June 2021

Complimentary Inventures Consulting Services

Inventures would like to disprove the old idiom, "You don't get something for nothing" by offering select consulting services to qualified associations, alliance, consortiums, and societies at no cost.

New Inventures AQ: Accelerate Quality

A lot of alliances and associations measure activities as a sign of success and progress. The number of development of specifications, certified products, meetings, cash on hand, website analytics or the number of members. A few more conduct member satisfaction surveys. While these areas are certainly important, another opportunity often exists and is often left unexamined: how well is leadership and staff aligned?

Inventures Adds Three Industry Communities to its Client Roster

Inventures welcomes the addition of three new industry communities to its client roster representing the RFID, packaging and lumber trade industries. The new clients include DoseID, Industrial Packaging Alliance of North America, and the West Coast Lumber & Building Material Association with Inventures providing a range of services including strategic management and business operations services.

Client News – Mopria Survey Shows that Employees are Bombarded with Distractions

A new survey conducted by Mopria® Alliance, a global non-profit organization providing universal standards and solutions for print and scan, shows that employees experience an average of 77 distractions per week or roughly one distraction every 31 minutes. For most workers, these distractions negatively impact work and productivity and increase stress, regardless of whether they are working from home or at their office.

Working Across Time Zones: A Return to Normal?

Summer is upon us and schedules can become more challenging with shifts in school schedules and hopeful vacations. This is true for all of us, as well as our colleagues and clients around the globe who wrangle with time zone and meeting management. As the world starts to see light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel and we begin to plan for face-to-face meetings, here are some lessons learned and best practices for time zone and meeting management.

Complimentary Inventures Consulting Services

Inventures would like to disprove the old idiom, "You don't get something for nothing" by offering select consulting services to qualified associations, alliance, consortiums, and societies at no cost.

Why free you ask? We realize that many organizations may be hesitant to contract with a professional services company that they have no direct experience with, despite the potential benefits that the consulting could provide. Therefore, providing a few services at no cost enables a volunteer-based organization the opportunity to get to know our team and for us to demonstrate the value. Inventures has a best practices knowledgebase built by almost 30 years of alliance and association management experience.

Inventures offers basic versions of the following services at no cost for new clients including:

• Governance & Operations Assessment – Discuss any perceived problem areas and potential solutions to help the organization run more efficiently and effectively to benefit all members.
• Organizational Lifecycle Evaluation – Helps an organization determine where it is in in its lifecycle with respect to achieving the defined mission and helps assess whether any adjustments are required.
• Strategic Planning – Guides the creation of a new or evaluation of an existing long-term roadmap for an organization.
• Marketing & Communications Audit – Evaluates the effectiveness of an organization’s marketing and communications efforts externally and internally with its members.
• Social Media Audit – Assesses the effectiveness of the use of social media by an organization and provides recommendations for alternative platforms, and development of a content strategy.
• Collaboration Formation – Consultation on creating a multi-stakeholder collaboration to jointly develop and advance industry specifications or a topic study.
• Inventures AQ – Our new operational measurement program for organizations that reveals how well an organization is running and helps identify operational or organizational issues and create change to amplify success.
• Website Audit – Assesses how well an organization’s website communicates its brand, value proposition, activities, and the membership benefits and joining process.
• Certification Program Assessment –Review of solution/product certification or compliance programs and provide any recommendations for improvement.

To learn more about Inventures and our no-cost, introductory consulting services, please contact us and indicate the service you are interested in. One of our experienced team members will contact you to better understand your organization’s goals and needs.

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New Inventures AQ: Accelerate Quality

A lot of alliances and associations measure activities as a sign of success and progress. The number of development of specifications, certified products, meetings, cash on hand, website analytics or the number of members. A few more conduct member satisfaction surveys.

While these areas are certainly important, another opportunity often exists and is often left unexamined: how well is leadership and staff aligned?

Inventures now offers our full-service client’s leadership team an opportunity to look at themselves and identify any operational issues and amplify success. This new measurement program, Inventures AQ, enables alliance and association leaders to have regular, meaningful, and focused conversations about priorities, progress, and opportunities for improvement.

The program was modeled after the SmithBucklin AXP program carefully developed by our parent company. Inventures AQ was then customized for voluntary standards setting organizations so that they can run at peak efficiency.

Inventures AQ looks at three areas: Organizational Health,Mission Impact and Member Engagement. The program gathers input from our client leadership team, including individuals serving on the Board of Directors, committee and working group leaders, outside executives and staff. An online interview is conducted among participants to identify opinions on these areas.

