Andy Harleman: hi everyone welcome, we are going to give it a minute or two longer here to let people get logged in, as we know.

it's always something with logging in that can happen and for the millions of people in the Midwest and the South today who are dealing with.

Possible power problems in their homes, I hope, none of you are on this call are affected by that but we'll wait give it a few minutes, let people get logged in so just sit tight and we'll start back up here in about a minute thanks.

Once again we're just going to give it another minute or so folks let others get logged in will be with you shortly, thank you for your patience.

Alright Thank you everyone just want to give people time to get logged in my name is Andy Harlem in here at jm T consulting.

And we really appreciate your time today as I was mentioning before I know much of the country.

is being terribly impacted by power outages and just brutally cold winter weather jm T has three physical offices in the United States, we have one in.

nashville Tennessee Austin Texas and New York our New York Office yesterday was the warmest of the three so it's been a crazy couple of days here, and I know many of my colleagues here, in fact, the the momma Dee person who was scheduled to be the emcee of our meeting today actually.

can't do it because she's at home in Texas, with no power, so I will be both the MC and the presenter if that makes sense, so let me introduce myself, I am the Harlem in here from when it does make sure that I am moving my slide there we go that's me.

Before the coven beard but I worked in nonprofit when I started my career, I got out of college and helped found a social service agency way back then.

And i've been on a nonprofit board and i've been working in this industry consulting with nonprofits now since 2016 hard to believe.

And you know that's my background, but really I want to tell you about jm T jm T is a firm who works only with nonprofit organizations.

And so, your mission and your nonprofit is our business we literally have thousands of happy nonprofit clients and we're known for helping our clients.

Get you know, rapid and affordable implementations of world class software that helps nonprofits better able to work towards their mission.

We are the hallmark of GMT is but we're a small independent business with 50 or 60 employees.

And so we're small enough to provide exceptional and personalized service but we partner with world class.

billion dollar software company, so you get the best of both worlds with jm T, you have a firm that's large enough to handle complex implementations small enough that you get to know us by name.

But also partnering with the giant software companies that make the good software, so we were built by.

A team of people who are dedicated to working with nonprofits like myself and our founder and namesake jm T herself Jacqueline empties oh.

was a finance person at multiple New York area nonprofits when she found a J amp T 30 years ago last month and so she had been a buyer i'm sitting in the finance office.

Of a couple of different accounting software solutions in those days, she talks about the days of the big floppy disks and other things that went on, back then, and doss operating systems, but.

She was less than impressed with some of the service, she got as a buyer for nonprofits and she was very passionate about the fact.

That nonprofits deserve better than what she got and so she formed jm T and part with the with the idea that she could do better than that and that she would have a company that focused exclusively on helping nonprofits.

In the way that she didn't feel like she got help so as I mentioned, we have three physical offices.

But the green dots are or where we have clients all over the country, and I wish I could show you the whole world map here because we now have an office in Melbourne Australia as well.

But this is our mission to work with nonprofits and you know, in this day and age, it really doesn't matter where you are we can help you.

And with we've been doing everything on zoom like the whole world has been for the last year now, but before that.

We would come to you and come to your office wherever you might be to help you implement your systems.

So these are some of the many nonprofits that work with us and have worked with us over the years, as you can see there's a wide variety of different organizations and I always like to say, look, I can tell you how great.

jm T is all day long but, but this is what one of our great clients Anthony has to say about us and you know that really ties into what I was just saying.

We understand nonprofits and that's what made him feel comfortable working with us, so I want to emphasize that we are an independent consulting firm.

And that should be very important to you because what it means is we're not tied to any publisher, we are not a software publisher, in fact, our commitment is to you the client.

And we go out there and monitor the marketplace, we know what software products are out there and we choose to partner with or not partner with.

All the software publishers out there, and so we make very careful considerations and decisions about what software products we're going to work with, so you can rest assured that if jm T.

Is a partner with a software solution that we have put it through its paces.

And then, it has met our very rigid standards for helping nonprofits, and so what we do is we we partner with the best products, we can find in the marketplace.

And then we help you assemble a perfect for you solution from our entire ecosystem so jm T works across the spectrum of all these different areas of your organization, where we might be able to.

help you and so today, you know we're going to focus on the the budget management part of it with vendor but, as you can see, we have many other partners out there that we work with across the spectrum in different areas.

