The End of Data Entry
Liberate Your Organization through
Automation and Integration
Technology in the Arts Conference
October 10, 2008

What we’ll talk about
• Custom software
• Systems integration
• Outsourcing data entry (for free)
• Case study: Fractured Atlas’s fiscal
sponsorship program
• (No ERP, sorry)

But first… Nice to meet you!
• Fractured Atlas
• Adam Forest Huttler
• Arwen Lowbridge
• Who are you?

Two kinds of software
vs. ?

Custom software is…
• Written for a specific “customer”
• Developed in-house or by contractors
• Designed to specifications
• Majority of software written
• More prevalent with the rise of web apps

The Good Stuff
(Custom software rulz! Off-the-shelf drools!)
• Designed around natural business
processes and workflow
• Everything’s integrated
• Easy to make changes
• Security (maybe)
• Total cost of ownership
• Shrink-wrapped alternative may not exist

Here Be Dragons!
(That’s geek-speak for BE CAREFUL)
• Up-front costs can be substantial
• No such thing as a finished product
• Need internal capacity & competence
• Security (maybe)
• High risk, high reward

So how do you prevent
boondoggles and maximize the
likelihood of success?

Guidelines for Success
in Custom Software
• Know what you want to build and invest in
upfront design that involves the end users
• Build modular components and minimize
dependencies
• Practice iterative development
• Save time for testing and bug fixes (more than
you think you’ll need)
• If your needs really are the same as everyone
else’s, buy the shrink-wrapped version

“We’ll build the plane while we fly it!”
- Anonymous client

Guidelines for Success
in Custom Software
• Know what you want to build and invest in
upfront design that involves the end users
• Build modular components and minimize
dependencies
• Practice iterative development
• Save time for testing and bug fixes (more than
you think you’ll need)
• If your needs really are the same as everyone
else’s, buy the shrink-wrapped version

Guidelines for Success
in Custom Software
• Know what you want to build and invest in
upfront design that involves the end users
• Build modular components and minimize
dependencies
• Practice iterative development
• Save time for testing and bug fixes (more than
you think you’ll need)
• If your needs really are the same as everyone
else’s, buy the shrink-wrapped version

Let your software evolve, because
if you try to do everything at once…

End-users also like
incremental change

Guidelines for Success
in Custom Software
• Know what you want to build and invest in
upfront design that involves the end users
• Build modular components and minimize
dependencies
• Practice iterative development
• Save time for testing and bug fixes (more
than you think you’ll need)
• If your needs really are the same as everyone
else’s, buy the shrink-wrapped version

Guidelines for Success
in Custom Software
• Know what you want to build and invest in
upfront design that involves the end users
• Build modular components and minimize
dependencies
• Practice iterative development
• Save time for testing and bug fixes (more than
you think you’ll need)
• If your needs really are the same as everyone
else’s, buy the shrink-wrapped version

Cost to purchase Microsoft Office:
$399.95
Cost to build a new office suite from scratch:
$??,???,???

But what about legacy software
or outside systems?
Redundant data storage
Manual processing/messaging
Inconsistent data
General misery

Systems Integration
a.k.a. Enterprise Application Integration
Getting different programs to share
information and/or trade instructions
even when they don’t know anything
about each other

Two ways to approach this
• Source code modification
– Only works with open source software
– Can sabotage upgrade path and complicate
maintenance
• Application Programming Interface (API)
– Published protocol for communicating with a
software application
– Most modern software has some kind of
externally accessible API

What non-geeks without giant IT
budgets should know about APIs
• Plugins
– Open source software often provides “hooks”
– Override/add functionality without modifying
core source code
• Web services
– Mechanism for exchanging structured data
over the web

Example of a Plugin
• Fractured Atlas website needs a blog
• Our blog is nothing special
• Install Wordpress and call it a day
• PROBLEM: Wordpress expects to use its
own user account system
• SOLUTION: write a plugin for Wordpress
that makes it use existing user database

Web services, on the other hand…
• Exchange data between remote systems
• Traditional data format is XML, but other
formats are emerging
• Examples:
– RSS/Atom syndication (simplest form)
– Weather data
– UPS/FedEX tracking

Getting Web Data
into Quickbooks
• Fiscal sponsorship transactions have
financial implications
• Custom software lives on the web server
– Hosted in Michigan data center
– Runs Linux operating system
– Software written in PHP
• Accounting data lives in QuickBooks
– QuickBooks server is in New York office
– QuickBooks only runs on Windows
– Server not web-accessible (security)

QBWC and qbXML
• QuickBooks can be made to act as a web
service client to periodically request data
from a remote web service
• qbXML is the structured data format
specified by Intuit for this communication

Example of qbXML
<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>
<?qbxml version=\"7.0\"?>
<QBXML>
<QBXMLMsgsRq onError=\"stopOnErrror\">
<CustomerAddRq>
<CustomerAdd>
<Name >John Q. Public</Name>
<IsActive >1</IsActive>
<CompanyName >Acme Manufacturing, Inc.</CompanyName>
<Salutation >Mr.</Salutation>
<FirstName >John</FirstName>
<MiddleName >Q.</MiddleName>
<LastName >Public</LastName>
<BillAddress>
<Addr1 >1 Main Street</Addr1>
<City >Anytown</City>
<State >KS</State>
<PostalCode >12345</PostalCode>
</BillAddress>
</CustomerAdd>
</CustomerAddRq>
</QBXMLMsgRq>
</QBXML>

Near real-time synchronization
• New fiscal sponsorship transactions are
queued for import in QuickBooks
• QuickBooks server in Fractured Atlas
office contacts the web server every 20
minutes to exchange data
• New transactions/entities are imported
– New donors added as QB customers
– Donations queued for deposit
– Fund release checks ready to print

We still haven’t eliminated data
entry altogether, though…
• Data creation occurs as a natural
consequence of doing business
• Not all of it naturally happens via
software (e.g., offline sales)
• How do we process “offline” data without
dedicating human resources?

Outsource it to your
customers and vendors!
• Co-participants in the data events
• They’re doing the data entry anyway
• Design processes so that you share in the
fruits of their labor
– Push transactions to your website
– Create incentives to use your systems

Donation Reporting: The Old Way
1. Member records donations on paper form
(20 minutes for batch of 10)
2. Member mails form with checks to FA office
(5 minutes)
3. FA staff records donations in database
(20 minutes for batch of 10)
4. FA staff deposits donation checks
(5 minutes)

Donation Reporting: The New Way
1. Member records donations in online form
(20 minutes for batch of 10)
2. Member mails only checks to FA office
(5 minutes)
3. FA staff confirms donations upon receipt
(1 minute for batch of 10)
4. FA staff deposits donation checks
(5 minutes)

Donation Reporting: The New Way
• Big deal… saves 2 minutes per donation
• But… Fractured Atlas receives over
10,000 donations per year
• 2 minutes x 10,000 = 333 hours
• That’s 7 hours each week that the
employee now has free for HUMAN work

Where to begin?
• Start small
• Focus on low-hanging fruit
• Conduct cost-benefit analysis and
persuade your funders to invest in
infrastructure