where that person really never gets to go on a vacation and they definitely can't retire. And so by having a system that then more standard, then more people can hold the responsibility. More people can share, share the load of, of updates. And so what I like to think about with that organization, what I told them in the beginning was kind of thinking about different banners that we that I would mentally implement on the wall when we were going through the functional requirements and what those user stories are. And so some of those banners were trying to make things as self service as possible. So making it easier for that that chess player in their home on their iPad to do more things themselves, instead of calling the office for maybe this list of things that they used to do. So in a lot of ways this changes like I mentioned that the tools that you use can also inform and really modify the way that your team is even working together to deliver your mission. And then all of a sudden that can change your culture too. So for the nature of us chess this the new system that was built using standard open source tools to replace the custom built system that they had had for decades. So as an organization the membership staff that used to do much more manual entry of data and manual adjustment to data, all of a sudden became tech support. So when you have a banner hanging in the wall of self service. That means people in their own homes on their iPads they can take many more actions on their own and they don't need help from an office they don't need to call a number. The reason I do call it's because something is confusing it's because they hit a screen and they don't know what to do next or they hit a screen and they clicked a button and it didn't do what they thought it would do so thinking back even to troubleshooting. There's a lot that as your systems get a little more complicated or if you start having more self service elements of your system where your users can do more of the things that they need to themselves and they don't need that guidance when they do need guidance. So as I said you're the one who's helping them troubleshoot to try to understand the issue that maybe you can solve on your own, maybe you escalate to the technology partner you're working with. And so having those kind of banners in mind when you're thinking about whatever the scale of project is that you have, and then knowing a little bit about how, depending on what that banner is how it may change the nature of what your team is doing. That doesn't mean that it's eliminating jobs, but it could be changing job descriptions. Going from that kind of the example of US chess, a lot of people doing much more manual data entry to all the sudden fielding member questions who don't remember and don't know how to reset their password. It's no longer the, the individual staff members job to create the passwords it's guiding that user through the process on the site and so that's a very different way of spending time that inevitably can have a big impact on the culture of an organization. So having all of those things on the table when you're implementing software like I thought it was just a donor database and now our organization is completely different. Well, that's a little bit of why because the way we spend our time and communicate together, then impacts the way those minutes moments every day goes by in our team. So, looking a little bit at warning signs you'll see a few of these before, and hopefully a few of you get the fantastic Star Trek reference. So before those we statements when there's really not a we, and it's maybe just a, an eye, but you are paying for an agency. So I want to make sure and clarify again I don't think one is better than the other it's more about making sure that you're getting the value of what it is that you're paying for. And so being aware of we statements and who is who is delivering work, and if you're getting the full kind of delivering attention of a team. So a lot of that is getting things and writing documenting when there was agreed to dates agreed to deliverables, which I think of as kind of having a time stamped right, and then follow me up and asking questions like Oh, I see Friday has passed and I was supposed to have this thing on Friday. What's what's the timeframe on when I'm going to get that that that is absolutely your role. If that is your role, but that's absolutely somebody's role within your team to ask those kinds of questions and expect accountability. Thinking about who's the guinea pig. So this is an example of this is just understanding if the thing that you're wanting your technology partner to do. Have they done that before. And you know what, it's okay if they haven't, but it's more helpful for you to know if they haven't, and that can also help reveal if there's going to be any, any surprises, any roadblocks that neither one of you were expecting or were in experimentation. And that's where having that relationship ability to be honest, critical ask questions of each other. You can hopefully get a sense of that, of if this is the first time that your partner has done that. Attention to responsiveness, are people replying to your emails, are you getting your phone calls back. And if you're not, it's okay to complain and do something about that. And it's okay to also look elsewhere. Depending on your system, like I said, it's very likely that there's