To help nonprofits so, as I said, we're going to work with them just today that's how we're, but I also wanted to.

leave you with this great quote I really I like this, this you know, this is an organization that helps people who are enduring cancer treatment.

And last year on covert hit they had a very moving emotional story about how they were able to just quickly adapt to the new remote workforce environment.

And still not mess up their services at all to any of their clients and john there says nice things about us in our onboarding process and how we got them there but.

Because they went through that process, they were able to pivot when coven hit, and that means a lot that's why we do what we do here at jm T.

There are literally sick people who are able to not have their treatment interrupted because we've been able to help in some small way that organization so.

We talked about last year, we learned in 2020 there's no excuse for working with outdated technology, I think we've all learned that the hard way, and so I want to talk about where that comes in, when it comes to the process of budgeting.

we've been doing this for a long time, and I can tell you that every single time I talked to an organization about their budget process.

There it's usually accompanied by moans and groans about what an arduous process, that is, we have found over time.

that the average timeframe, just to build the annual budget for a nonprofit is four to six months.

Though i've seen longer I will never forget one particular nonprofit to told me that their budget cycle was 10 months.

There were only two months of the year, when they weren't working on building out their budget, and as soon as they finished you, you know you would think they would feel very great relief from that, but then.

The dread of starting the new process in a very short period of time was always in their mind so that was the worst i've seen, but the average we see is about four to six months and.

Most organizations, when we talk about the concept of collaboration what it really means is emailing spreadsheets around and so that's.

pretty much the gist of most nonprofit budget cycles that we've seen over over the last 30 years that we've been in business everybody gets a spreadsheet.

And we all know what can happen when you have too many spreadsheets floating around, so what I think is kind of interesting is the idea that.

it's one thing if you're a budget manager program manager and someone emails you a spreadsheet to fill it out sure there's there's lots of trouble for you about how about the poor person back in the finance office whose job it is.

to assemble all of those spreadsheets and and really this cartoon makes light of it, but the idea of budgeting instead of budgeting to your strategy spending your time.

trying to find what sal is broken, I think that I probably could have just had this one slide really because that is the gist of the problems that we see with our nonprofit.

clients, is that you know it's just too much time being spent on low value tasks like trying to find errors and spreadsheets and formulas.

So then, you get to the idea of how do I recast my budget we i've had so many conversations in this last year with organizations who have had to make pivots and changes.

Because of covert getting a new stream of funding coming through, for example, I spoke to someone in indiana today who got a bunch of state funds, which is great.

But that meant they had to completely redo their budget and redoing their budget was an arduous process.

So sometimes it's great to get a new pot of money or to have something come in to provide great relief for you, but at the same time.

The process of recasting that budget can become a nightmare when you're talking about all those spreadsheets floating around and then you've got a situation like this, where you might have.

Your board needs a new plan ASAP as you pivot and change through all of these.

different things that are going on in the world around you you're you have to sit there, and quickly, change your previous assumptions that were in your budget or.

collaborate with your workforce, who is now remote after all the years of being in the office with you, you don't have time to waste on data collection or data entry.

Yet you have to make strategic decisions on that data and then sometimes.

assumptions change and they change quickly, in some cases, we saw during the height of coven it was changing as quickly as our new for some organizations.

And then, so you have to do that process all over again, so I don't want to hit it over the head too hard, but I think I hope I paint a picture for you here on.

What we've seen with a lot of our clients in terms of the process that they've had to go through with their budgeting so.

for you to hit all those things it's really no problem when you have a tool like that I mentioned before jm T chooses what product, we can work with, we have chosen to partner with men and we're very excited about it.

Because what it does, is it says hey wait a minute.

excel isn't all bad, in fact, there are many things about excel that all of us know we know how to use it every single person in the finance department already knows how to use excel.

Our theory at jm T is, if you know how to use excel you're probably 50 to 60% of the way there on understanding how to use them, so what excel does or what vendor does, excuse me with excel.

Is they essentially they lock out all the bad stuff about excel and they keep all the good stuff and then they add and enhance to it.

So you still get work you get workflow automation you can actually collaborate across departments you actually have version control and audit trails.

