Welcome to fusionSpan

Marlene Sebastian Senior Trainer Marlene is from Windsor, Ontario, and has seven years of experience in the Learning & Development (L&D) field and has worked in both academia and the service sector. She specializes in adult learning, software training, and instructional design. Columbia. She enjoys…

Business Process Automation (BPA) is the application of technology to replace recurring, manual tasks, allowing organizations to focus on more strategic initiatives. This can include automating email communications, membership renewals, payment processes, hiring and onboarding as well as many other functions of an organization. Implementing…

Most modern business leaders are still underutilizing the power of technology in today’s digital world. But, in reality, being digitally first does not imply having all of the software tools available; rather, it entails having the proper ones. Technology is essential, but it’s only a…

Data security and data privacy are commonly used interchangeably, but though they are linked, they are distinct terms that serve different scopes. Difference between Data Security & Data Privacy Confidentiality, availability, and integrity of information are used to describe data security. It’s all about the…

Businesses deal with a lot of data, and analyzing it in its raw form is frequently difficult. The quality and accuracy of the datasets you’re working with increase when you present them in attractive graphs, charts, shapes, and plots. Tableau is the most extensively used…

Lynette Raudner Director of Training, Delivery Team Lynette Krishnabhakti Raudner is a passionate technology trainer, instructional designer, and training manager. She joins fusionSpan with 12 years of experience in the technology training industry, having worked in corporate consulting, law firms, and tech startups. When not…

What is Tableau CRM and why you should look at Tableau CRM if you use Salesforce? Salesforce launched an integrated business intelligence solution with Einstein analytics in 2016. Subsequently Salesforce purchased the BI market leader when they acquired Tableau in 2019. That has lead to…

Julio Lozano Senior Software Engineer People are really nice here at fusionSpan. They're always eager to help and everyone is very supportive. I love how all the team members here are really open and inclusive. I feel like I know everyone here, even though we…

Have you ever found yourself trying to figure out how to create a flow, update a page layout, or create a complex formula field, and you can’t get it to work? I sure have. One of the things that I am constantly reminded of working…

Salesforce is constantly releasing new features and updates to their platform. The Spring ’22 Release is no different, with a ton of new features to help users be more productive and effective. In this blog post, we’ll highlight some of the most important changes and…

Alexander Lord Senior Consultant, Delivery The company is only as good as its people and fusionSpan has some AMAZING people. Definitely the most talented and competent crew I’ve ever worked with. And that’s easily what I’ve enjoyed the most. Once a month, fusionSpan will share…

This blog was originally published on June 7, 2018. So you’re just getting started with Salesforce, a powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that offers users a great deal of functionality, and unlimited possibilities! Or, maybe you are using Association Management Solutions (AMS) powered by…

Beginning February 1, 2022, Salesforce will require customers to enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) in order to access Salesforce products. In our opinion, this is a good move by Salesforce. We always recommend our clients to enable MFA on any and all of their IT systems…

Chelsea Ashe Project Manager, Delivery Everyone here has some kind of unique knowledge set and they are always eager to help if you are having an issue. I enjoy working with motivated teammates with a passion for problem solving! Once a month, fusionSpan will share…

Aoife Cashin Senior Business Analyst The highlight of my day is always being able to present a functionality to our customers that is going to improve their day-to-day operations! Once a month, fusionSpan will share the talent and hard work of the people that we…

Best Of Breed Infrastructure Most organizations today deploy a “best-of-breed” infrastructure, meaning that they use the best software that solves a specific business problem really well. These systems typically aim to include member management, payment gateways, event registration and more all in one platform. While…

Sanket Khare Web Technologies Manager I feel as if putting one's thinking into a machine and making things easier and better for mankind is one of the boons that technological advancement has given us Once a month, fusionSpan will share the talent and hard work…

Automated Journeys are a key capability of marketing automation tools for associations. These journeys can be thought of as a detailed map showing the experience a customer or member will have with your organization. One of the primary reasons for moving to a new tool…

As an Association or nonprofit, you likely rely heavily upon your members paying by Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, and Discover for membership dues, certifications, event registration, and more. Now, imagine what would happen to your organization if you couldn’t accept credit card payments for any period…

The technology ecosystem has grown significantly since I started my career. There are stunning examples of what we can do with data and the right tools. Online meetings can now be captioned in real time for better accessibility. 3D printing, a data-hungry tech, is being…

Many association professionals are undoubtedly aware of the membership life cycle of Awareness, Recruitment, Engagement, Renewal, and Reinstatement. The concept can be pushed further since your relationship with members does not look the same year after year, instead, it evolves. Thinking about the membership life…

