We reached a very exciting milestone on Friday. We have finally figured out how to build our own Workflows. What this means is that we can automate many of the mundane tasks that are necessary but difficult to remember to do. For instance, when someone registers for a class, RAMCO will automatically generate a receipt. When someone joins our organization, they automatically receive a series of welcoming messages from the President and key staff members describing our organization. Up to now, it’s been a lot of work trying to figure out everything contained in RAMCO but I think we are about over the hump. I can see the promised land! We are still tying out our dues payments and I will feel a lot better after our state and national dues are paid but we’re getting there.

Carol S. Van Gorp, RCE, CAE, CIPS, ePro
Chief Executive Officer

The REALTORS® Association of the Palm Beaches
One Harvard Circle
West Palm Beach, Florida 33409
(561) 585-4544
Direct: (561) 727-2767
Cell: (561) 414-8611 (Text me!)

carol@carolvangorp.com

We went to Anaheim and I got back to a busy Thanksgiving/Christmas season and it was easy to forget about my blog. So sorry that I haven't kept it up.

Am I still crazy about RAMCO? - Absolutely! I have the vision to see the possibilities. We are going to be so strong and powerful when it is all over. Have there been a few bumps in the road? Absolutely! But nothing that I didn't anticipate or that is insurmountable.

I think the move that RAMCO made to change the training to situational based was very necessary. You don't think of all of the nuances in a REALTOR association until you get knee deep in them. Also our old, bad data haunts us but is much easier to fix in RAMCO. Is RAMCO complex? Absolutely. Power and complexity go hand in hand.

I promise to get back to my blog and to update you on our progress but tonight is our installation and I have to go get dressed up!  Later......

Carol S. Van Gorp, RCE, CAE, CIPS, ePro
Chief Executive Officer

The REALTORS® Association of the Palm Beaches
carol@carolvangorp.com

Membership is up. Dues payments are up. The portal is up. There’s a little issue still going on with the conversion of the Education classes (the dates are randomly off…)  but they are working on it this weekend.

We’re doing “High Five’s”

By the way, I am finding “Step by Step Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011” very helpful. It is written by Mike Snyder, Jim Steger and Brendan Landers. You also can get practice files with it and an online edition. I found it helpful in understanding the CRM side of RAMCO. The book is also written for not too technical people! (Like me!)

Carol S. Van Gorp, RCE, CAE, CIPS, ePro
Chief Executive Officer

The REALTORS® Association of the Palm Beaches
carol@carolvangorp.com

We had an issue or two with the firewall in the hosting environment today. RAMCO is being hosted in California so we had to wait until someone got to work in order to open the firewall. Once they did, the NRDS synchronization started flowing. Everything appears to be in, up and working. All in all, I would say that there were surprisingly few hiccups considering that this installation is the first one.

Tomorrow we will pound away and send some test data through just to make sure eCommerce, NRDS and RAMCO are all happy with one another and doing what they are supposed to do. It is time for a celebration.

Carol S. Van Gorp, RCE, CAE, CIPS, ePro

CEO - The Realtors® Association of the Palm Beaches

Carol@CarolVanGorp.com

So we are sort of live but expect to be fully there by the end of today. As I write this we are turning on our NRDS integration. I’ve asked the mother of NRDS, Chris, to keep an eye on it for us, say a few “Hail Mary’s”, bring out the rabbit’s feet, whatever…

We had a little issue at the last minute where a member paying dues through the portal couldn’t get rid of the RPAC voluntary portion on our Dues billing. (Frankly, I fail to see that as a problem but that’s another discussion….HA!) The folks at Cobalt have worked diligently to solve the problem.

You know, one of the things about this process that I personally have had reinforced is that when I know that we are supported, that someone at NAR cares about our success, that Cobalt understands the problem and is applying their resources to solve our problems, the frustration of not having everything just perfect goes away. I never really expected everything to be totally hooked together right out of the box but considering everything, it’s pretty darn close. It’s probably a good lesson in how our members feel when they have issues…..