You have security, you have integration with other tools and you can do complex financial modeling all these things are possible within excel but no formula errors.

No versions floating around that are correct, none of that the regular hassles of excel so it's the best of both worlds for sure.

It is a cloud tool and so you're able to make this whole process very easy for your staff by mapping out your own.

workflow for your budget process, which is a nice thing, and on top of everything else you're able to not just build a budget but you're actually able to do.

board ready reports right out of the system we have a lot of clients that are doing that are using vendor for their management reporting exclusively.

and others have a really great era P like something like in tech where they're able to do their financial statements out of intact.

But they may use vendor for something to enhance that with their management reporting, so it gives you a lot of great options.

Ultimately, what it does, this is our goal for you, we want to help you spend 80% of your time being strategic rather than the other way around that whole prieto principle.

Unfortunately, far too many of our clients over the years we've seen spending on only about 20% of their time being, strategic and so with Vienna it's you're able to make it at So these are the some of the things you don't have to worry about when you're using something like that.

I have one question which i'm going to save for the end I forgot to mention that i'm sorry to say, I have a hard time multitasking.

And seemed a little I just see that I have a question, but we have Kathleen monitoring if it's any kind of question about technical or.

If there if my volume is wrong, or if i'm cutting out or something, please do let me know but otherwise we'll save room at the end for all questions and appreciate your patience with that sorry I forgot to mention that, at the beginning, so what I want to do next is I do want to.

Open up my excuse me, my.

Actual.

Then a system, so let me do that.

Then it is a cloud based tool.

And I simply went to a tab on my browser and logged in, as you can see i'm logged in with to a sample database with my name.

Now i've logged in I can either be a manager over here or a contributor so let's start.

start with a manager as a manager, there are many things that I can processes that I can create and control.

I have my nonprofit budget creation, this is just a sample database, of course, but if I open this this is.

What I showed you on that screenshot before this is where you can actually build out that process this isn't just a visual aid here this these things actually come within them.

You create the processes that roll up into these and then you can live, you can use this flowchart to create you know who gives what.

To when and where and how the approvals flow, this is where it's all set up, so this is just an example of one that I that we have set up in the sample database.

But there are other things that manager has as well, including I love the status tracker.

Now again keep in mind, this is a sample database, so our data isn't updated and things like that, but you're able to actually track the process of the contributors on your team.

and see where they are maybe keep up with those who need a little keeping up with because perhaps they haven't done what they were supposed to do for.

For their budget entries, and you can really see in calendar eyes, the whole thing, so this really gives you a great view and ability to manage that process more easily internally.

And what's interesting about that and we're not going to get into this here today too much.

But then, is able to do more than just budgeting we're focused on that because that's really what its biggest strength is and certainly why we're most excited about it.

But any process that you do in your organization can be tracked here through vana.

including some such things as the monthly close process, so we have some clients that are using it for that sort of thing again we're going to focus today.

On the budgeting process, but just keep in mind, this is a true platform and a tool that you can use for many other things so i'm logged in you can see, this is some of the stuff I see as a.

manager or manager and then i'm going to go over here to be the contributor next so imagine a scenario where like what I talked about before.

In finance, you need to send spreadsheets around to all these different program managers who run the different areas, and they have budgetary responsibility, you need them to give their input.

and have it roll up into one master organization budget, so what I want to show you here today is just a very small hypothetical glimpse at what that might look like when you have a tool like venom.

So i'm going to go over here i'm going to go to this detailed op X input report, this is where I would be able to enter my data now.

You notice here, it says check out what that means is i'm going to actually check this excel spreadsheet out.

What it's doing is it's populating this excel spreadsheet with data from the secure event cloud.

And it's checking it out so think of it like a library book if you check out a library book, you have it, nobody else can get to it.

And that's the way this works once a budget manager checks out their little sliver of the organization.

No one else can be messing with it, therefore it controls for the problem of you know, too many cooks in the kitchen to too many people messing up or changing data at once, because only one person can change it.

and obviously you have security to control who even has access.

To all parts of the data, but what I did was I hit check out if you were looking quickly you might have seemed to just download it here on the bottom left of my screen so i'm going to open that now.

think it yeah throw it over, on the other, monitor so i'll drag it back over me do that first.