You are live, have gone through the go live challenges, and have worked on the other phases whereby the implementation project can be closed. What now? Here are a few items to consider: Expand Training Spend time developing training materials, and put a system in…

Haoyue Zhang fusionSpan Data Analyst The technology industry is improving the way we live and work which makes me feel excited and satisfied. Once a month, fusionSpan will share the talent and hard work of the people that we call our team. From delivery, consulting,…

Valentine’s Day was last week, and at the invitation of my friends here at fusionSpan, I’m popping in to share a few thoughts about my one true love – data! I Love that We Are (Finally) Moving Past Just Talking about Data The past 12…

TIBCO Cloud Integration, formerly known as TIBCO Scribe Online, is a cloud-based data integration tool that helps businesses sync data between two existing applications. TIBCO Cloud Integration has a wide variety of connectors, allowing it to extract data from HubSpot, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Amazon Redshift,…

Dan FitzGerald fusionSpan Software Engineer I think my favorite part of work might be that we get to work with so many different technologies. From all of the Salesforce related technologies (Visualforce, Apex, SOQL, Javascript) to the DevOps tools we use to backup and deploy…

NetForum Enterprise is a feature-rich association management system (AMS), but most associations will inevitably find themselves needing to customize. That’s fine – NetForum allows customizations. The challenge comes in down the road when you’re looking to upgrade and the customization does not support new functionality…

As we close 2020 and move into 2021, association leaders may be looking for ways to increase their organizational efficiencies – a kind of new year’s resolution. Association leaders should resolve to review how technology supports the organization’s processes. Unfortunately, many organizations delay examining their…

Forms are very common features on association websites to collect information from visitors, regardless of if they are members or not. The information gathered on forms can help turn anonymous visitors into identified prospects. For example, when a visitor provides an email address in the…

With the discovery stage complete, you and your staff let out a sigh of relief. The team is happy the implementation is moving along, and members are eagerly anticipating all of the features they expect the new AMS will bring to make their lives easier.…

Rachel Sigler Project Manager for fusionSpan’s Professional Services department. What I enjoy most about my current position is just helping clients and seeing the difference we make for them - it doesn't have to be the biggest project to make an impact Once a month,…

By this stage of Your AMS Journey, you have made all the crucial decisions regarding choosing a new product and implementation partner. With your platform and partner selected, now it is time to roll up your sleeves and get to work. To begin, you will…

As an association in an increasingly digital world, providing value to members through online-content is essential. However, it can be difficult to determine whether or not that value is truly being delivered without knowing how users are interacting with the content on your website. By…

In today’s age of social media and digital transformation, email is often overlooked as a marketing tool to effectively use to reach members. Email campaigns are an inexpensive option for associations to reach a large group of members and are even still relied upon as…

As an organization that specializes in AMS support and implementation, we typically step in after the selection of an Association Management System has already been made by your organization. Our first step is to ask the AMS partner or association for their Request For Proposal,…

Welcome to Your AMS Journey: Selection to Adoption, a blog series presented by fusionSpan. Throughout our work providing consulting, implementation, and support services to non-profits and associations, we have seen our share of successes and challenges that the entire selection and implementation process involves when…

In our latest Non-Profit Tech Podcast, fusionSpan’s Justin Burniske talks content creation with Hilary Marsh, Chief Strategist of the Content Company and returning guest Elizabeth Weaver Engel, Chief Strategist of Spark Consulting, LLC. Associations are content machines, and we are all looking for ways to…

What are Einstein Bots? Whether you know it or not, chances are you have encountered a chatbot while using the internet. Many chatbots can be found immediately when visiting a website, as they exist to greet the visitor and help guide them. Chatbots are designed…

Himali Shah Salesforce Solution Architect Growing up, I asked a lot of questions and used to get in trouble for it. Here, it is encouraged and part of my job - that’s cool. If you have ever been in the fusionSpan office, you have probably…

Salesforce solutions and WordPress are two of the most widely used platforms globally, and that is certainly true for membership-based organizations. The ability to create a seamless, personalized experience across both platforms requires a type of integration commonly referred to as Single Sign-On (SSO). For…

Managing email communication with your association’s members includes more than the marketing emails that are sent to advertise events or share information. A key part of email communication is transactional emails (also called Operational Emails), which many organizations leverage to provide members key information. These…

Summer means more than vacations and cookouts in the Salesforce world. After being delayed due to COVID-19, the annual Salesforce Summer ’20 Release update will deploy to all production environments by July 20, 2020. This release offers a number of new features and changes, which…

Your staff just went through an intensive User Acceptance Testing (UAT) process, and the shiny new website looks and performs as expected. You give the go ahead to the vendor to launch the site, and in most cases it is also the last time anyone…

