Implementing Tech: A Guide to Best Practices
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In a digital and mobile world, company leaders are tasked with discovering the right tech solutions needed to rectify disparate financial systems, revenue leakage, transparency issues and decentralized reporting. Learn from association executives who overcame these challenges through the implementation of a robust technology solution that aided in their ability to increase coordination across their organization, improve fundraising capabilities, event management and marketing tools and create better reporting processes. Learn how you too can recognize and identify the need, implement new technology and measure the end results of replacing or integrating the right technology needed to take your operations to the next level. Originally presented by Doug Fry, Director of Program Management and Implementations at Billhighway, at the 2016 FHRBOC (Finance, Human Resources, Business Operations) Conference on May 10, 2016.
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Implementing Tech: A Guide to Best Practices
- 1. Technology Best Practices The When, Why and How for Implementing Technology Solutions #TechBestPractices
- 2. THE HOUSE01 02 NEW TECHNOLOGY 03 THE STEPS 04 BEST PRACTICES #TechBestPractices Our Agenda
- 3. Think of your association as if you’re building a house #TechBestPractices FOUNDATION FRAMEWORK PLUMBING FURNISHING
- 4. Is your association considering implementing a new piece of technology to…? New Technology: Benefits of Implementation STREAMLINE Streamline operations CROSS- FUNCTIONAL Increase cross-functional visibility & efficiency AUTOMATION Automate manual processes STRATEGY Bring new programs or strategy initiatives to life 01 02 03 04 #TechBestPractices
- 5. 1. Is there a clear understanding of what the end goal is? 2. Are all impacted departments represented? 3. Are you including chapters, affiliates or other stakeholders? Project Team & Plan: Hit the ground running #TechBestPractices
- 6. Ask yourself… 1. Are staff complaining about manual tasks? 2. Are you prone to errors that require hours of costly clean up? 3. Has there been increasing concern around data and payment security? Gap Analysis: Where are YOU feeling the pain? #TechBestPractices
- 7. Ask yourself… 1. How much is the pain costing your association? 2. Does the pain outweigh the costs of the proposed solution? 3. Do you have other implementations or large projects going on? Timing: When is it right for YOUR association? #TechBestPractices
- 8. Consider… 1. Is there another association that has faced a similar challenge? 2. Does the new technology play nicely with your current systems? 3. Have you thought about change management? Selection: Finding the right vendor partner #TechBestPractices
- 9. Implementing: Measuring progress & reporting KEY METRICS01 02 03 ACCOUNTABILITY02 OWNERSHIP03 #TechBestPractices
- 10. Keep in mind… 1. Perception is everything 2. Different audience, different message 3. Pilot with beta testers – do it! 4. Adoption is the real indicator of success Change Management: How are you transitioning? #TechBestPractices
- 11. Ask yourself… 1. Did it address the pain points you identified? 2. Are people using it? 3. Is it benefiting (or tasking) areas of your association that you hadn’t anticipated? Launch & Beyond: Did the technology do what it was supposed to? #TechBestPractices
- 12. Best Practices Strategic Objectives Add firepower to the solution by aligning with strategic objectives. #TechBestPractices
- 13. #TechBestPractices Partner Once you’ve decided on timing, vetting out a trusted partner is the next step. Discovery Be sure to complete a discovery process with users to uncover specific needs and document scope for your project.
- 14. #TechBestPractices Assessment & Feedback Do team gut checks often and get feedback from users. Ownership Once you identify your internal champion, what resources across the organization will they need to leverage to be successful?
- 15. Pilot Have a small, diverse sampling of chapters pilot the solution. #TechBestPractices Adoption & Change Management Use communications specialists and people with strong relationships throughout association.
- 16. Strategy: Embrace technology as a strategy Increased productivity Predictable transparency Greater organizational effectiveness Quicker & more accurate processing Steady cash flow & quality data #TechBestPractices
- 17. 248.273.0074 | dfry@billhighway.com | kbazzy@billhighway.com www.billhighway.co #TechBestPractices Questions?
