Monthly Archives: July 2012

DataPlex’s AmpUp “Rapid Enterprise Deployment” software platform is being used to implement “million dollar systems” at a fraction of the cost. Each system is designed to enhance an organization’s already proven workflow, further leverage its business intelligence, and make it more productive and profitable. DataPlex AmpUp systems are 100% web-based and come already mobile and tablet enabled for access from anywhere. Example of already deployed systems are:

• An Electronic Field Reporting System used by police officers to file incident report more quickly and conveniently
• A Parking Management System that processes parking lot data to provide real-time dashboards with management-oriented charts and reports
• PlexChex, a web service that constantly monitors and sends alerts based on website and business system performance
• A Patient Management System with advanced EMR support to reduce the staff workload of medical groups
• A new Fundraising Organization Network Database System (FRONDS) helps non-profits be more efficient at donor development and membership management

The most recent AmpUp-based enterprise system developed by DataPlex is its Fundraising Organization Networked Data System, known as FRONDS, which is now live at Descanso Gardens and enabling their staff to more effectively interact with its membership of 18,000 people. The “back office” of development where all donations are managed went live on June 1st and the “front office” of the Visitor Center with membership and ticket sales went live on July 1st.

Not only did DataPlex engineers design a custom version of FRONDS for Descanso Gardens called the Descanso Gardens Enterprise System (DGES) but they are hosting it on the Amazon’s high-performance EC2 cloud. DataPlex has become truly a one-stop shop that can work with an organization all the way from concept and design through development and hosting, and offers a suite of already developed modules for integrating enterprise, mobile and the cloud.

FRONDS is based on DataPlex’s AmpUp rapid development enterprise software platform that reduces the amount of time and cost to get a state-of-the-art web-based platform up and running. Many of the standard AmpUp features are available such as flexible searching, Excel/OpenOffice exporting, mail merging and consolidated “one button” month end reporting.

Some of the more interesting capabilities of FRONDS are:

• Real-time dashboard display of daily activity
• Print and scan ID cards
• Point-of-sale (POS) operations: ticket, course and membership sales
• Automatic letter generation with mail-merge capabilities
• Track donor gifts by solicitations and campaigns
• Donor communications Journal
• Calendar of events
• Budgets and Actuals: trend analysis and forecasting
• Accounting Reports organized by General Ledger codes
• Single-button Month-End Reporting
• Multitude of workflow reports, document generation and Excel export

FRONDS prints membership cards, each one with different information including member name, ID number and an associated scancode. The Descanso Gardens staff decided to print all the cards themselves rather than use a commercial printer. With two printers set up, each of which prints one card every 7 seconds, the entire print job was under 20 hours. While printing, the staff was able to test scan the cards for quality control purposes so as to be sure to keep to their aggressive timeline. Now that the cards have been printed, the staff only has to print a couple thousand cards a month, a comparatively easy task, and has the option to offload some the ID card printing to the Visitor Center when people who sign up can get their ID card instantly.

The system dashboard shows the staff the current weather conditions and real-time visitation and sales figures, and compares them to the same day of the week of the previous year.

FRONDS also has an interactive POS cash register that is 100% web-based and compatible with all major web browsers including those for iPads and other tablets and which is also touch screen and barcode scanner enabled.

Descanso Gardens executives report how FRONDS is already proving its value:

• Instantaneous reporting that will help us manage our enterprise better
• Tracking member behavior, which improves our knowledge of a key, core constituency
• Integrates POS with membership management
• Provides us with much more powerful tools for member fulfillment and satisfaction:
  • instant enrollment and addition to the database
  • near-instant fulfillment of membership cards
  • much faster renewal process (soon to be also web-based)
  • better “member experience” at check-in
  • much better control of entrance gate
• Much simplified and more user-friendly donor tracking, moves management, reporting system that is also much less expensive than the current systems in wide use such as Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge and DonorPerfect

Even though they had been using a different commercially available web-based donor management package, they will still realize a 25% savings in overall work effort by using FRONDS which aligns more closely with their fundraising and membership management requirements.

For more information about FRONDS, AmpUp, one of the other AmpUp systems, or to discuss without obligation what DataPlex technical services can do for you, please feel free to contact us anytime.