Think, I have to first answer the prompts that is giving me to make that happen, but what it what it's doing is it's loaded on my other monitor here the.

The spreadsheet and now i'm going to.

Choose my I have to choose my parameters first, before I can drag it over to that other screen sorry about that.

So what it's asking me to do is simply say what department, are you looking at and i'm choosing one called San Francisco.

And i'm going to choose my forecast as my version so once I do that it should be it'll load the data and then i'll drag it over to the other monitor.

And if I was more proficient at zoom i'm sure I could have figured out a way to show that monitor, but I will just admit right here now.

i'm not that guy who's proficient at zoom like that so here instead is my sheet that I was just talking about Kathleen, can you please verify that that is visible to you.

Kathleen: It is Thank you.

Andy Harleman: Thank you.

So this.

The apex entry template that I was talking about now again i've simplified this down here for the purposes of a webcast, but I want you to get a sense for what i'm talking about this looks and feels like a spreadsheet In fact it is actually a.

spreadsheet but what you might notice up here is there's this special ribbon that appears, this is all the stuff so they've basically installed.

A macro on to your spreadsheet and it is allowing you to have actually control all those other things I was talking about so let's say i'm a budget manager.

And I need to enter my expenses i'm going to do something simple and come down here i'm going to say let's go to my forecast here number for June of 21 and just enter a number of.

i'm just going to say 44 for 44.

And then enter it now, when I do that there's a couple things it hasn't done anything yet, because I haven't saved, but I want to scroll over and show you a couple other things so let's look at some of these others that i've done let's just highlight this cell and let's look at.

The audit trail in the cell, you can see, it gives a full audit trail and shows, who did what when to that cell.

So this is very powerful as we mentioned before there's a full audit trail, you can see that perhaps I may have used the same cell in multiple webcasts because i've gone in there, done that.

But you get the idea, this is very powerful you can also do things like got look down and see what are the actual.

saves to this cell that have happened in the past, so when I do, that what it did.

Was it it's just showing the one other time that i've done that I can even see line item history, if that were enabled I believe on this one it's not have enabled.

But you get the idea, it is, it is a very powerful tool that allows you to get a lot of the others, no, no did actually showing on that, but.

This is where I again back to where it was the budget manager i'm entering data I entered that 44 for 44 now.

Obviously I would normally be doing a lot more than just that one recruitment line item here but i'm going to go ahead and just save it now, for the purposes of this webcast.

So when I do, that a couple of things are going to happen i'm just going to try it this way by closing the excel sheet will say wait a minute it's controlled by vendor do you want to save this of course I do I want to save this to the vendor database.

So i'm going to do that.

And now it's going to warn me about a budget threshold problem that I have, and that is that.

That that I have a something where i'm not allowed to go 20% higher now, this is a soft.

control, this is just morning me it's not prohibiting but obviously you could set up to be more stringent and not let anybody do things like that.

And I could make a comment if I wanted to argue over, and in this case because it's a sample database for a webcast so i'm going to go ahead and just say yes, I want to do that.

So now it actually had on my other monitor a little window that pops up that says data save successfully do I want to check this filing.

Well, yes, I do so now, as you can see it went back to check out and this file is in there, so it would be that simple.

For anyone in your program to do that now multiply how many different people you have in your organization, who might need to enter data like that it saves securely to the database and now.

anybody can go in the administrator can go in, I should say and see the work of all the other program managers who might have done something similar for their little cut their little piece of the organization.

At the same time, so it's very exciting to think about how that might make a difference in your nonprofit.

Especially when you think about the emailing around of spreadsheets that have happened before now i've been focused a lot here on.

That process and i've given you a small glimpse into what that could do for you in terms of.

Making the process more streamlined, however let's also look at some of the other things you're probably caught, this is probably caught your eye that there's some other things on here, like, for example.

These financial reports so if I come down let's say I want to look at at some of these reports, I want to look at my expense variants report as an example, so if I hit that.

Again same thing it's just simply downloading that data to this from the secure vendor database to the spreadsheet that's going to open.

Here, on my other screen.

And again i'm I have to choose my fields first is asking me, you know what department and things that I want to that I want to look at on it i'm just concerned okay once it loads i'll move it back over sorry about that.