Notas del editor
- Intro – asking probing questions Who here has had some problems with getting big technology projects started? Maybe it never got off the ground due to political challenges, or competing agendas? Say you got that project started, but you’re having trouble getting it launched? Ever get a project part of the way there, only to have it killed? We all know: Implementing technology solutions is HARD – especially in a large multi-entity association.
- Our agenda today is to go through steps on how to implement technology solutions in multi-entity associations. We are going to share some tips and best practices to help make projects go more smoothly, and give them a better chance of succeeding.
- First you have to lay your foundation – that’s your AMS or member management system Then you raise the framework, and build out the rooms – that’s all the state or local associations, all the many affiliates and entities that make up your association Now think about how money and information – dollars and data – are moved from individual affiliates in your association, up to headquarters, and back down. That’s your plumbing Last you have to furnish your house – adding your appliances and furniture – that’s the programs, events, and benefits you offer your members And your leadership and staff are the family living in it keeping everything going. And just like a house, there’s always something that needs to be done. Now that can be as simple as moving furniture around or painting a couple rooms, or as complex as tearing out the old galvanized pipes and putting in new copper plumbing. Major technology implementations are BIG PROJECTS, and tend to be similar to replacing your pipes in most cases, and rarely as simple a painting a room.
- Now, just like a bathroom remodel or new kitchen cabinets, you don’t go into it without having a reason. Maybe you want to add value to your house to sell it? Maybe the floor plan doesn’t suit the needs of your growing family (or association…) It’s the same with technology, there is something that is causing you pain, or a process that is slowing down the way you want to operate, so you find a technology solution to solve it. What is the reason behind wanting to implement a new piece of technology? Streamline – Are you looking to streamline operations, and reap the benefits that come along with it? Improved processes, lower costs, less wasted resources, etc. You want cross-functional visibility & efficiency – are departments having a hard time sharing information and slowing down the organization? Are decisions being made without other parties involved that should be? You want to automate manual processes – is your staff keying in data? We know that takes tons of time, and is prone to errors and mistakes. Automation can speed up processes, improve accuracy, and get your people focused on the mission of your association. Always think about strategy – keep in mind as you consider technology is does it align with the overall strategic objectives of your organization? Will this project – this new technology with all the bells and whistles – will it help you hit your goals for the next 3,5, 10 years?
- As with any project, whether in your house or your association, you need to assign people to it to vet it out and make sure it’s the right decision for the organization overall. Does everyone understand what you’re trying to do – do they know why you want to implement this new solution?? Sounds simple, but sometimes that’s not the case. Are you trying to free up resources and scale so you can bring on more members? Do you want to put in a financial management system to automate payment processing and reconciliation? Make sure everyone knows the end goal, so they can get on board. Make sure all teams are represented – and BOUGHT IN – so no one is blindsided or not supporting the project. This is really important for later on in the project, it will help with change management throughout the organization. The more people know up front, the easier it is to get them to go along for the ride. And don’t forget about your state and local affiliates? If this affects them, you’ll need to get their buy-in as well, so you don’t face a lot of resistance when it’s time to launch.
- So what do you do? even if you THINK you know where your pain is, you should absolutely do a gap analysis. If one team feels pain, you can almost guarantee that another team is feeling it as well (or maybe causing it!). Do the work to analyze all processes related to the type of technology you’re looking to implement. And it doesn’t matter if those processes are powered by technology or people – look at them anyway. Three simple questions can get you started in your gap analysis: Are staff complaining about manual tasks that don’t allow them to focus on their primary job? Anywhere manual tasks are taking time away from value-add activities that can impact revenue, member relations, etc. should be looked at. Has manual data entry made you prone to errors that require hours of costly clean up? Manual processes can lead to a lot of errors that typically snowball into larger issues that need to be cleaned up. Clean up can be expensive, not only in dollars but also hours and resources. Errors for associations can also mean disgruntled members, or state and local affiliates, which is never what you want. Has there been increasing concern around data and payment security? Security surrounding data and payments is continuously becoming more complex, and it doesn’t show signs of slowing down. Staying ahead of these standards and properly protecting your organizations’ data, assets and revenue is REALLY HARD. Review your online payment pages, verify how credit card numbers being stored (hopefully not at all!), audit who has access to your member database and contact information, etc. Putting technology and measures in place across the organization that close the gaps in security is definitely a good place to start.