a lot of other agencies that could provide you services. So don't sit and feel, feel abandoned for too long before really doing something about it, especially depending on what that pricing structure is. If you're still paying that, say monthly retainer out the door at a fixed amount, but you're not getting your emails responded to take action. Businesses naturally understand that they need to be competitive against each other and stay on top of their game in order to deliver services. And so you're helping push an organization, push an agency to make some of those changes that they need to make in order to get back to the level of responsiveness that they need to have. And in general, if you see any new alerts in your system, right, like warning security update required security updates are supposed to be done in your system. Well, there's another check that you can see, and say hey screenshot I saw this in the system is there anything I need to know about, and that can be the quick way for the agency to say oh yeah we're scheduling that for Wednesday thanks for pointing it out there's nothing you need to do something like that but there's to to don't be afraid to ask, I guess. So, so you know the summary of you have opinions share them. You can also develop by example so thinking about all of these organizations. They each came to square where they really like there was this other system that was inspiring to them. And how could they have that right it's like these, these wheels that we can just constantly reuse reuse reuse, and that we don't need to invent on the that there's a lot that could be possible with your system with some additional training, and that's where joining groups like this, where you can get to know other nonprofit leaders get to know other folks who are working within your same role in other organizations and how they've solved problems is such a great way to take advantage of the tools and the resources that you have within your own organization. And in conclusion, how do you get more out of your technology partner just don't be afraid to ask questions and have greater expectations of what your software can do for you and make people earn their money, you know and everyone at the end of the day, your relationships are going to be richer. They're, they're going to feel like valued colleagues and not someone that you're dreading to contact. If you're dreading to contact them. Well, shoot, Google some other Google some other providers and it to have your needs met and and your dollars spent in a better way for your organization. And so just, just don't be afraid to ask questions is the biggest and to put things in writing and so I love this topic. And I would love if there's any kind of follow up questions, or how to troubleshoot things because it's very likely that any, any partner that you're working with now. That relationship if it's, if it's struggling in any way, having that kind of direct conversation where you ask some of these pointed questions could likely turn that relationship around. And maybe you don't need to go shopping at all but if, if they don't know that you're dissatisfied in some way, but you are not letting that build and addressing that earlier to reset that expectation is just going to mean that you can probably do more with your system have more focus on the relationships on the work that you're doing to have the impact that your organization is having. So it's been a pleasure to be here. I'm really thankful Carol and that you invited Thanks, look forward to yeah to hearing from anybody who has follow up questions and if not hopefully it means that everybody is kind of straightening up the relationships they have or has a better tool set for evaluating technology partners that they may work with in the future. Yeah, and anyone watching the recording of the program tonight, you can email Gina didn't have to be right this minute in the comment field. You can just email her later but I have a some experiences that really bear out what you said I should do a lot of troubleshooting major gifts and will traditionally go in for several months or a year or a couple years or something like that and run campaigns but always run up against a WordPress website or you know the constituent management system so one example is I was working with us really promising startup not afraid of all at all of technology and they engaged and got a grant actually create a new website. And so really kind of expensive company I have to say, and so fine we were in the midst of that and we had an emergency happen, actually, and I had to change some data right away on that website, like right away, and we didn't have any kind of emergency. You know, claws or anything like that, who thought of it we never thought of that and we should have because the kickback email we got was, I'm on vacation and can come and I'll be back in days. And so I kind of reach out to other people. Nobody at that firm could help us you know, and I was so angry that I actually make WordPress websites myself for some nonprofits you know. And I got online and created a new website and I gave it to the executive director that the next week and I said look, I made this in two hours. And she goes, I actually like the way that looks. Yes, we were paying $50,000 over the course of the year for a website, a database, you know it was more complicated there were many features but basically, the clauses