Friends of MSCR Golf Outing

June 14, 2023

For Immediate Release

Contact: Nicole Graper at ngraper@madison.k12.wi.us or 608-204-3017, or Mary Roth at mcrowley@madison.k12.wi.us or 608-204-3036

Friends of MSCR Golf Outing
Enjoy a fun day of golf and games while supporting a good cause!

Friends of MSCR is holding the 19^th annual Fore Friends Golf Outing on Wednesday, July 19, at the Oaks Golf Course, 4740 Pierceville Rd, Cottage Grove. Sponsors are needed for this valuable event, please go to birdease.com/mscr to get involved.

Enjoy 18 holes in this fun golf event – no need to be a pro. Network with community and business leaders and experience The Oaks Golf Course! Check in begins at 9:30 am and with lunch. A dinner, auction and awards program follow golf at 4:15 pm. Registration includes lunch, greens fees, golf cart, dinner and a golfer gift.  

Since 2003, Friends of MSCR has gifted more than $530,000 to MSCR. These funds support afterschool clubs, new equipment, new program initiatives, fee assistance and professional development.

The Friends of Madison School & Community Recreation (MSCR) is a non-profit organization that values MSCR as a vital community resource. Since 1926, MSCR has been Madison’s community based public recreation department. Friends of MSCR support public recreation as an approach to enrich the lives of individuals and the community.

Go to mscr.org or call 608-204-3045 for information on golfing or sponsoring the event. Learn more at mscr.org/get-involved/friends-of-mscr/fore-friends-golf-outing

MSCR is Madison’s public recreation department offering a wide range of recreation programs for all ages.

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The American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact Entrepreneurs Fellowship Application

The American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact Fellowship for female entrepreneurs of color.

The Fellowship runs from July 10, 2023 through June 30, 2024.

This fellowship is dedicated to supporting early and emerging companies led by remarkable women of color who are preparing for significant growth and impact. Whether their ventures lie in the realm of art, technology, or any industry vertical, this fellowship provides resources, mentorship and a supportive community to help these female entrepreneurs unlock their full potential and thrive in their respective fields. We encourage women who have been justice impacted and veterans to apply.

Please read StartingBlock Code of Conduct. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufU0cfYzsE_ehtfhorGTDKefDp_efUV1/view?usp=share_link

In order to learn more about you and your company, we’d like you to complete the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact Entrepreneurs Fellowship Application. Once we receive your application, we will be in touch to discuss next steps.

If you have questions, contact Leslie Weissburg at leslie@startingblockmadison.org.

Apply here

SuiteDynamics: Taking Business Ethics to a New Level

Not long ago, Jake Kleiner noticed a lack of honesty in the ERP world. So, he formed a company to fix it.

In 2016, SuiteDynamics founder Jake Kleiner felt aggravated. He was working with too many ERP implementation partners who couldn’t deliver quality work on time.

But one man’s failure is another man’s opportunity. So, in 2021, Jake established SuiteDynamics to provide ERP consulting based on real-world experience with business and financial systems. And he felt determined to deploy those ERPs with integrity and consideration for a company’s budget and timeline.

Essentially, Jake established a business to save others from his frustration.

“I’d love to be the first implementation partner that companies engage with, so they never have my experience,” he explains.

Identifying a Lack of Honesty in the ERP World

Before exploring ERPs, Jake had a background in management systems development, financial management, and business. He had worked as an analyst at RedPrairie Software and the Board of Trade in Chicago. And from 2016 to 2021, he served as CEO of a quilting accessory company called Paper Pieces.

While operating Paper Pieces, Jake struggled with disparate data silos, broken and unstable program integrations, and systems that simply didn’t work together. Fed up, he contracted implementation partners to deploy an ERP and fix those problems. But sadly, he discovered that not every partner is created equal.

“The quality of their work was not good,” Jake says. “We had to do a lot of it ourselves. We had to rework a lot of the ERP just across the board.”

The implementation process became a mess. And the lack of genuine partnership Jake experienced with so-called “implementation partners” rubbed against his sense of morality.

So, he figured out ERP implementation on his own. Jake drew on his knowledge of computer systems to learn the modules and coding one day at a time. He used trial and error to establish a system that fit Paper Pieces’ needs. And he chose to learn NetSuite because it was the only ERP with a native e-commerce solution.