All of the powers that be have been wonderful and I thank you tremendously for giving us such an awesome tool. You’ve obviously worked hard to get it to this point – we’re taking it over the goal line! Once we are fully functional, the power and knowledge that we will have and ability to automate processes will make us a formidable association. (Did anyone say “Unreported licensee?” Not in our area!) I am really looking forward to getting totally up and running.

Carol S. Van Gorp, RCE, CAE, CIPS, ePro

CEO - The Realtors® Association of the Palm Beaches

Carol@CarolVanGorp.com

Wow -when you consider that our kickoff was the 17th of August, this was fast! We're going to have fun on Monday.

Sent from my iPad

The data is being converted as we speak. We had a few inconsistencies in the data that we had to resolve (big surprise there…) so it’s taking a little longer than anticipated. I’m going home – we’re having a “Chamber of Commerce” day in south Florida. I’m going to enjoy the evening and wait for Keith to let me know all is well. We are all looking forward to getting our hands on the real stuff next week!

Carol S. Van Gorp, RCE, CAE, CIPS, ePro

We are almost there! 

We pulled our data last evening and “over-nighted” it to Cobalt/RAMCO. We were on the phone with our Project Manager Keith this morning when someone walked in and handed it to him. Talk about “when it absolutely, positively has to be there!” We have checked out the data and tweaked it a little bit for the final conversion. We believe that everything is working. Keith has been just wonderful and has added fields to views and extra logic for us. I can’t say enough nice things about his support and sensitivity to our needs. He says that it will take a couple of hours for the conversion to take place so we expect to be up mid-afternoon.

Even our Accounting Department is feeling positive. We are planning on collecting dues via RAMCO over the weekend.

Gangway! Here we come!

Carol S. Van Gorp, RCE, CAE, CIPS, ePro

CEO - The Realtors® Association of the Palm Beaches

One Harvard Circle

West Palm Beach, Florida 33409

Carol@CarolVanGorp.com

Office: 561 585-4544

text me: 561 414-8611

Direct: 561 727-2767

Things I wish I had done while I was waiting for RAMCO:

1.      Get SnagIt or some type of screen capture. Actually I already had it this software but have since gotten it for several staff members. I understand that there is some type of “snip it” that comes with Windows 7. I have found this absolutely invaluable in communicating with Cobalt. I can show them exactly where data has landed in wrong fields, document our keystrokes and other goodies. They say a picture is worth a thousand words – SnagIt has saved me lots of breath!

2.      Get familiar with Microsoft CRM. I have purchased a few of the basic books for Dummies from Amazon. Only one has arrived so far. When I figure out which one is the easiest, I will let you know. One thing you can do for free is watch CRM videos on YouTube.

3.      Get a hold of the RAMCO user manual and actually read it! Not sure if RAMCO would let you but you can ask.

4.      Upgrade your Outlook to 2010. It has a lot of uber cool features that work well with RAMCO.

5.      Cleanup your Member subtypes. (Or billing codes as they are called in some systems). They control the billing in RAMCO as well.

6.      Have your Membership application ready to rework. We started comparing it to the Contact screens in RAMCO. Right off the bat we discovered that our application had a single name field where RAMCO had First, Middle and Last fields. You might ask RAMCO if they will give you a printout of a sample Contact record. You can begin comparing it to your own database and membership application. Don’t worry about your fields for MLS information yet. They are in a different place and that’s part of your training. Just focus on name, rank and serial number for now – and pay attention to the order the fields appear in on your application.

7.      I am making an implementation check list. It will consist of the tables and information you need to set up before you can go live…or would like to have set up. Many of the features that RAMCO can do are not present in your own system so you don’t think about them ahead of time. Do you have a standard “Welcome new member” email that you send out? How about a registration confirmation?

I’ll let you know when I think of more!

Carol S. Van Gorp, RCE, CAE, CIPS, ePro

CEO - The Realtors® Association of the Palm Beaches

One Harvard Circle

West Palm Beach, Florida 33409

Carol@CarolVanGorp.com

Office: 561 585-4544

text me: 561 414-8611

Direct: 561 727-2767