really important. Then, another place I went, I was trying this was like an incredibly braining arts group okay very aesthetic and smart and smart when it comes to art, but not technology so anyway, they had like, literally data all in a bunch of little pieces, you know, in files and different places in the building and in people's minds so my greatest accomplishment probably for them, one of them anyway was getting it out of people's heads and onto a charge. I said let's consider this constituent management system so I helped implement it and you know the direction I talk is like finds great in the chairman of the board actually approved it. Okay, so when it came time for the person who managed tours and the other person who managed direct mail and mailing lists and other things. They didn't want to learn how to use it, and you know you have to learn it to use it and their functions. Oh, a gift shop manager. Okay. It could do it could, it could launch rockets. I mean, it was really a great platform, and they just, it didn't matter that the chairman of the board and the executive director and I running the major gifts for a year. Wanted it and spoke highly of it and we're really encouraging and trying to get everybody on board. So the buy in thing, the whole buy in no matter what you're doing when you're getting into a new technology. We need to go beyond those people to make sure that you have buy in and we actually another group I worked with the board member actually research donor constituent management platforms and came up with one which was great. And when it had been sitting there a year when I came on board to work on major gifts so I get in there and they were mailing. They had about a 3500 person list in there, including the donors all mixed in. And I would say two thirds were all out of date, the emails were going to space. So I literally tore it apart and put it back together. I just, I reinvigorated the whole thing so it's really start working but basically the board member was for it. But the executive director is like, Yeah, I just don't want to do it and the program people who needed to put in input who was volunteers who are working with projects are working on that. Again, the buy in all the way kind of from the top to the bottom because it doesn't matter what level of the organization you're in. You can have a lower level of employee just really cause a lot of problems because if they're not going to use it if they're not going to take time they never have time or they somehow don't have time they should have the time. But sometimes they, I've actually had some of them say well, this data is so important and I don't want it being in this database because other people will see it. Which then there's always options for that too. That's not every system has that but that's a question that I ask is about permission control so I remember I was working with one organization that they really did have like true celebrity donors you know people like I know that name I think I saw that movie with that person, and it was important that they hide the contact information of some of those folks to only specific members of the team. So while it may not be possible in every CRM system, it is very possible in some and that's where asking those questions, getting the training we didn't talk about training very often but your, your comment about spinning up a WordPress website so quickly and not being able to get any help from this professional agency that's supposed to provide these services. That's where I try to be really aware and upfront with our clients about kind of pulling back the curtain, the Wizard of Oz curtain and like this is not complex and then making it a choice that it's completely fine if, if an organization doesn't want to understand how to update the language on this specific page. But what is not fine is for us on the technology agency side for us to innocence keep that as this very technically complex thing as if Oh, well, yes, we must do that for you. Instead, we can do that. Here is how we're going to do that we. If you want instead we provide a 15 minute training for you and a recording of the screencast so in the future you can do this yourself. That's something that I know that gets more of kind of to a values and much more how I personally work but this idea of that's not the kind of money that on the technology side. I'm not interested in making those kinds of dollars I know at the end of the day doing that kind of work could in a sense result in more billable time. But frankly that's boring if we're just changing text on websites or that and that should be the easiest thing for an organization to be trained on there's all kinds of different levels of what can be done within your system. And I'm sure that there are things in everybody system that there really would need to be a developer but that's a very specific type of change. And otherwise there's a lot of training that could be provided to probably meet a lot of those needs that exist within their intermediary. So that kind of pulling back that curtain is so important that way you can know for sure that you're actively choosing to have and pay the money for your partner to do that work that you could do in house and that's completely fine. But it's less fine if it's sort of conveyed in a sense that they are the only ones who you can who can uniquely do that thing. Because if you can be provided