If it makes anyone to feel better you'll know that i'm sure my my co workers will be making fun of me for my inability to.

Put that that spreadsheet on to the right monitor during a webcast but anyway here is the report I was referring to, so I can scroll down here, and I can see.

All kinds of things and I can expand out and see the actual dates and look at all the different information that I might have now I saw actually did have a chance to see a chat question that had something about can we put that question.

Can you draw back to the source system, yes and that's what's beautiful about this and and also saw another question, I had a chance to look.

doesn't work with them IP, the answer is yes, then I can work with any rp they have pre built.

integrations with multiple like intact is one, but any rp what's beautiful about it is there's a way that they can do an import of data from any system.

So, essentially, even if you have a really old on premise tool we can get data into Vienna with it so.

What I want to do just to demonstrate some of the stuff that you can do here, this is, as you can see you're in excel but you're using the event driven so you can scroll down, and you can see different.

Information, so let me just highlight this this cell here as an example, so when I look at this, I can do a couple things let's look at drill transactions.

This is actually transactions that made up that number that would theoretically and again, this is a sample database have come from your earpiece system, so it actually shows.

The transactions and it's simply opens a new tab down here below on this spreadsheet.

And it actually shows where that data came from again I clicked on that, right from the Venice sheet, I can also do.

back down to you know I can drill down into that if it if it's got anything open and you can see that you're able to do further look.

I can also check audit trail, I can see comments many other things that you can do right here on these reports so.

It is a lot more than what you would get on a regular excel, as you can see, and you can connect it to multiple sources I mentioned connecting to MIT or any year p.

But the fact is that most organizations, we work with have many others certain tools out there, you may have a HR payroll system that you pull data from you may have some sort of CRM if you're doing revenue.

fundraising through some other way, and all of that can be set up to go into Vienna and feed these files be these actions and then and then allow you to do your your budget process and your management reporting as well.

And I have another question from my friend Lawson who I happen to know hi Lawson.

How did the spreadsheets that I checked out are viewed and vented get format it in the first place, and who created them and how So the answer is.

That the Well, this is obviously a sample database, but what we do certain ones come with the system when you have a subscription.

But what we do that's part of jm T services is help you create the exact ones that you need for your organization, but what's nice about, that is.

Many of the spreadsheets that you already have in use can actually just be pivoted to being Venice spreadsheets.

with very little work I don't want to guarantee that that's always the case, but in a high percentage of the cases.

We can work with existing than a spread or excuse me excel spreadsheet that you may have in play.

So it's pretty exciting that's why we really like this tool, because it really saves some of the good things about excel so Another thing I want to show you here, I was i'm going to close out of this report.

i'm not gonna bother saving it, but you might have caught that it does many other things to other types of reports.

We have you can actually set up an executive report Pack and once you have it set up, then what it does, is it will actually.

update any of the file any of the tables within there that need to pull from the actual secure than a database, so this will just be a very.

simplistic board Pack that we've made up in here, but you can see, and again i'm pulling from a sample database and I haven't pointed to the right.

dimensions to pull but you get the idea any of these numbers that are actually they would be pulling straight from the vendor database and updating.

So that you don't have to recreate this packet every month, it just does it for you, when you simply hit refresh the same is true.

If you noticed a lot of organizations do that very same thing via PowerPoint and and the same thing that tables that are within that PowerPoint that actually contain.

Data that comes from Vienna just would get updated when you refresh it so you don't have to rebuild your PowerPoint every month or anything like that.

You simply can refresh with the vendor data, and you can even like let's say you're looking at this right now, and you realize oh my gosh I forgot to enter something.

And you can either literally go back to the entry sheet.

update that save it check it back in and then come here refresh and it will instantaneously update the numbers on this PowerPoint as well, so this is a really big time saver when it comes to things like board packets.

In addition, so this I hope you're seeing here today that, then I can do a lot for you, we don't expect you to possibly after a brief webcast with us.

know everything there is to know about it, of course, we hope that you've seen enough that you're interested in having a further conversation with us we're.

You know we're very big at jm T where we really believe strongly in being upfront and honest about all the capabilities and lack thereof, of any tool we work with so we'd love to talk to any of you about.

how this might be able to help you, and if there are things you need to do that, it will do for you will tell you.