Meeting a Need for Integrity and Financial Experience

In 2019, Jake and his wife moved from Paducah, Kentucky—the small river city where Paper Pieces was headquartered—to his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. There, he established SuiteDynamics as a business that could help deploy NetSuite ERPs with the honesty he craved during his own implementation journey.

Jake also realized his financial experience at the Chicago Board of Trade and Paper Pieces gave SuiteDynamics an edge. Many implementation partners knew NetSuite inside and out but had little to no knowledge of accounting systems. That weakness caused chaos.

“At the end of the day, NetSuite’s, above all, an accounting and finance software,” Jake explains. “And I saw a lot of development teams or third parties bolting on a customization or an integration without understanding what that would cause as far as downstream impacts on the software.”

Jake, however, understood financial systems and how they should operate. Consequently, he had more to offer than much of his competition.

So, he earned NetSuite’s ERP Administrator, Suite Foundation, and SuiteCloud certifications and opened SuiteDynamics, a registered NetSuite implementation partner. By the summer of 2021, he had completed his first ERP implementation for Autocado, an auto products company. He helped the client automate financial processes, and the company’s satisfied COO dubbed SuiteDynamics “a crucial business partner.”

From that moment, SuiteDynamics began to grow. Fast.

Cuing Exponential Growth

Jake hired his first employee, developer Derek Kalvin, in the summer of 2021. But demand for SuiteDynamics’ implementation services and financial expertise grew. And by the winter of 2022, Jake employed roughly 20 people, including CFO Grace Martin. Her background also married computer programming with financial expertise and strengthened the company’s ability to implement working NetSuite solutions.

Yet, Grace and the other staff weren’t typical software company hires. They weren’t just tech experts; they were self-starters, life-long learners, and people with strong “Midwestern values.”

“Do what you say you’re going to do to the best of your ability,” Jake says, describing the values he wants his staff to uphold. “Deliver on time. Be honest. Deliver in a quality way. Say when something isn’t possible. Make something right when it’s wrong. It all sounds so simple, but if you work enough within the partner network, you’ll quickly find how many other companies don’t meet those expectations.”

As SuiteDynamics grew, it hired more employees who could offer clients real-world experience—particularly in the financial field. And those hires have now paid off.

“We are routinely saving implementations,” Jake says. “And that’s one thing we pride ourselves on—getting people to go live.”

Becoming More Than a NetSuite Solutions Provider

Now, SuiteDynamics has become a go-to company for NetSuite financial implementations. In fact, other implementation partners are contracting its services to ensure successful deployment for their clients’ financial ERP modules.

“We liken ourselves more to partners than consultants,” Jake says. “When we’re creating solutions, we’re really thinking about the long-term impacts versus an immediate or quick fix. And so, we’re really looking, I think, long-term at the most stable and quality solutions that are possible.”

And, of course, SuiteDynamics is also making its own long-term plans, which involve the development of new software applications to enhance NetSuite Cloud ERPs.

But for now, the company is focused on hiring more experts and helping more businesses succeed.

Naviant, Inc. Partners with Reveille Software to Offer ECM Monitoring Solutions

Naviant unveils new solution to drive customers’ business agility, efficiency, and ROI

VERONA, Wis; ROSWELL, G.A. – May 24, 2023 – Naviant, Inc., a leading provider of intelligent automation solutions by Hyland and ABBYY, has announced that it has partnered with Reveille Software to offer ECM monitoring solutions. Reveille is a leading solution for managing and monitoring business-critical Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems.

Reveille’s software offerings fill the ECM monitoring and managing gap so organizations can optimize the ROI of their ECM solutions. This technology accomplishes this by providing full visibility into ECM application health, automated alert notifications, tools that analyze user activity comprehensively, and more.

As a top Hyland partner, Naviant has been named an OnBase Platinum and Diamond Support partner consistently year after year with a thriving and happy client base. “We are very excited to be working with Reveille Software and believe that this partnership will align with Naviant’s strong commitment to exceptional support and delivery for our clients,” Greg Albert, SVP of Operations at Naviant, said. “ECM monitoring technology is a strategic priority for Naviant, and we view it as an excellent complement to the Hyland and ABBYY platforms with its rich portfolio of integration and monitoring tools.”

