Comments on: I've said it before, but it bears repeating…

By: Wes Trochlil

Wes Trochlil — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:34:27 +0000

In reply to Tom Slykhouse. Thanks for the comment, Tom. I would agree that taking the approach of an OTS AMS as your core and leveraging third-party tools for other things (like workflows) makes a lot of sense.

By: Tom Slykhouse

Tom Slykhouse — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:31:23 +0000

Hi Wes, I definitely agree with your perspective. As a developer who has had to live with maintaining a custom system, the easy solution on the front end becomes a long term burden and expense. The approach I am intrigued about now is using off the shelf cloud tools such as Google Apps (specifically sites, docs and apps script) to put together customized workflows to automate some of the back and forth between planners and the other organizations involved in large scale events.

By: Wes Trochlil

Wes Trochlil — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:18:49 +0000

Fair enough, Barb. But surely you’re making compromises, as well.

I notice that three of your four solutions are off-the-shelf software. I’ve written before (see here: http://effectivedatabase.com/why-your-association-should-NOT-develop-software) on why associations shouldn’t develop their own software. I stand by those thoughts.

By: Barbara W

Barbara W — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:14:58 +0000

Wes, you make some comprises going with an off the shelf AMS. We use filemaker pro, Regonline for events, Constant Contact for e-mail and Scholar One for speaker abstractions. We found that going with best of breed solutions work well for us coupled with it being cost-effective. When we perused out of the box AMS systems none of them were capable of handling speaker abstractions without integrating with a 3rd party. Not to mention, the e-mail marketing solutions they offer were not up to par with a Constant Contact.