But I suspect, you know most cases we've really seen a lot of organizations using this.

And more and more inquiries into it, you know we've been in this business for a long time and it's only been the last few years.

That fema tools like this have even been affordable for your average nonprofit in the marketplace and it's really exciting for us to think.

Because, as we all know, when a new technology emerges At first it comes out and it's really expensive, and then the price comes down, and so you know FP amp a tools used to only be things.

That organizations who wanted to spend a million dollars could afford but that's no longer the case and we're really excited about how a lot of our smaller nonprofit clients are going to be able to use a tool like betta as they move forward so.

To the point I was making about earlier about what to do next, you know, we want to, we want to help everyone get going on this as soon as they possibly can so we've come up with at J empty.

A way that we can actually implement this and get you up and running in a very short period of time.

Through outsourcing administration of the model essentially to us, we can do all of this for an affordable monthly fee.

And we can get you up and running very quickly, so the hardest part about deploying new software isn't really the end user training everybody that.

Everybody can learn how to enter data and save stuff and with a little bit of training it's the people in the organization have to really master it and understand it, to the point of.

always being able to build out their own model sheets themselves or knowing how to change around some of the rules and formulas.

And so what we're seeing at jm T is there's an option for you, if you don't want to take all of that, on but you still want to get the benefits of this tool to outsource the administration of your model to us.

And all of that can be rolled into a very affordable monthly fee, including the software subscription so that we can actually get people up and running really quickly, we know.

That June 30 is coming quickly, and that is the year in for a huge chunk of our clients and many of you may be already starting to think about whatever new budget process, you have to start after June 30 and.

hard as it is to believe on a day like today, where where I sit it's 10 degrees.

That will be in July, before we know it, but that is the case, so if any of your organizations, want to have a further conversation with us about how you can deploy this.

rapidly, we can do that, we can also do a much more traditional implementation of it without that outsourcing of the administration to us where.

You know, we really give you that end user administrative training and just takes a little bit longer, but if you want to go into that you can do that as well, so I want to double check see if there are any other questions I don't see and then.

The next step is, we have a we want to schedule a quick 15 minute consultation with anyone is interested in target for their body.

And we're offering a $10 starbucks card anybody who books, one of these by Friday the 19th so you can reach us at jm T consulting COM slash meet as you see there on the bottom.

Of this slide and that will allow you to have that consultation with us the I see one question I did get is curious about pricing, yes, absolutely the.

Pricing on this tool is really contingent upon a few factors, most importantly, that number of users and types of users, that you would need so for every organization we're happy to give you.

A quick pricing estimate, as you know, as soon as we can understand a couple of details about your organization, we very much believe.

in getting that pricing conversation out front, because if it's something that simply is not within the ballpark of a budget that you can afford i'd rather you find out really early so that you don't get excited.

and spend a bunch of time looking at demos if it's not something you can afford so we'll make sure we're very quick about getting you that pricing information.

When the time comes, so with that i'm going to look and see if anyone else has any other questions, but just i'll leave you with this thought.

No fooling by April fool's day this could be you could be relaxing about your budget process so.

I want to learn that, when in doubt put a funny animal picture in a PowerPoint and it will make for much higher ratings on your webcast so.

I hope that that has that has raised your opinion of me just by putting that picture in there for you.

I say ingests with a smile on my face but Thank you everyone really appreciate your time today.

We I can be reached at jm T consulting his website or my email is my first initial and last name at jm T consulting COM, if anyone wants to reach out to me directly.

But let us know if you would like to book that consultation by Friday and even if it's just to have a pricing conversation.

We can do that with you and let you know what you think or you can let us know what you think once we've been able to give that to you so again Thank you everyone I leave you with one final quote.

From one of our clients who I wish I had another one her quotes up where she said vintage change her life, those were her exact words but.

Sarah one of our happy GMT clients talks about how James he really became a part of the family at the children's tumor foundation and absolutely we want to be part of the family of every nonprofit so.

Thank you all, I hope you have a great rest of your day and for those of you in the frigid Midwest or south or I guess whatever part of the country we're all the cold is which I guess everywhere, but Miami stay warm and stay safe thanks everyone.