The yearlong program is designed provide a report on program findings and opportunities for change. Each client’s leadership discusses the program findings and determines the need for an action plan to take advantage of the opportunities presented. Any changes made as a result from the action plan are evaluated again mid-year, providing feedback on if the changes are working or if a course correction is needed.

If your organization is looking for a better way to operate, Inventures AQ may be just the program you need to maximize your organization. Email us if you’d like to learn more about the Inventures AQ program.

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Inventures Adds Three Industry Communities to its Client Roster

Inventures welcomes the addition of three new industry communities to its client roster representing the RFID, packaging and lumber trade industries. The new clients include DoseID, Industrial Packaging Alliance of North America, and the West Coast Lumber & Building Material Association with Inventures providing a range of services including strategic management and business operations services.

"We're delighted to welcome three new clients into the Inventures fold – each of these organizations is unique, interesting, and well positioned for continued success," said David Schmahl, president of Inventures. "It's particularly important for us to understand our clients’ goals and we welcome the opportunity to collaborate with each of them so that they, in turn, can to achieve their missions and deliver the greatest value to their members."

About the Industry Communities
DoseID is a self-governing consortium established to unify the industry around an approach to serialized, RFID-tagged pharmaceutical products. Its goal is to ensure the quality, performance, and interoperability of RFID tagged drug products as they move through the supply chain from the manufacturer, through the distributor, to the hospital and eventually into the patient, across any and all hardware or software systems.

Industrial Packaging Alliance of North America (IPANA) is the primary association representing the interests of manufacturers of new industrial packaging and their suppliers in North America. Its goals include raising the visibility of industrial packaging and emphasizing its importance in the safe and reliable transport of goods throughout North America and the world. Its formation is a leap forward for manufacturers and suppliers interested in establishing a formidable resource to advance the industrial packaging industry, promote technological developments that improve product safety and reliability, and assure that domestic and international regulations are reasonable and necessary.

West Coast Lumber & Building Material Association (WCLBMA) is a non-profit trade organization representing independent lumber and building materials dealers for more than 100 years. WCLBMA is the voice of this industry with expert lobbying and government affairs services in California, Nevada and at the federal government level. The organization provides legislative and regulatory representation, education and training programs, professional development, communications and industry information, benefit programs, and industry networking and social events.

More information about Inventures’ full suite of association, alliance and collaboration management services can be found at https://www.inventures.com/Services.

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Client News – Mopria Survey Shows that Employees are Bombarded with Distractions

A new survey conducted by Mopria® Alliance, a global non-profit organization providing universal standards and solutions for print and scan, shows that employees experience an average of 77 distractions per week or roughly one distraction every 31 minutes. For most workers, these distractions negatively impact work and productivity and increase stress, regardless of whether they are working from home or at their office.

Overall, Mopria's workplace distractions survey found that the top distractions that both work-from-home and in-office employees face are personal communications such as text or chat, checking personal email or surfing the web, and unplanned conversations. The population most affected by these distractions are working parents living with children at home. The survey found that working parents face a distraction every 25 minutes during their workday, which is 37% more than their non-parental peers. Specifically, parents that work from home face about 10% more distractions than in-office parents and nearly 50% more distractions than non-parents who are working from home.

Read more details on the Mopria survey findings in their press release, survey results and on the Mopria blog.

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Working Across Time Zones: A Return to Normal?

Summer is upon us and schedules can become more challenging with shifts in school schedules and hopeful vacations. This is true for all of us, as well as our colleagues and clients around the globe who wrangle with time zone and meeting management. Scheduling a meeting at 8 pm may be fine with you, but your family may have less patience. As the world starts to see light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel and we begin to plan for face-to-face meetings, here are some lessons learned and best practices for time zone and meeting management.

• Use a time zone converter to eliminate the guesswork for scheduling. is a good example used for identifying awake-time in up to four cities (more options for a fee).
• Identify where people are located and don’t make assumptions. Just because your office is in one city doesn’t mean everyone else is in the same time zone. Make sure to ask where everyone is physically located, or at least identify a time zone, and be sure to share your information, too.
• Identify any roadblocks for scheduling meetings, such as national holidays in countries. This makes planning meetings easier for everyone. Some holidays fluctuate each year so it’s best to check a resource like Time and Date before proposing meeting dates.
• When traveling, be sure to let everyone you left behind know where you’re going and for how long. This helps everyone manage expectations on response time and helps you avoid getting caught on a 2 am call.

We’re sharing some of our best practices and there are many online resources offering additional planning strategies. Just remember research and communication is key and avoids scheduling hardships for everyone. So when thinking about dusting off that suitcase or working with challenging schedules, come back to basics. And, don’t forget to set your alarm.

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