- Time is so precious and none of us have enough of it. So just accept it: it is never going to be the perfect time to implement new technology across your organization. But, taking a few things into consideration can help determine when the NECESSARY time is. How much is the pain costing your association? Costs are not always tangible, so keep an eye out for where value isn’t being added at the highest degree. Brainstorm how technology can help to streamline processes or reduce the pain. Does the pain outweigh the costs the proposed solution? Money may be leaking due to fraud (which is hopefully not the case, but it does happen), You could be losing members due to a poor experience they had. Sometimes you just have to invest in technology because other pains are so great. Do you have other implementations or large projects going on? If so, make sure you’re able to allocate the proper resources to the project. This is key to success. Resources are something we never have enough of, so you need to make the judgement call based on the level of pain, the costs and your resource availability. You know what your organization is capable of. If the pain is great enough, you’ll definitely find a way to make it happen.
- It’s very important to find a partner, not just a vendor. A partner is going to invest the proper time into the project and ensure that it’s a success. There are many places to look to help you identify which solution and partner is right for your organization. Referrals – do you know someone at another association who has gone through a similar transition? That’s a good place to start. Show of hands – who in this room has recently launched new technology? Who is thinking about implementing a new solution? There you go – people from the second group, go introduce yourselves to people in the first group! Does it add complexity? Adding a system into the mix is always going to add a little more maintenance work. A good partner will help find the integration points and increase your efficiency, not make things worse. Change management can get tricky – people don’t like change very much, even if the new solution is going to make their lives better. Make sure that your partner has thought through change management, and has a plan to help you tackle it. Because it’s different at every organization: tailoring the roll-out and adoption plan to how your organization operates, is very important. it’s NEVER one size fits all. Always remember – the technical solution only gets you half-way there: roll-out and adoption are the other half. I’m going to repeat that (and it kills me to say this because I’m a product guy), but roll-out and adoption are half the battle! Without a well thought-out rollout and adoption plan, even the best product implementations can fail.
- You’ve picked the perfect partner, but how do you keep the project on track? Follow these three things to keep you on the road to success: What are your key metrics? What does success look like to you? Be specific. Make sure both you and your partner understand how you are measuring yourselves and the success of the project. Are those metrics agreed upon by all parties? Include milestones and timelines. All parties should sign off and agree on the metrics – this makes everyone accountable and it also helps keep the highest priority items top of mind as the project pushes forward. Make sure people understand how they impact the metrics as well, so that they are accountable for their role in the project Assign a champion to each part of the project – give them ownership. Obstacles will come up, things will happen and the project will experience road bumps…it’s just how it goes. But how you handle those obstacles and push forward from them will stem from how good the partnership is, and the sense of ownership people feel for the project. If people know exactly what they’re responsible for, and are held accountable for it, the project will go so much smoother.
- Change is not easy, and most people don’t like it, even if it’s going to help make their lives better. Associations tend to be unique which can make change really challenging. When you have multiple levels in your organization and chapters, who may be autonomous. This can increase the complexity of your change management plan, but also increases the importance because without adoption, the solution won’t succeed. Perception is everything. Whatever is visible to staff members is what they’re going to care about and is how they are going to interpret the changes. As you’re developing your transition plan, really understand who your audience is. Is it by level (National, State, Local, etc.), is it also broken up in the subgroups by role (finance, membership, IT, etc.). Identify who needs to know what, and develop a plan to communicate and train with that in mind. For example: Judy is in member services, and has been keying in new member information for 15 years. The new software solution will push new member sign-up out to the members themselves, through self-service online forms. So Judy is obviously going care how this changes her job. You need to develop a transition plan specific to her needs. Dan is in finance at the state affiliate level, and he has been manually collecting checks and cash from members to pay their dues. The new solution is going to automate dues payments through automatic direct debit, and Dan will need to learn a new reconciliation process. He doesn’t care too much about the effect on Judy in Member Services, he needs to understand how the new solution affects him. There’s also the question of HOW the training is delivered. You might have volunteers running the organization in addition to their full-time jobs, so think about an online learning system that they can access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or if you have targeted chapters that you want on the solution, host an on-site training and bring everyone in. 3. Piloting is a great way to refine your solution, get real feedback and ensure that your launch is going to be as successful as you can make it. This also creates great case studies to encourage others to adopt. Also is great for reputation and ca help you win bonus points with the tester organizations if 4. Your solution could be an awesome, amazing product….but if no one is using it…it’s useless. Getting your association to adopt new technology takes hard work, planning and execution.
