Eighty of Socius’ employees welcomed 250 attendees and 50 sponsors and guest speakers to their annual Aspire conference, held just north of Columbus, Ohio on Thursday, September 23, 2010.
This year’s theme was “What’s In Your Future?” and featured a keynote address by renowned global futurist and best-selling author, Jack Uldrich. Forty-four breakout sessions dedicated to equipping attendees with the tools to maximize success professionally and personally continued this theme. Presented by Socius consultants and leaders, software partners, and leadership training experts, the sessions covered a range of topics from software specific insights to applications to hone leadership skills.
The event also featured the presentation of the Aspire Awards, recognizing the distinguished achievements of five of Socius’ client organizations for enhancing their growth and profitability through effective use of their business software solutions. The Aspire 2010 Award winners are:
Turning Technologies, LLC, an audio/visual company based in Youngstown, Ohio that has developed the popular TurningPoint audience response software, received the Excellence in Evangelism Award for their continuous efforts to find ways to use technology to improve growth in their business. They have implemented dashboards, alerting functionality, and integration between different software packages.
Restaurant Equippers, Inc., a Columbus, Ohio based wholesale distributor, received the Excellence in Innovation Award in light of their habit of always looking for ways to use technology to improve their processes. Restaurant Equippers uses Microsoft Dynamics GP along with an automated integration to their warehouse management application to process orders from call-in customers, Point of Sale, and the Internet. They have a customized integration that allows users to find and capture the best shipping rate directly from within Dynamics GP order entry. They make use of SQL cubes and SSRS reports for Business Intelligence. There is also two-way integration to their website for orders and inventory availability. Finally, Restaurant Equippers has implemented clustered SQL servers for system redundancy to protect against hardware failures.
Moresco Distributing Company in Petaluma, California earned the Excellence in Teamwork Award for their ability to manage change with collaboration, analysis, and careful planning. Teams of key players are assembled to participate in this process to ensure collaborative success. Critical deadlines are met multiple times a day to get orders fulfilled and delivered to their customers. The operations and warehouse staff work in tandem with each other through their Dynamics GP ERP system. Financial data is compiled and analyzed for use by Executive, Sales, Finance, and Operational staff. Moresco’s systems include Dynamics GP financial and distribution modules, FRx, Crystal Reports, and integrated FileMaker databases. Through an innovative technology vision, Moresco has implemented systems to support over 100% revenue growth in less than five years. Efficiency of these systems has ensured the continued success of the Moresco Distributing Company during tough economic times.
The Shepherd Color Company in Cincinnati, Ohio received the Excellence in Vision Award in recognition of their ability to look into the future to see their organization NOT as it is but as what it can become. In order to accomplish this feat, Shepherd Color has spent over 12 months developing and implementing a highly sophisticated Business Intelligence system. Their system is truly a business performance management system that supports strategic as well as day-to-day operations. Shepherd Color has used CRM in combination with their homegrown systems to build xRM and make it work for BI. They are now able to track key performance indicators that had not been measurable for almost 4 years.
2Checkout.com Inc, a Columbus, Ohio headquartered business that provides turnkey e-commerce solutions to thousands of business customers around the world, received the Overall Excellence Award. 2Checkout.com had several unique challenges for their initial implementation of Microsoft Dynamics GP, including integrating it with their own proprietary operations system to process 7,000 transactions per day from 215 countries in 29 currencies using 9 payment methods. By providing buy-in at the top, everyone rolling up their sleeves, finding that a second or third approach to a problem could be the best solution, and communicating their thoughts openly and honestly, they were able to meet their go-live deadline. This initial implementation project laid the successful foundation for 2Checkout.com and Socius to continue to work together as a team to improve business processes, track and analyze business data, and meet current and future business goals. This project truly exemplified the definition of Socius – PARTNERSHIP.
“Aspire is always a great opportunity to foster community among our clients and partners. 2010 was our most well attended event to-date. This enabled our attendees to network and share strategies with others in their respective fields, as well as to learn from our Socius staff,” said Jeffrey R. Geisler, CPA, Socius’ CEO. “It is a pleasure to work with so many organizations that are not only equipping themselves to succeed today , but are also laying the foundation for the future.”
