Community IT Innovators. Established 1993. Serving social mission organizations with integrated technology services you can trust.

This is Part II of a two-part series on moving from a strategic planning to strategic management process. Rob Jackson is a Senior Consultant with Community IT Innovators.

Strategic management is a logical set of connected activities that enables the organization to make its strategy work. It is a process. It is not the result of a single decision or action. It is the result of a series of integrated decisions or actions that get measured over time.

For the purposes of this discussion, strategic management includes:

• Strategic planning
• Budgeting
• Performance management
• Strategic measurement
• Evaluation

Information Technology (IT) should have a role in all of these functions, and below we explain IT’s role in the strategic management process:

Strategic Planning
While IT professionals are not strategic planners, per se, IT professionals should be members of the strategic planning team and serve as technical resources during strategy formulation. Business strategies must be translated into short term operating objectives, data must be collected and aggregated for analysis against the plan, and eventually IT will be called upon to develop the systems that will institutionalize new attitudes and automate new patterns of behavior within the organization’s information systems.

Budgeting
To realize IT value, nonprofit organization should develop an IT budget with a three to four year horizon. It should include a list of all recurring IT costs related to Personnel, Contractors, Software, Hardware, Data and Telecommunications, as well as any re-occurring costs associated with maintaining the organizations IT portfolio.

The IT budget should be developed holistically with the expected funding levels from all departments, the organization’s calendar, the sequence of projects and respective timelines, and be mapped to the organization’s operational objectives. The organization’s leadership should look for common costs, reduce unnecessary expenses and work collaboratively with the IT staff to align the IT budget with the organization’s strategy.

Performance Measurement
From an IT perspective, performance measurement systems can provide a convenient and expedient method for organizations to summarize and report on critical measures for organizational success, but it is only a piece of the strategic management process. Performance management works to:

• Manage the implementation of agreed upon strategies
• Assess the performance of those strategies
• Reconcile inconsistencies and misalignments
• Formulate new and revised strategies

Strategic Measurement
Similarly, strategic measurement systems can facilitate the collection key performance data, but it is only a piece of the strategic management process. From an IT perspective, it differs from performance management because it:

• Continuously monitors the fit between the organization and the environment
• Tracks external trends and forces that are likely to affect the organization
• Develops information flows that shape internal and external communication
• Provides a clear vision for the type of organization the organization is striving to become
• Creates strategic agendas at various levels, and in all parts of the organization to ensure they become the driving force in all other decision making
• Guides the other management processes in an integrated manner to support and enhance these strategic agendas

Evaluation
From an evaluation perspective, IT must be involved in the process that identifies inputs and codifies all of the observable and measurable targets to ensure data quality. IT can also be used to help the organization track changes in value, condition and status regardless of the type of evaluation being employed.

In conclusion, the successful management of any organization’s strategy depends on the design, use and alignment of these functions to achieve the desired result. So, coordinating workflows, transferring relevant knowledge effectively from one part of the organization to another and achieving integration so as to meet organizational objectives are all ingredients for successful strategic management that can be achieved by using IT strategically.

Seventeen years ago, researchers at IBM concluded that the anticipated value of Information Technology (IT) investment was not being realized because there was a lack of alignment between business and IT strategy.

“IT is transcending its traditional ‘back office’ role and is evolving toward a “strategic” role with the potential not only to support chosen business strategies, but also to shape new business strategies. Yet, there is increasing concern that the anticipated value of the investment in IT is not being achieved … We argue that the inability to realize value from IT investments is, in part, due to the lack of alignment between the business and IT strategies of organizations. We view strategy as involving both formulation (decisions pertaining to competitive, product-market choices) and implementation (choice that pertain to the structure and capabilities of the firm to execute its product-market choices).” — IBM Systems Journal, March, 1993; by John C. Henderson, N. Venkatraman

Within the nonprofit sector, the inability to realize IT value is due to the low priority that nonprofit organizations place on IT strategy. Simply put, IT is not considered to be a strategic asset within the nonprofit sector and the staff that support the organization’s IT functions are rarely involved in the organization’s strategic planning process.

Realizing IT as a Strategic Asset
As the quote above suggests, technology within the nonprofit sector has grown beyond the back office to play a more strategic role within the organization. It has become essential to the successful implementation of strategies that facilitate and improve stakeholder and constituent outreach, data collection, information management, and outcome reporting, yet IT is still not considered to be a strategic asset within the organization. Technology influences the way nonprofit organizations govern themselves, structure themselves, communicate, build capacity, and scale their operations, yet IT is often an afterthought.