Apache Superset is an open source, enterprise-ready Business Intelligence (BI) tool for building dashboards. It was developed by Airbnb with the philosophy that “data access should be democratized to empower every employee in order to make data informed decisions”. Superset users are able to connect…

In this podcast fusionSpan’s Justin Burniske discusses work from home benefits with Rebecca Achurch from Achurch Consulting, as well as what changes could come from this period of unplanned remote work. Rebecca also discusses protocols and guidelines companies can use to help set the company…

Last month I celebrated my one-year anniversary at fusionSpan as a Digital Strategy Business Analyst, which resulted in a plethora of celebratory emojis on the company’s internal Slack channel. (For anyone with Slack, I highly recommend the Party Parrot emojis!). My job is to help…

While working remotely was a sudden adjustment for many, organizations have been able to make teleworking the new normal and catch their breath. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic might have accelerated remote teams by years! As each business adjusts procedures and processes to ensure productivity…

As many organizations are striving to make teleworking as normal as possible, there is a large focus on the implementation of new tools and software. Most team members are fully remote and on their own wireless network, making a VPN a must-have. What is VPN?…

2018 has come and gone, and we have a lot to celebrate! Over the past year at fusionSpan, we’ve continued to grow as a company.  From mobile apps to Salesforce applications, we are proud to partner with some amazing associations and non-profits to build better…

fusionSpan kicked off last week at the Annual ASAE Technology Conference. As our team has continued to grow we have looked for more ways to engage and give back to the association community, and ASAE Tech is a great example. Not only did we have…

Following the Complicated Integrations Made Easy with Zapier – Part 1 article, we will now look at how we can leverage Zapier to easily build an integration with no actual coding. There are hundreds of Zapier connectors that we can use to integrate various systems together.…

One of the biggest challenges with association management system (AMS) implementations is that organizations often confuse processes in their old system with their business requirements. When this happens, organizations request customizations to make the new system function like the old system. [Read one of our…

We’ve all gone through change —sometimes good, sometimes bad—but worst of all is the unknown. The transition of your Salesforce organization from Salesforce Classic to Lightning Experience (LEX) can seem like a daunting change with a lot of unknown, but there’s a lot to be…

First, let me point out that I am a millennial. Second, these tips don’t only apply to millennials. Technology tools overwhelm the workplace, but no one discusses how to actually use the tools. I’m not even talking about the more complex CRM or ERP tools,…

One of the most common questions we get from associations is how to integrate various applications and IT systems. Through integrations, you can copy data from one application to another, or event in one system can trigger an action in another. There are a few…

There are a number of different implementations for Single Sign-On (SSO). SSO is generally approached in one of two ways – The first is a browser-side implementation which usually involves an integration that redirects the user to an Identity Provider’s login page (Identity Provider is…

Todd M. Tolbert, the Chief Administrative Officer at the Internet Society, joins us in this episode of Non-Profit Tech Podcast, hosted by fusionSpan’s Justin Burniske. The conversation touched on a range of topics around data including the differences between data privacy and data protection, common…

Last week fusionSpan was at Community Brand‘s User Conference – Xperience18! Five days packed with lots of learning, sharing and connecting. Here are a few highlights! fusionSpan was networking We had a booth. Community Brands has compiled quite a cornucopia of products, which in turn meant…

netFORUM Enterprise is a feature-rich system out of the box. But if your organization selected netFORUM Enterprise, they also likely selected it for the flexibility allowed through customizations. Being able to customize means you’re not dependent on a vendor’s roadmap to get the features your…

By now, you may have heard about the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that is rattling companies from technology titans like Facebook to small businesses with a website. In short, the GDPR is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and…

“Did I lose my special treat?” A frequent question from my son. We’ve created a system in our home where if he behaves, he gets a “special treat” after dinner – usually in the form of 22 minutes of TV. While there are some issues…

As a web design company, one of the first things we’ve had to tackle is the website navigation (also called the site information architecture or Sitemap). The site navigation often drives the entire website project and its content, so it is important to determine the…

Underutilize technology and it will rust away… As part of an office redesign, an organization I used to work at installed all new screens in the conference rooms. They also installed two large touch screen projectors that allowed for an “interactive” presentation. Instead of sitting…

“OMG – what is that smell?” Nothing seems to bring a company to its knees like a terrible smell in the office refrigerator. Within minutes the company wide chat/email gets flooded with demands for people to take personal responsibility, denial of any wrongdoing, and a…

fusionSpan was at AMSFest, put on by Teri Carden, founder of ReviewMyAMS.com. It’s an intimate event where association professionals can get an up-close look at a bunch of different AMS (association management systems) vendors all in one place. They also can talk with industry partners…