- Determine if the new technology is addressing the problems it was supposed to fix. Did it address the pain? Is it doing what’s it’s supposed to? Go back to the reasons you did it in the first place: Has it reduced the amount of time your team is spending on manual data entry? Are you seeing that increase in revenue or members that you set out to achieve? Asking these kinds of questions and making an honest assessment is extremely important Are people using it? Have users provided any constructive feedback? How many times have staff had to go to IT to ask questions about how to use the new solution? Or did the users feel adequately trained and able to use the new technology without a lot of extra support? Are there unanticipated benefits or challenges that have come up as a result of implementing a new solution? Retrospective analysis – do surveys, gather data, ask the tough questions and be open to the answers, whatever they are. You put a lot of time and money into this project, so you want to make sure it’s a success. Find any problems early and often, so you can fix them and move forward.
- So lets pause there a second, because that’s a lot to take in… There’s obviously a lot to think about when it comes to implementing new technology, especially in a large association with multiple layers and affiliate entities. We’ll wrap up with some best practices and things to remember when embarking on this kind of project. Why do you want to adopt a new solution? A painful process or situation has triggered the need to identify and implement a solution…add firepower to the solution by aligning it with your long-term strategic objectives. If your objective is to increase member retention, how will the technology contribute to that? Will it provide a better member experience? Will it break down barriers to engagement? If your objective is to grow revenue, how will the technology contribute to that? Will you capture new revenue that you weren’t getting before? Will it help develop new revenue streams? Show how the technology will help your organization meet your strategic objectives, to get everybody on board
- Partner Having a solid partner will help you When is the right time? Discovery Discovery is so important. This will take place with your partner, most likely before you sign a contract. Understanding all of the use cases for your solution is super important and including all impacted departments in this is key to capture all pieces of your association that the solution touches. A good discovery process sets your association up for a smoother launch, and ultimately higher adoption because it will be a more comprehensive and better solution.
- Ownership Do you have an internal champion? Does that person fully understand what they’re responsible for, and are they empowered to make decisions along the way? If your leaders have that sense of ownership, then they’ll be more likely to see it through to success. Assessment and Feedback Is there a process for communication and feedback throughout the project? Assessing the project status and getting feedback from other stakeholders or end users along the way is critical to success. It’s important to incorporate end user feedback before the solution is fully formed to make sure you’re hitting at the right pain points. You’ll need to be able to sift through feedback and interpret it appropriately. Just because they say the solution should do something, doesn’t necessarily mean it should. Try to understand what they’re trying to accomplish and ensure that the solution gets them to their end goal, perhaps easier than they thought.
- Change management – Pulling in a communications specialist or someone who has strong relationships throughout the association, including chapters, to oversee and facilitate the change management piece will be key. Bringing the executive sponsor on the project into this component will also help. Pilot – We can’t say pilot enough…you want to give your solution a test run with a sampling of chapters or users who understand they are essentially testing the solution to provide feedback. This helps increase the probability of a successful larger launch as well as empowers staff and volunteers. And if you get a positive case study out of it, that helps boost adoption amongst other chapters and becomes a powerful tool for change management and adoption. Word of mouth from your peers is always going to be more impactful than a message from headquarters. A successful pilot increases your chances for a successful launch.
- Make sure that your strategy aligns technology with the mission and goals of your organization. When associations embrace technology as a strategy, rather than a tool, we found they experience…