In today’s economy, there is a great need to help nonprofits control cost, minimize risk, and accelerate revenue growth. While there are a number of ways to accomplish these objectives, very few nonprofits have a plan that explicitly states the role technology can play in achieving these objectives. As Business IT consultants, we believe that many, if not all of the organization’s strategic initiatives can be enhanced by developing an understanding for what IT can do, setting the appropriate expectations about what IT can accomplish, and executing a strategic plan that is enabled by, and aligned with, the organization’s IT portfolio.

As Business IT consultants, we help organizations understand the possibilities of using IT to effectively achieve its mission, but we also help set appropriate expectations for what IT can do given the organization’s constraints. Yet between the possibilities and the expectations, we believe there is an extraordinary opportunity to help nonprofit organizations successfully execute desirable changes and enhance the capacity for future results by making IT a greater priority within the strategic planning process.

Simultaneous Planning and Doing
Our experience suggests that strategic success demands a simultaneous effort toward planning and doing, and successful strategic outcomes are best achieved when those responsible for the execution are also part of the formulation process. In most nonprofit organizations, IT is responsible for a great deal of the “doing” when implementing the organization’s strategy, but it does not have a prominent role within the strategic planning process. IT can inform strategy formulation during the planning process and begin to align the organization’s information management capabilities with the organization’s strategic objectives.

IT needs to have a more prominent role within the strategic planning process so that it can to help the organization move from strategic planning to strategic management.

This conversation will continue later this month in Part II which details the role of technology in strategic management. Rob Jackson is a Senior Consultant with Community IT Innovators.

Idealware updated one of its most popular articles in answer to the question: What are some broadcast email tools that do work well?

Email newsletters, action alerts, and/or fundraising emails are a cost effective way to communicate with constituents or members. However, it requires a coordinated plan and an organized communications calendar to manage the effort and analyze the effect of sending and tracking thousands of emails. Find out the thoughts of several technology experts on this topic and see what set of broadcast email tools might work for you.

The article includes details about:

• Inexpensive and straightforward emailing tools — Free and straightforward emailing tools that let you send plain text emails to an unlimited number of addresses.
• Online mass emailing tools — Hosted email tools, which typically allow you to manage your lists, create emails and view reports through a Web-based interface.
• Taking a more integrated internet strategies approach — For organizations that are also tracking their constituents’ actions, donations, and their activities on the website, you may need to think through how you track and integrate all this data. This includes considering software that can manage all of your constituent data and activities rather than using a separate broadcast tool. A number of online integrated tools handle a broad swath of internet features.
• Guidance on how to decide — What the important considerations are to keep in mind as you weigh your choices.

Idealware is a nonprofit organization which provides thoroughly researched, impartial and accessible resources about software to help nonprofits make smart decisions about solutions for their business needs. Idealware is aided by a community of experts, including Community IT Innovators’ Dan Shenk-Evans, who is one of their contributing authors.

This article on the CIO challenge, by Shawn Banerji for baselinemag.com, is a few months old, but still very relevant to the challenge CIOs and other technology managers face this year. Some key points from the article:

• “Aligning technology resources with business goals” remains a “top technology priority for information officers.”

• IT leaders face “a mandate to reduce information technology expenditures while simultaneously increasing productivity and operating efficiency”

• Budget cuts and scrutiny for 2010 are still expected to be tight, though not quite as severe as most of 2009

• “Building effective third-party partnerships,” strategic sourcing, and effective vendor management are becoming higher priorities as information officers gain visibility and come under more scrutiny

The bottom line? Even if you don’t have an “information officer” or “CIO” at your organization, effectively aligning your IT with your organization’s broader goals and forming a trusted relationship with technology experts and leaders outside your organization can improve your budget efficiency and impact.

For more on what a CIO does and how you can more effectively align your technology with your mission by taking a big picture approach, join us for the next CITIzens Forum on Wednesday, February 3rd at 5:30, or check out our CIO service offering.

There are a lot of interesting nonprofit technology events coming up in DC in the next few weeks:

• Wednesday, Jan. 27, InsideNGO Technology Update: Inside NGO will be presenting a full day course detailing four technologies. CITI’s Matthew Eshleman will be presenting on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).  Virtual collaboration and training, Windows 7 deployment, and WAN optimization will also be covered.

• Wednesday, Feb. 3, CITIzens’ Forum: The Value of a CIO Perspective: The second forum in our series asks, who is managing technology at your organization? Do you have one person  who takes a big picture view, or are different people responsible for managing your network, website, databases and applications?  What’s the difference between a CIO and a CTO? Join in an open discussion to share what you’re doing and how other organizations address similar challenges.

