The fusionSpan Blog

2020 fusionSpan Year in Review

By Carla Yvonne Murphy |January 12, 2021

2020. What a year! Although we had no idea what we (or the world) were in for at the beginning of the year, fusionSpan was able to grow as a team and provide our clients with best-in-class service and solutions!

In March, we went from a primarily in-office organization to fully remote within a matter of days. Despite being unable to see one another in person every day, it did not stop us from making an impact on our clients and in our communities – check out what fusionSpan was up to this last year!

Clients & Projects

In 2020, fusionSpan had the opportunity to work with a total of 101 different clients and offered services that ranged from support to full-scale implementations for a variety of organizations. We helped our customers evaluate, maintain, and enhance their Association Management Systems (AMS), websites, and Salesforce instances. And we are excited to share some of our biggest successes.

Implementation Models

We developed two new implementation models that cater specifically to the needs of SMB sized and Enterprise sized organizations and launched 18 clients under those new models.

Additionally, our delivery team introduced a new managed services model for SalesforceⓇ support that will reduce our customers’ costs and give them access to a whole team of experts and experienced Salesforce administrators and consultants to manage their Salesforce function.

Marketing Automation

We’re particularly proud of the managed services project for the National Parent Teacher Association where we’ve run internal planning meetings, led their AMS upgrade process, and provided managed services to their national and state teams.

fusionSpan was also fortunate to expand the team in our Marketing Automation specialization which allowed us to take on a 10% year over year increase in marketing automation implementation projects in 2020.

We helped to launch the California Water Environmental Association’s enhanced Website & NetForum Portal. This project included fusinConnect, our custom-built fully managed cloud-based Integration as a Service (IaaS) offering, which has integrations with OpenWater, NetForum, and WordPress. We also implemented geolocation search for events, which dynamically lists events in WordPress based on a user’s location leveraging the address verification in NetForum. We are excited to continue to work with CWEA – fusionSpan is currently building their NetForum to Elevate LMS integration!

Lastly, we developed a custom connected Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) for Fonteva Single Sign-On (SSO), and have since signed multiple SSO projects using the application.

We have learned so many things along the way. We created new processes and built new tools. And we’re looking forward to continuing to provide technology solutions that increase efficiency and improve the customer experience for all of our clients!

10 Year Anniversary & Pledge 1% Initiative

Pledge 1% In 2020, fusionSpan celebrated our 10 year anniversary! In celebration of our 10-year anniversary, fusionSpan is proud to announce that we have joined the Pledge 1% initiative to give back to the communities that have gotten us where we are today.

The Pledge 1% initiative is an international corporate philanthropy campaign spearheaded by Salesforce, Atlassian, Rally, and Tides that encourages companies of all sizes to contribute 1% of their time, product, profit, or equity to any cause or charitable organization of their choice. Companies across the globe are making this pledge to invest today towards a big impact tomorrow.

The fusionSpan Rockville office created a scholarship fund to support women from underrepresented ethnic groups pursuing a STEM degree at Montgomery College. Montgomery College is right in the backyard of our Rockville headquarters and welcomes students from over 150 countries. We are aligning our values of women in underrepresented ethnic groups, STEM education, and local contribution with our scholarship fund of $25,000 over five years.

The fusionSpan offices Hyderabad and Nagpur, India have committed $25,000 in 2020 to the Swami Vivekananda Medical Mission to support the communities where our valued employees and their families live and work. This valued medical resource began in 1974 with a small clinic in a livestock shed, and now has hundreds of beds across multiple locations throughout central India.

Industry Events

While the COVID-19 Pandemic has restricted our ability to meet for in-person conferences, that has not stopped us from making our presence known at various industry events! Throughout the year, there were a variety of events that we were able to attend both on the individual and team level.

fusionSpan was proud to participate as a Gold Sponsor at Fonteva’s annual user conference, FUNcon. This year brought an all-virtual experience for sponsors and attendees, and although we missed the in-person connections at our physical booth, we were able to connect with many current and prospective customers over the two-day event!

At FUNcon, fusionSpan was named Fonteva’s Premier Partner of the Year for the 4th consecutive year! Our VP of Technology, Noel Shatananda, and our Senior Developer, Jason Cookman, presented an innovative thought leadership session “Automating Testing for Releases” that discussed how to alleviate testing frustration and enhance metadata back-up to ensure your organization is set for success.

Along with FUNcon, fusionSpan was able to attend and participate in a number of other industry events! Justin Burniske attended the annual AMSfest, and Susan Baumbach spoke at the Emergent Conference. Towards the end of 2020, we even had team members attend the DigitalNow Conference and TEC powered by ASAE. Our President and co-founder, Gayathri Kher, even got to participate in a variety of Association Rockstar events throughout the year!

New Partnerships

In addition to these events, fusionSpan also became a HubSpot partner to further provide automated marketing solutions to our customers! HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. We are excited to deliver a full suite of marketing automation solutions to our clients going forward.

Throughout this previous year, we also had a great time becoming a #FriendOfAWTC and attending their monthly sessions! Association Women Technology Champions, or AWTC, is a networking and educational group, providing knowledge and support to advance women in association technology. The group is open to anyone who works in or serves associations, whether as staff or supplier, consultant or partner.

Lastly, we are also happy to announce our new partnership with .orgCommunity, a vibrant network of association executives, entrepreneurs, and strategic partners dedicated to shaping the future of associations. As we continue to grow as thought leaders within the industry, we are excited to see where partnerships like this take us!

Overall, we were able to overcome the challenges of 2020 as an organization, and can’t wait to see what 2021 has in store for the team here at fusionSpan. For those looking to stay up to date with our latest news, subscribe to our blog and follow us on our social channels!

Follow @fusionSpan

Carla Yvonne Murphy

Carla Yvonne comes with about 20 years of global Human Resources and Talent Acquisition experience to oversee and scale people operations that affect team member experience and company culture. She is responsible for programs and initiatives that are focused on engagement, culture, total rewards, career development, DE&I, hiring top talent, and improving team member retention rate. She has previously led people teams, built HR infrastructure for start-ups, and helped prior organizations maintain their Best Places to Work status that received in total over 25 employer awards.