training on that and that training can be stored for you or for any member of the team that also is going to be a longer life and a better use of those dollars by the by the partner you're working with. So my, I actually did get them to train to let me get in the back end to be able to make those really relatively modest text and uptake up the dates of events or changes. So they did eventually do that. So I guess I would say it eventually worked out but I think that is something for firms to know from the other side. The thing is they didn't realize I was really a good hacker. So I was actually able to kind of get in there and deal with it. You know what I mean. Yeah, I could have used something up that they had beautiful thing that they created of course but the other thing I think though is where I really think so many nonprofits that I ran into that I because I meet so many and I help untangle things, but they, they have gotten so excited about new technologies and they just like piece them all together.   Yeah, probably someone there for two years and came in the past I mean that's where paying attention. So at least time and investment that they spend in trying to clean up and better understand the system that already exists instead of bringing in a new system is such a gift to all future team members because I don't remember now, what the, what the rate over is now is it two or three years two to four years for turnover, which I know it's for for development officers it's like 14 months or something it's terrible. Yeah, but those investments, those notes you know in one system that's such a gift to the future people who will hold your job. I mean it's just you, there needs to this is like, if you have your own, you know you have your menu of things that square provides but I would say, I assume you might have one that is, help me figure out what systems actually do go together I like MailChimp a lot. Does that go with Z to neon, or. Yes, I think that gets in so much to the strategy consultation side because what we often see is that especially if an organization really does have multiple software multiple systems. It could be that there are components of software that they have that's duplicative so, for example, if I can go to the settings of a software and kind of enable a new component that is already part of the software that it just hasn't that checkbox hasn't been checked for that to be enabled, and enabling that doesn't change your pricing fee. There's no reason to then unless functionally somehow it's so different. There's no reason to then pay for that system within another space and so that's what will often do as kind of a functional audit functional system on it so what are the things that you need done and then what tools do you have that are doing those things and sometimes there's going to be things on that list that these are the things we need done and sometimes there's no system that's meeting that need. Other times, we see this is a system that's meeting that need, but this system that you have could also meet that need. So then it's a comparison of, do you then stick with the system that you're already using that's meeting that need or do you just enable that component within this that could consolidate and then maybe you can get rid of that subscription that monthly $29 or whatever it is that you're paying for. I've seen that over and over again and that's one great thing to kind of close on with like to see if I mentioned this in a prior program I think but basically there's so many great tech discounts. Yes. And the other thing is, I often do see this. I'll get on the budget and see that a group is paying the full rate for a commercial QuickBooks. And I ran into and they just felt they wanted to be so professional they were really well meaning, but basically a tech soup it was something like $80 a year versus. And it's a free membership to right and to get it you know just sign up on the platform. So I guess I would say, you know, it's good that you are helping the tech clubs and the tech suits because there's so much if, if you kind of didn't audit, you know, of all these sometimes incompatible systems and kind of came up with well maybe you want to look at it this way and get rid of that one and put this one in put constant contact in instead of or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I think that would be incredibly helpful that's just me going in and having to untangle it myself and I'm like, this does not work it's just that I'm tech set tech inclined and I have no fear of technology so And you're not afraid to ask those questions, you know, but I really need professionals to do that not somebody who's a heck, you know. Yeah, that's a that's a really, that's a really valuable important point and I think that's where starting from what you have an understanding that better is going to end up being better than trying to start from scratch. Because then you can better know exactly why you're dissatisfied with your current system if you still end up being dissatisfied with whatever tool it is that you're using. It's good to know why, because a good technology partner is going to want to know why. So then it's not a churn and then you don't end up dissatisfied with them to because nobody wants that right. So that's not going to be stable for either either partner. So yeah, well thanks Gina that was so helpful man. I think every nonprofit, but you get, you know, you apply to have a nonprofit, get the legal designation, and they say on that form from the federal government this is what I want to say. So you need to have a technology audit and decide what it's what you what is going to make your operation work best for you and all the systems that will integrate because I can tell you it's wasted time. If you are not, you know, options galore. Yes. Yeah, there are so many choices and sometimes you just really kind of need a few. But you have to have somebody smart to look at the right partner. Yep, getting more out of your relationship. Okay, well thank you. Yeah. And we'll post this recording soon. So you will see it on there online on Facebook. Thanks. Bye.


