My Visit With ACS

I am a geek at heart. I have said many times that if you squint real hard while reading the Bible, it says the geek shall inherit the earth. Because of my propensity toward all things digital, I sometimes want to move too fast for those around me. I must always remember to study, verify, test and troubleshoot before I spring new technologies on our team. We have been an ACS client for almost 18 years. We were with them in the early days of DOS (I am glad those days are behind us). We made the transition almost 5 years ago to their Windows product and have utilized many of their various modules.

Then came the internet. Remember, I am a geek. I believe in the power and possibilities it holds. My house is very wired. Gabriel and Noah, my two oldest, have their own blogs. I am sure as Adam learns to read he will want one as well. I recently read a study from the PEW Internet and American Life Project that states:

64% of wired Americans have used the Internet for spiritual or religious purposes.

Wow! The Internet is now! Those who don’t get into the mix and leverage this technology lose.

With that said, if you jump into a new technology before it has matured, you may get what you paid for. If you jump in too soon, you will spin your wheels trying to make something happen prematurely. If you wait too late, you become irrelevant. I don’t want to be either. Recently, we have been reevaluating our commitment to ACS and their product. There are a lot of great new cutting edge products on the market today. Between Fellowship One, Blackbaud, Connection Power, Shelby and others my head begins to spin. They each have a defined approach to both church/nonprofit management and how they leverage the internet. It is difficult at times to know which tools have the greatest importance in our decision making process. I read alot of blogs and hear stories applauding and whining about every product imaginable. That doesn’t help. I listen to a rep from company A plead their case and it seems right. Then I listen to the rep from company B and they look like they have all the answers. I am so lost.

It has seemed to me, at times, that ACS has drug it’s heels moving fully onto the Internet while other, smaller companies have built ground up as complete web only products. Why has ACS stayed with a Paradox database? When will they be completely online with all of their products seemlessly integrated with our web site? Why? Why? Why?

I realized there was a disconnect between our church and where ACS is headed. Now, their base of operations sits just 3 hours south of us. They send information out to clients all the time. Where was the disconnect? They have some of the best manuals I have ever seen to help clients set up their software. Tech support is hands down the best of all the vendors we work with. Yet, we were still left without a “Best Practices” model of how to set it up for our needs. We need help. This is where competition swoops in. We have been lured this way and that and left wandering where to turn next.

What to do? What to do?… I know, I could… pray for divine guidance. That just might work. So, that’s what I did. I prayed for guidance while I sought wisdom. I listened to man and for God to direct me. Then it happened. I stumbled (or was guided to) a post from Tony Dye who visited with ACS in January. Then I read Hal Campbell’s reply where he welcomed current, future or former clients to drop by. We fit into all three of those descriptions.

So, I took my senior pastor (who is also my father) to Florence yesterday for a tour and talk with their team. I was impressed. Do I believe they have arrived at their ultimate destination? No. But I do believe they are moving quickly and cautiously forward. Remember, this is a company that is over 27 years old and serves over 22,000 organizations worldwide. Not 100 or 1000… but 22,000! A simple idea to me (like switching from Paradox to SQL) is not so simple with 22,000 clients. What I did hear was a clearly defined strategy to move forward.

Craig, Hal, Cindy, Dean and others took just about the whole day to talk to and listen to us about their products, vision and implementation. That was significant. They have 22,000 clients and the CEO, COO, Product Manager, Executive Director of IT and programmers took the bulk of yesterday for us.

So, what did I learn?
1) ACS has depth, breadth that only comes with a mature product
2) They have been doing church management software for a long time
3) They want to listen to their customers.
4) They are committed to moving completely to the web
5) It is probably not wise to use resources to completely rewrite the desktop with a different database system when you are moving to the web as a matter of course. Just let the new system live in the SQL database.
6) They have a vast wealth of underutilized resources at our disposal including: tech support on our terms (phone, an extensive web knowledge base, live chat or email)
7) There are many training resources that we have not used including online web training videos, user groups, regular regional training seminars and traveling trainers that will come to us.

Are we going to return to ACS? I can’t answer that just yet. But I will say that I came away with a new respect for this great company. Thanks guys!