• Monday-Tuesday, Feb. 8 – 9, Managing Nonprofit Technology Projects: Our second conference partnering with Aspiration to help you better manage technology projects in your nonprofit.  See this post for additional details

• Wednesday, Feb. 10, NTEN Webinar: Greening Your Nonprofit’s IT: Find out what all the green IT buzz is about and get practical information for greening your IT infrastructure.  Matthew Eshleman will be presenting with Peter Campbell on virtualization; other breakout sessions will cover green IT strategy, hardware and software, case studies, and sustainable design and printing.

• Friday, Feb. 12, Nonprofit 2.0: This unconference will let participants shape the agenda around how nonprofits use the latest technology to communicate, fundraise, and organize and advocate for their issues.  The event is already sold out, but there is a waiting list, and there may be a conversation or two to follow on Twitter…

• Wednesday, Feb. 17, CITIzens’ Forum: Salesforce: Learn how organizations are using Salesforce as a powerful CRM to manage contacts, campaigns, and related data; find out how Salesforce could be helpful for your organization, and share your story if you’re already using it.

“Business change is all about people.”  – We are really big fans of these words from Roger T. Burlton, an internationally recognized leader in business process change. He also expresses that business process changes must be managed holistically. We could not agree more.

Starting first with understanding where you are – what works, what is painful, what is stressful – establishes a baseline for the changes to make. In the discovery process we start exactly there, first understanding the “as is” picture and the people involved. It is important to draw on their wisdom on how things are, and are not, working. And then we work together to create a “to be” picture that involves changing the way some things are done. It is crucial to look at the priorities, and explore – can the organization use the technology already in place, in an improved manner (replacing the existing system is not always the answer)? Or maybe another solution is needed, and we look at how can that solution be integrated with back office systems (i.e. Accounting).

No matter what, as long as it is kept in mind that the change is all about the people (and the processes they use), there is hope for creating solutions that will make life easier for them, and help them focus on accomplishing what they do best.

People are an organization’s most important asset. We’ve all heard these words before. How is this translated really? Some leaders might say it’s the staff’s talents and special gifts, as well as experience, which are the asset. For some leaders, they appreciate that team members have the ability to learn and/or just simply follow instructions (which actually can go a long way to bringing about results).

In our interactions with various clients, whether they are local, national or international, and regardless of their mission, the value and reliance on highly talented people – and people who like to learn – is evident. It doesn’t stop there. There are some organizations which value their staff’s wisdom and find ways to draw on it authentically. This is something we highly support and encourage in our project approach.

Figuratively speaking, 90 – 95% of the answer to an organization’s problems, or desired innovations, is in the midst of the collective you – where the creativity and intelligence of multiple people across disciplines come together and do the hard work to find the answers. It sometimes requires having someone from the outside function as a source of creative tension and creative support for the group, and simultaneously provides a vital piece of missing expertise that helps complete the picture.

A lot of collective internal intelligence, with a little desire to ask for outside help, equates to the right synergy to find major answers. We know the synergy happens when we join with our clients in this way, and we have found ourselves in this place as well (we ask for outside help when we need it too).

I’ve recently helped a client implement Blackbaud’s NetCommunity (NC), and this report is my initial assessment of its capabilities.  NetCommunity is Blackbaud’s online tool built to provide a content management system (CMS) with Web 2.0 features that allows clients to not only manage their website and use the full featured broadcast email and analytics tool, but to integrate online transactions and constituent profile updates into Raiser’s Edge.  My client’s main reason for purchasing NC was for the integration, which as Raiser’s Edge customers have known has previously been a challenge.

Summary of Project

My client is implementing NetCommunity through Blackbaud’s Grow program, a limited-scope offering of the full product intended for organizations with simple websites with limited number of pages.  Since we were not going to be doing a full implementation of NC, but mainly using the form building capabilities of NC to integrate with our WordPress website, we purchased the Grow offering.  The costs for Grow include a year of hosting, implementation consulting & training, and emarketing consulting, and a certain level of email volume.  First year costs including hardware can range from $25 – $35,000, as opposed to a full blown implementation of NC which can cost 2 to 3 times as much depending on the complexity of your website.

If you don’t use Blackbaud’s hosting services, you will need to purchase and install a server on your local network and configure the appropriate firewall security.  As far as limited-scope engagements go, the project management and consulting provided were sufficient, albeit a little too scripted – we had to break the mold a bit since we were not implementing the CMS as usual.  Support was generally responsive, although as is common with all implementation consulting, sometimes there was a 2-4 day delay on responses if the consultants were onsite with other clients.