Bob Estes, CEO of Reveille Software, said, “We are pleased to announce our partnership with Naviant, as we share the same core commitment to customer success. With our extensive out-of-the-box capabilities, we are confident that Reveille Software solutions will be extremely beneficial for Naviant clients in their digital transformation journeys.”

Since 1986, Naviant has partnered with clients to help them do more with less and reach their business goals. The partnership positions Naviant to further lead the industry-wide evolution towards intelligent hyperautomation and make an even bigger impact on digital transformations.

About Naviant

Naviant is a nationally recognized intelligent automation solutions integrator and business process consulting organization with over 35 years of experience. We help our clients do more with less by using technology to streamline processes and gain visibility into the data they need to make better decisions.

Our “process-first” approach emphasizes the importance of process improvement before implementing technology solutions such as OnBase, Brainware, the ABBYY intelligent capture platform, and Hyland RPA. We also offer flexible Managed IT Services, where our team of experts can manage, enhance, or expand our clients’ OnBase or ABBYY solutions. To learn more about Naviant, please visit Naviant.com. Process focus. Excellence.

About Reveille Software

Reveille is a leading provider of out-of-the-box monitoring for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions for business IT and MSPs. With a wake-up call to the need for comprehensive visibility into content processes, Reveille has filled the ECM monitoring gap and is trusted by hundreds of organizations worldwide. Reveille’s purpose-built software empowers teams to understand their ECM environment and avoid costly issues, ensuring critical processes keep running.

The company’s solutions are built to monitor and provide early notification for content systems, analyze user activity, and connect ECM visibility to current tools to optimize platforms and maximize productivity. Contact Reveille at https://www.reveillesoftware.com or + 1 877 897 2579 | EXT 1.

Fetch to Host Mark Cuban Foundation Artificial Intelligence Boot Camp for Madison Area High School Students

Fetch, Madison’s unicorn tech startup and the nation’s leading rewards app, will host a Mark Cuban Foundation Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bootcamp for high school students at No-Cost in the Fall of 2023. The AI Bootcamp in Madison will be targeted at underserved high school students (9^th-12^th grade) and will introduce these high school students to basic AI concepts and skills. Fetch is one of 28+ host companies selected to host camps across the US in Fall 2023.

The Fetch Bootcamp will be held over four consecutive Saturdays starting on October 14^th and ending on November 4^th. The bootcamp will run each Saturday from 1-5pm CT and if accepted, high school students must commit to attending all 4 sessions. The student and parent application are now open at markcubanai.org/fetchpr. Students do not need any prior experience with computer science, programming, or robotics to apply and attend.

With AI being a relevant topic on many news sources, students will learn what artificial intelligence is and is not, where they already interact with AI in their own lives, and the ethical implications of AI systems including but not limited to TikTok recommendations, smart home assistants, facial recognition, and self-driving cars to name a few. Participants will also learn how Large Language Models like ChatGPT are changing life as we know it by answering questions, telling original stories, and even writing computer code.

Students will benefit from volunteer corporate mentor instructors who are knowledgeable about AI, ML and data science and able to help students quickly understand material normally taught at a collegiate level. As part of the four-hour curriculum, students will work with open source tools each day to build their own AI applications related to Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Generative AI.

The Mark Cuban Foundation provides the bootcamp’s curriculum materials, trains corporate volunteer mentors, and recruits and scores applications for local student selected to attend camp. In addition, the Mark Cuban Foundation and Fetch work together to provide food, transportation, and access to laptops for students at no-cost throughout the duration of Bootcamp.

“It was a lot of fun, I learned things I didn’t even know were possible with A.I. and their real-world applications showed me just how much it will change our world.”
– Brandon B., 10th Grade, 2022 AI Bootcamp Participant

Founded by Mark Cuban in 2019, the AI Bootcamp initiative has hosted no-cost AI bootcamps for students across several US cities, including Dallas, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Atlantic City to name a few. The Mark Cuban Foundation has impacted 900+ students to date and has a goal to increase that number year over year.

Students interested in applying to the Mark Cuban Foundation AI Bootcamp should do so before Friday, September 8th, 2023 at markcubanai.org/fetchpr. To see our 2023 camp locations and to learn more about the Mark Cuban Foundation AI Bootcamps, please visit markcubanai.org/faq.