Okay, we're back. This is Dave Vellante. I'm with Stu Miniman with Wikibon.org, and this is The Cube, SiliconANGLE.tv's continuous coverage of Dell Storage Forum. We're live in Boston with Praveen Astana, who is the vice president of Enterprise Solutions and Strategy at Dell. Praveen, welcome to The Cube. Thanks very much for making time out of your busy schedule. Dell Storage Forum is rocking a second year in a row for us in the Converged Dell Storage Forum. I know there were some pockets previously, but I'm really starting to come together for you guys. You're mentioning off-camera that you've been with Dell for eight years and the storage group for five years, so you've seen this transformation occur first-hand. How does that feel? Can you describe what it was like five, six years ago at Dell and sort of what it's like today in storage? It feels great, first of all, to see where storage has come at Dell. When I joined Dell, we were primarily a reseller, so we basically sold other people's storage. Now we make our own storage, we have our own IP, and we're addressing customers' needs. I can tell you that when I started at Dell, storage was the last on the agenda when we did the ops reviews with Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins. Today it's first on the agenda. Really? It's really changed in terms of the importance that Dell is giving to storage. How did it change the nature of the conversations that you have with customers? Well, customers really started taking us very seriously because storage is actually probably the most, you know, addresses the most important part of their infrastructure, which is their data. It's a lifeblood of many customers right now, is data which they use to make better business decisions. So we look at, you know, a joke we have is that we look at the storage business like the bank vault and the server like the ATM. One is more important than the other. So Praveen, we're talking about convergence. If I look at from the services side, converged infrastructure has been put together by, you know, the vars, the integrators, and by the service teams for many years. So can you tell us really what's the journey been for Dell from kind of, you know, putting all the pieces together from just the services part to like what you have with the VSTART today, where you've got all the pieces and you're integrating them? Yeah. So when we talked to customers, what they told us was, look, we're tired of having to integrate and assemble the stuff that vendors make. Why don't you guys do this and give it to us? And we thought about it and said, you know, actually we have the technology, if you will. I hate that quote from the $6 million man, that TV series, right? Yeah. We can rebuild it stronger, faster, better. We have the capabilities from a supply chain perspective, manufacturing perspective as well as an optimization perspective to build what the customers want. What do customers want? Customers today more and more are buying VMs. Used to be they would buy servers and storage and networking. Today they're buying VMs. They're saying, I want 100 VMs or 1,000 VMs. Well, to create that VM and make it useful, you need to have not just a server but also the storage, networking, and the management. And we have years of experience with virtualization. We're the number one reseller. We've been the number one reseller of VMware for quite some time. And so we have looked at our hundreds of thousands of customers who have bought virtualization or millions actually who have bought virtualization from us and figured out what it is it takes to optimize. So we know how to do the optimization. And so when we create a VSTART for 100 VMs or 500 VMs, we've optimized that infrastructure for the customer. Far better than they could do themselves, save them a lot of time, a lot of money. Okay. And not just VMware, Microsoft, I believe is part of the VSTART package. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's a very important point, which is that we offer choice to our customers. So it's both Microsoft and VMware, both partners of us, and we offer VSTARTs for both. So what are those discussions with Michael Dell and Kevin Rawlins like? Obviously, you can't give us the too much inside baseball, but what are you guys talking about?  