Thursday 16th May 2024

European Conference

28th-30th October in Holland Utrecht maybe?
David: I’ve seen something on LinkedIn about a US conference in September.

Best Practices

There still seem to be mixed views from Momentus about whether this is possible.
Alex: DC has very specific best practices - so it can definitely be done.
Sam: How do people record their best practices? We just use word documents.
Theresa: I’ve tried Tango which uses AI to automatically write docs/guides - it’s awesome but the licensing is a bit pricey. End users need licences too - the software has a “guide me” feature which will automatically launch the software and walk you through the process.
Louise: Do you find people use the guides? I can write as many as I like but nobody actually uses them.

Licensing

Sam: We have some express users only logging in once or twice a week. We’re looking at automating some reporting etc. We’re finding that everything new is only available for pro, so we have to give everyone pro licences.
David: This is our biggest problem with SaaS (we haven’t moved yet).
David: We’ve used scheduled reports for some people so we don’t have to give them a licence.
Sally: We’re going to use SendGrid, Momentus suggested we use this.
Theresa: We use SSO but have a generic account that about 10 people can log in to. A number of others have had to resort to this for rotating staff too. In Belfast Momentus agreed they will sell licences singularly, but they actually insist on selling blocks of 5. I think the express licences are 10x(ish) cheaper than pro.
Theresa: Do any of you have partners that have licences and do you charge them?
David: Yes, we’ve given them a limited number and if they want more they can pay.
James: We provide licences for ours too.
Louise (Access) + Jo (Sage): We use separate finance systems with integrations.
Louise + David: We use Access as a HR system.
Alex: We used to.
Theresa: We’ve just moved to Frankli.
Jo: We’re looking at something called Element Suite Lite.
Jane: We’re using the report scheduler to send function sheets (to avoid needing licenses for everyone).
Jane: We have a one-way integration into Mono our finance system. It took a lot longer to implement but it does work well. We run a monthly P&L rec.

Registration Challenges

Jane: We have exhibition and registration. We find the exhibition stuff great but not the registration side.
Lee: There aren’t many using registration. There used to be half a dozen but they’ve all moved off. We still work with one European customer who use it.
Lee: I’ll get my team to reach out and see if they’ve experienced any similar issues.
Helena: We use a ticketing system - Fango.
Jo: We use Fango for some events too.
David: We use something called Red61. During the Edinburgh festival, we rent our space to a big organiser who uses that system. We’ve also used Event Brite for some small events.
Jane: We have 2 types of events. Our trade shows - we have to vet all the guests (approve/reject).

Momentus Steering Committee

Does anyone want to volunteer to help arrange the meetings as it’s quite admin heavy. Managing the mailing list etc.
Lee: Maybe we can try using Meetup.com
Lee: I think Doodle works well for collectively agreeing dates.
Jo: Potentially multiple venues could offer different dates in the future. Maybe Yammer? Or Teams? Event format might need to be changed. Do we always want Momentus here? Maybe only once a year etc. Maybe we just get them to dial in with someone specific with a specific issue. We could give them the topics and the timeframe.
Sarah: Maybe we should block out some more time for workshops/smaller breakouts etc.

Reporting

Anyone using Power BI?
Sam: Yes but not with Momentus.
Sarah + Jo: Starting to dabble not with Momentus.
David: Using PowerQuery in Excel. Have to export the view from Ungerboeck then use that for the report.

Friday 17th May 2024

Momentus Presentation

• Ungerboeck family are still involved.
• Momentus are still going through a lot of changes, trying to be transparent.
• Not a start-up, but starting to do things differently.
• Had to put a lot of processes in place as Momentus had such a mix of contracts (ancient or non-existent with certain customers).
• Mostly everyone on the leadership team are new. They bring a lot of experience from previous software companies.
• Conference: Illuminate 2024- 28th - 30th October. Jaarbeurs - Utrecht. This will cover Priava and VenueOps too.
• Ungerboeck the product is now called Enterprise.
• Elite & Prime are our VenueOps product.
• We still have a lot of Pirava customers who we’d love to eventually move to Elite.
• WeTrack is our risk management and sustainability product.
• Momentus moving from a modular pricing to a package price. Customers may end up getting some extra modules/products for free as a result of this.

