Pro domo: Mobilize, ACL™ & Partner Summit
Aside the solution per se, customers deciding on data analytics or audit management software are also interested in its future viability and the manufacturer’s integrity and product strategy. Generally, acquisition and implementation costs are only acceptable if the solution will be viable over the medium and long term and if there is no risk of either the software or the company doing a sudden vanishing act.
What's important for our customers also applies to us as sales partner – in terms of the products that we sell and use. We invest significant resources in our partnership with ACL™ Services Ltd. (which has been running since 2004), we develop know-how around the current solutions, familiarise ourselves with the detailed features of the individual tools and use them in internal and external projects. Besides purely sales aspects, it’s also important to ensure that, in the best-case scenario, the company’s vision, mission statement and values are consistent with your own, or that you can at least endorse them with a clear conscience. Evaluating this is generally not a snap decision, but a process which continues over the entire business relationship.
To give us a first-hand insight into this mix of product updates, strategic orientation, corporate values and product roadmap, we attend “ACL™ Mobilize” in Vancouver each year; this year, the event was organised alongside a gathering of international sales partners, the ACL™ Partner Summit.
Vancouver, the headquarters of ACL™ Services Ltd.
Without going into too much detail at this point, we are again leaving Vancouver in a buoyant mood. The insight we gained into ACL™'s strategic orientation has shown us that as a partner, we can continue to rely on the company in the medium and long term. The product development roadmap (catchwords: big data, machine learning, performance) and also thematic focuses (RPM risk and performance management, content) fill us with optimism that ACL™ will not remain purely focussed on the data analytics and risk and audit management market, but will be able to further expand this role in future. This is essential in today's fast-moving world where digitalisation is advancing apace and where data analytics already plays a dominant role at all levels. And is all the more important given the major changes already faced and still to be faced by the IT market in these areas.
The photographer poised in front of the stage, waiting for the next big thing from ACL™
However, it's not only product-related matters which are important to our partnership. In terms of contact partners and management, too, ACL™ offers us consistent and ethical cooperation at all levels.
So why is this important for you, too?
You use data analytics, GRC or audit management software in order to analyse processes and make them more efficient, in order to identify problems, to establish or test controls, to use data analyses to convert raw data into valuable information, to receive day-to-day project management support, or in order to identify or combat fraud. You invest significant amounts of time and money in the corresponding software to ensure the solution is successfully integrated into your processes. It becomes an integral part of your day-to-day processes and you rely on being able to receive dependable, competent support in future, too. Knowing that you have a manufacturer with whom you can face the digital future with confidence is important. And knowing that with dab: Daten – Analysen & Beratung GmbH you have a sales partner that enjoys trusting, in-depth cooperation with the software manufacturer is also a major plus point.
In addition to the internal ACL™ Mobilize & Partner Summit event, customers can also find out first-hand about developments at the annual ACL™ Connections conference, https://www.acl.com/connections/, which this year will be held from 24 to 27 September in Nashville, Tennessee. And of course, for those of you who are unable to attend, we will, as always, keep you updated here.