And that's a big part of the reason for the transformation is, look, we've got to own more of our own IP. It can't happen fast enough for investors, obviously, but as I was saying at the top of the show, Dell has more cash on the balance sheet than any other storage company. I guess with the exception of Oracle, but really Oracle's not a storage company, but let's throw them in the mix. So you can virtually compete with anybody in the acquisition game. So the strategy is to increase your intellectual property ownership and increase margins and obviously cash flow and profits, right? So talk about that a little bit. What's that high-level strategy? Well, I think it's always best to start with the customer, honestly, because if you can win with the customer, you can win in the end with your financials and all that stuff. And we noticed that. I'll go back to storage again as a great example, and I'll address that point directly. But when we entered the storage business with our own IP, I actually came up with three words that I thought would really describe what we were trying to do from a philosophy perspective. It was simple, capable, affordable. When you think about that, storage at that time, storage networks were the opposite of simple, capable, affordable. They were hard, they were expensive, and they were capable, but you had to really have a lot of skills to be able to utilize that. So we said simple, capable, affordable, and we looked around and we found a company that embodied that, and that was Ecologic. And we bought Ecologic, and that product was extremely successful for us because it hit that philosophy that if you change the game for customers, change the economic to storage, make it easy, you can win. And that's what propelled that growth. So now we extend that to the rest of the data center, saying, how can we make the rest of the data center simple, capable, and affordable also? And that has driven a lot of our acquisition strategy is finding the right technologies that can actually help us create a solution that will not, you know, we don't want to add another Me Too product. We want to address the fundamental need that the customer has. So if you talk about, for example, convergence in cloud, well, we know that customers, when they want to talk about convergence infrastructure, they don't want to be locked in. They still want to have choice. And so we acquired a company called Scalant, which allows management in heterogeneous fashion. That's really been very, you know, resonated with customers. When we talk about cloud, what customers want to do is connect their off-premise cloud with what's on-premise, who bought a company called Boomi that allows for applications to be connected on-premise and off-premise. So I think our strategy in terms of what we are buying, what we will buy in the future, is not driven so much by a margin profile or a financial metric like that. It's how do we win in the marketplace? And with basic philosophies like simple, capable, affordable. So if you were getting simple, capable, and affordable from your previous relationships, let's say whether they be OEM or reseller, are you suggesting that you might not have gone down this path? If we were, the answer would be yes. There would be no reason to do that if that was the only thing that we wanted to do. But if you look at the way technology is evolving, more and more, if you do not own the various parts, you're not able to engineer the best solution for the customer. So as an example, networking, why did we go into networking? We had great relationships with Brokehead and Juniper, and they have a good coverage. However, we found that unless we own the networking operating system, we are not able to create a converged infrastructure or even to create the best offering for virtualization because one part of the legs of that three-legged stool, you cannot change at all. So academically, the answer to my question would have been yes. But practically speaking, you're saying you would not have been able to accomplish simple, capable, and affordable without basically owning your own destiny and being able to do that integration. That's right. And so we've been commenting that Dell, I think uniquely when it comes to acquisitions, focuses more on integration or maybe it just succeeds more, I don't know. But can you talk about that focus on integration? Because it seems like it's unique in the industry. A lot of companies buy companies and they'll just sort of leave them alone and they'll do very well. And integration is sort of an afterthought. It's a GUI. Why is Dell so focused on that? Well, I think it starts with, if we go back to what I said, it's purposeful acquisition. It was an acquisition just to get, you know, address a new market segment or to change your financial profile. It was an acquisition to say, how can we create a better solution overall? And so clearly integration was part of the roadmap of making that happen. But, you know, this is a balancing act because you cannot buy a company and just say, okay, we're going to absorb you in a few months. You cannot also just leave them to be independent. You have to balance how you bring it in. And we have actually a pretty disciplined and balanced approach of doing that. One of the best I've seen in the industry. And I agree with you. I mean, I've been in the industry for a long time and I've seen many companies, you know, large companies, buy other companies that just disappear. You have no idea what happened to that. Dell has a couple of things going for it. First, we don't do many acquisitions. We do a few. We do ones that are absorbable. We do quite a few acquisitions, but okay. We've done quite a few lately. But in general, I think that, you know, if you count the number of acquisitions we've done, it hasn't been as many as other companies