David: This can be challenging as we don’t know what we’ve got and when discussing with other customers we may have different things to them etc.
Momentus: We will no longer sell individual items like we used to. You can turn on whatever you wish.
Lee: Are you saying everyone will get everything?
Momentus: Not yet.
Eventually when we move everyone over to the new model. Today we look at the market segment + sq footage or how many seats etc to determine the tier and price.
David: If the package/module approach is changing - the release notes should change to make it clear whether you are getting each module (e.g. Outlook Add-in).
David: What’s the plan going forward? We’ve had 3 double-digit increases in the past 3 years and our finance team is almost ready to bin it. Do you think it’s undervalued? Will this continue?
Momentus: Yes, it is/was undervalued - the price you’re all getting is definitely less than new customers. But we will not be continuing to increase double digits. We will sell you a single licence if you want it.
Sarah: What is the aim/vision of Momentus?
Momentus: We are trying to come up with solutions that meet a lot of needs and tap into new markets, but our focus remains on our core product. We are trying to grow, but will slow down a bit to make sure we’ve got our house/products/release strategy etc in order.
Mark: We’d like to have someone from the product team here in future to dive into the roadmap and what’s coming.
Momentus:

Roadmap

• UX Modernisation
• Innovation in risk management and sustainability
• Platform improvements - extensibility and APIs

Lee: We used to use the Ungerboeck product for a lot of internal stuff. Which I was quite impressed by. It’s great for financials, CRM etc. But it doesn’t quite work/fit for a software company.
Momentus: We’re roughly planning 1 release per quarter for the rest of the year.
Lee: Can you share information about automated testing? How much you do and if you’re focussing on it (to try and improve release quality).
Lee: Is there any way we can tackle the challenge with many of us in the group who have been using the software significantly longer than the support team.
Momentus: Not really.
Alex: SLAs?
Momentus: No plan.

Momentus Roundtable

Mark: Any plans for a BI gateway/module? How are they proposing to connect Power BI.
Momentus: One of the PMs on my team is entirely focussed on reporting and analytics. He’s looking at how we can handle this both when there is a replica and when there is not. He is looking to talk to customers who are willing to have a conversation.
Mark: Process for new API functionality? Need to update journal entries and current API doesn’t provide required functionality.
Momentus: Through CSM or support channels. We will definitely research and prioritise. We won’t be changing any v1 API’s? But let’s discuss with regard to the more modern API’s.

Integration Hub/API’s

Momentus:

• There are four of us in the product management team based in London. We’d love to meet you all.
• Momentus connect. Platform providing connectors, API’s and integrations. Developer portal and integration hub.
• We are working on this to try and address problems we see customers facing.
  • The API’s have been too difficult to use in some cases.
  • Knowing which integrations are available.
  • Not enough integrations.
• Goal is to:
  • Improve developer experience.
  • Boost innovation.
• Enterprise v2 API - You won’t need to make 14 calls to get events for example. Single call to get all the information you need.
• Elite API - Reach out if you are interested in being part of the beta of these new APIs.
• Standard integrations coming in 2024 (June - Outlook).
• Connector and workflow builder planned.
• Outlook calendar integration - 2-way sync.
• Initially you can log in to Momentus connect through Enterprise or Elite. Eventually they’ll be a public facing/separate portal for developers.

Additional Discussion with Momentus

Momentus: Having renewal and contract conversations every year is hard work. So we’re looking at 3 + 5yr agreements which will reduce the percentage increases.
Sarah: What’s the plan with support (like service packs or CSMs or enhanced support etc).
Momentus: We’ve done away with all of that. There is no discount for pre-purchasing hours. 20 hours is a minimum, then increments of 20?
Theresa: Would you have a dedicated point of contact for projects?
Momentus: Let us check on that. In an ideal world yes.
Sarah: Are all of your UK customers aware of the user group?
Momentus: Yes. Jane for example someone knew who we passed on.
Alex: Will the conferences be more aligned in Europe with the US in future, or will the US one continue to be “grander” with better opportunities.
Momentus: A bit unknown, but now that the staff are global (e.g. product managers in London and everywhere) it should be more aligned.
Lee: It’d be great if the conference focusses more on roundtables/birds of a feather type sessions and less presentations. We hope we’ll get mostly customer presentations, not Momentus presentations.
David: Got rid of the exams/certifications?
Momentus: Don’t know what the plans are with the education team - I’ll find out.
David: It’d be good to understand cost. In the past if you had CSM you got that included etc.
Momentus: We have a separate SKU for that.
Sarah: We’re trying to do forecasting based on the data in Ungerboeck (e.g. a tech show will have more telecoms spend and a food show more F&B spend)
Lee: Could you open up the KB a bit more so we can all contribute?