have. So Praveen, when we look at kind of the deployment. This is something that tends to not be talked about as much. If it's simple and it's automated, you know, magically it's just going to go in there. But we know that there's a lot of services. And we're here at Dell talking about the channel a lot. So can you talk to, you know, what is the balance and the touch points and the handshakes between Dell's services and the channel partners when it comes to deploying Converged Infrastructure? Sure. Well, you know, specifically about Converged Infrastructure, just about any infrastructure, there is a lot of things that have to be done to get that infrastructure optimized and useful for the customer. And what I mean by that is it's not simply a matter of plugging it in and turning the button on and saying, okay, you're ready to go. It's a question of, okay, how do we now tune it for your application? How do we build on what you have to make your whole infrastructure easier? And so what we find is that you can characterize the number of the tasks that have to happen as very mundane tasks like cabling and, you know, just hooking stuff up and making sure you allocate lones and things like that to much more sophisticated tasks where you're actually putting a lot of value at. So what we are trying to do for our channel partners is, hey, maybe we'll integrate the mundane tasks in the infrastructure so you can focus on more of the value-added tasks for the customer. Yeah, no, that's a great point because it's not just, even if customers are saying they want to deploy VMs, you know, VMs are not created equal. From a workload standpoint, things change, customer environments. Are you doing anything to kind of harvest that field expertise that you get and all the deployments that you've done to kind of help iterate and learn? Yeah, we are. We're very much trying to learn from our customer deployments and then, you know, take that knowledge base to create reference architectures, known good states that we can, you know, have a customer start with. What we have found in many cases is that the customer does not want a fixed configuration. They want to have some flexibility. But they want to start with their reference point or a known good state. Yeah, so do you have any data point for us? You know, NetApp just put out a press release saying they've got 1,000 customers and then they've got over 20 kind of templated, really well understood, you know, applications that they can use. And obviously NetApp's pitching that this is a flexible environment. So, you know, they've got 20 applications. EMC, when they launched their VSpecs, kind of had five initial use cases. You know, how many different environments is Dell pushing conversion to? I don't know the answer to actually that question. But I think we can, you know, we're building up our database on that. But I think that the key thing here is that we look at major applications like VDI, or workloads, or big, small, medium, large configurations. So there's like an infinite number of configurations that you can have. I think the key point is for us is just to, you know, for the mid-market to start with something that is optimized for them. Right. Yeah, it's always that balance between you want to have it as homogeneous as possible because that simplifies and I can do automation around it. And, but I still want to have flexibility.  Or how do you keep that balance so that you understand what a customer has? Because, you know, to be honest, I think about from a services standpoint, so much time is wasted to try to figure out, okay, what does this customer really have? And convergence is supposed to simplify that. Yeah. You know, I think that in many ways, all of us in the industry are early in the convergence game. And so we're figuring out exactly what the boundaries are between what's acceptable as a fixed configuration and what is a, you know, completely variable configuration. We're just sorting out the boundaries. When we first came out with VSTARTS, for example, a lot of customers said, you know, I really like that idea. I really like it at all, but can I just have this tweak to it? I just want these CNAs and not those CNAs. I want this different. And, you know, we would accommodate that because we have the right kind of manufacturing infrastructure that can enable that to happen. But now some customers are saying, you know, I don't really want to mess with that. If it's going to give me 100 BMS, I'll just take that. So part of it is an education on the customer that a fixed config is okay. And so I think that we're in this journey. I wouldn't say that we fully understand what the parameters are in the whole industry. Sorry, it's interrupt. So, Praveen, I wanted to ask you, I saw an interesting note next to your name and the schedule. And it was HTML5. And I said, hmm, interesting. You know, usually storage guys don't talk about that. Was that a typo on our guys? Or do you have something to say about HTML5? I mean, we got the Apple Worldwide Developer Conferences going on this week. And are you guys doing stuff in next-generation languages and interfaces? Well, yeah, I mean, so I'm not an expert in HTML5, so I'm not sure why that was there next to my name. But I can tell you that obviously we have a very, you know, strong client business. And we're doing a number of things to make that end-user productivity better. So HTML5 is one of the languages that clearly, you know, can help with some of this whole idea of device independence. And, you know, being able to do applications in different ways. So there's a number of things we're doing there. In general, if you think about end-user computing and end-user virtualization, we're doing a lot. Recently, we bought a company called Wise, which puts us now as number one in really end-user virtual computing. Tarkin Maynard here? See, he might be here, yeah. He's been on theCUBE a number of times. He's quite a character. He is. So we, you know, we understand quite well that the endpoint can be nice and sexy, but the real action is in the backend. The real action is with the service, storage, networking, management, security, and services. And so that's the sort of infrastructure we're putting in so that even if you were misguided enough to buy an Apple tablet, we would be the backend for it. It's a gift. So, okay, and then the other, so this is, HTML5 was a list of topics that, you know, there were sort of things that, you know, we might want to think about. The other was IT strategic value. Now, that's something that five or eight years ago, if I were a CIO, I probably wouldn't be having a discussion with Dell about my strategic value. Are you having those discussions today? About Dell strategic value or IT strategic value? Well, IT strategic value and with Dell fix. Yeah, we're absolutely having that discussion today. So the CIO has, you know, it's transforming themselves from being, let's say, the chief infrastructure officer, which is what they've been for many years, to actually being the chief innovation or chief information officer. They want to, the CIO really wants to be part of the group of executives in the company that's helping drive the business forward, not just the manager, like the facilities manager. They really want to change and that's all over the world. I was in Japan last year in December in Korea and I was getting the same feedback for a lot of CIOs, which is that we don't want to just be handling plumbing. We want to help increase revenues. How can you help us do that? And, you know, we understand that there's a couple of ways you can do that. One is that you actually reduce the amount of time and effort that the IT departments are spending on maintenance because they spend 75% of the time on keeping the lights on. And so that leaves very little time to develop new applications that can help drive the business forward. So, by making infrastructure more efficient, easier to manage, you can shift the balance of effort towards...


Hi, this is Dr. Don. I want to show you a quick skill that I learned about how to link my Word documents to my Excel files. Quite often when you're preparing a report for your boss or some other person, you want to summarize the data and put in your report the most important findings, but you don't want to necessarily put all of the data files in there in the intermediate calculations. So what I like to do, here's a typical report, and I'm going to put a link, right click, click on link, and then I want to go to the current folder, because you need to have the Excel file in the folder, and I want to click on that Excel spreadsheet. You can see it shows up down here in the address bar. And I click OK, and that created a link, and as long as that Excel file can be found, I will just control click, and it will open up the Excel file, and it will take you to the Excel file at the page or the worksheet that was last saved when the file was saved. And when I was working here, I would just happen to be on the table of contents. But later on in my report, I want to go to a specific place in my report, particularly it's a residual plot, and you'll learn about what those are a little bit later. And on this spreadsheet, I'll spread it out there a little bit, I've got a number of residual plots, and it goes on down to residual plot 10. I want to go in this particular report to residual plot 2, and I want the Excel spreadsheet to open up to show this plot. I'm just going to pick a cell that is pretty much in the middle vertically of the window, because Excel will scroll down to this point. And I'm going to right click on that cell, and I want to go down to define name, and I'm going to call this PLOT2. Now when you're creating names, you can't have the same name more than once, and you can't have any spaces. You've got to have everything run together. I could put a underscore there if I wanted to, but I'm just going to leave it PLOT2, and hit OK. And then I'm going to save my file, close it. Now I'm going to go back to my Word document, again this in the same folder. I'm going to scroll down, I think it's on page 4 that I'm talking about these residuals. Here it is. We're talking about auto correlation, and I want to click to the residual plot 2, put a link to it so my boss can find it easily. And I'm just going to highlight that again, and I'm going to click on link, and it goes back to the current folder on my Excel file. Now there I've got the address, but that would take me back just to the initial spot in the file. I want to click behind that, put a pound sign, and then the name of that cell, PLOT2. And then click OK. I'm going to save it. Now I've created that link. I just put my cursor there, and then control click, and Excel will open, and it will take me and center that cell in my view, which is what I wanted. Hope you can use this tool.