Benefits

So far my client has been satisfied with the new level of integration between their website and Raiser’s Edge.  It’s very nice to be able to transfer online donations straight into the database after a fairly simple process of review and confirmation.  There will be no laborious process of getting the gifts into RE, or the tedious reconciliation process at the end of the month.  Blackbaud has created a plug-in for RE that serves as a bridge, and allows the fundraiser to confirm whether a gift is coming from a new donor or a constituent already in the database.  RE evaluates for duplicates using criteria that can be adjusted slightly and allows users to search the database as well.  If a constituent creates an online profile, RE will automatically link future gifts to their record, and the donor will be able to see their giving history.

My client is looking forward to having event registrations that also transfer into RE, eliminating a lot of duplicate effort that is currently the status quo.  They already greatly appreciate that the email tool is integrated, which allows us to much more easily manage new subscribers and those that unsubscribe, and thus eliminate the need for separate distribution lists that have to be manually reconciled.  It is great to pull the recipient list straight from RE, based on criteria that can include donation, volunteer, event, or profile demographics.

In summary, they are enjoying the benefits of integration. This is one example of why the whole industry has moved toward integration, whether offered through open source, APIs, or web services.

Challenges

NetCommunity’s CMS features are decent and sufficient to manage a website – e.g., styles are CSS-controlled – but they do not yet stand up to a more full featured, best-of-breed CMS.  It does not have advanced file and site management, almost no image editing, or advanced survey building.  It has some flexibility in form-building, but not enough, especially if you are used to open source products.

Like all vendors, Blackbaud is working on upgrading the features of its products.  I hope they make the registration forms more flexible by allowing the re-ordering of parts and editing of sections, and that they also make registration for free events flow more naturally by removing the language and feel of billing. They need to fix the events page WYSIWYG editor so that it is full sized. The event registration does not have maximum capacity limits or wait lists, and the volunteer management does not have a schedule that allows volunteers to sign up for available opportunities.

We have also experienced some technical issues with Internet Explorer and iframes linked to their donation forms. Performance is also a bit slow.  As might be expected, I would like to see a reduction in costs as well, as implementing, hosting, and licensing of NC is not cheap – affordability has never been Blackbaud’s main selling point.

One of the features I would most like them to add is page versioning and support for draft mode.  One cannot take a current live page, start making changes in draft mode, save intermittently, and then publish the new version when fully ready.  While one can preview a change, as soon as you click Save on any change to any part of a page, it is saved to the live site.  To be truly safe, it requires one to create a copy of the page, and then to create copies of all the parts of the page, and then make changes on those copies, and then when ready to link the new page to the navigation so that it becomes the live page (hopefully it’s not a page that you have a lot of intra-site references and links to). NC also does not come with any built in fundraising reports, so one has to log into RE to see the actual gifts coming through the system, which is not always convenient.

Conclusion

If you get NetCommunity for the basic gift and event integration with Raiser’s Edge and broadcast emailing capabilities, you will likely be happy.  But do not expect a lot of flexibility out-of-the-box, or more advanced features in terms of events, volunteer management, or members-only portal capabilities. If you want complete flexibility and the latest and greatest CMS features, you will likely be disappointed. Blackbaud does offer an API for those that need more flexibility (usually $10,000 or so, but included with NC), and it does allow building of new modules, but as with most customization projects, expect it to require significant hours, expertise, and money. Blackbaud will continue to develop the product, so I don’t doubt it will improve over the coming years based on customer demands and trends in the market.

Dave Deal and I recently returned from the Groundwork Group 2009 Nonprofit IT Conference: Sustainability through Technology. The theme that nonprofits need to think strategically about technology and have a CIO role came up in several ways. There was one panel discussion in particular, presented by Groundwork Group, that addressed how IT has helped small, medium, and large nonprofits build capacity or become more efficient.  Some of the take-aways from this panel discussion include:

• Technology can really make a difference
• Nonprofits have very limited time, resources, and money, so it is imperative to streamline operations and use technology to deliver services as efficiently as possible
• Capacity planning requires technology planning
• Get technology experts on your Board
• Get an IT plan
• Create an IT Task Force Committee focused around projects
• Do a better job of sourcing computer hardware
• Pay more attention to the security of sensitive information
• Financial audit costs can increase if there is a lack of standardization
• Document everything
• The farther behind you get the more it’s going to cost

It’s also worth mentioning that the morning keynote given by Mike Brevard, Enterprise Solutions Director, Microsoft Heartland District was about how organizations can reduce IT costs by refining the organizations business processes.

A recent article from CIO Insight, “Increasing IT Capability While Cutting Costs,” described research findings from Jeanne G. Harris, Allan E. Alter and Michael K. Nieves. According to the authors:

“Reducing IT costs while improving IT capabilities may appear to be a paradox. But by focusing on fixed IT costs and following a strategy of sustained cost reduction, organizations can invest in new capabilities and innovation and prepare for future growth, even as they tighten their belts.”

Funny thing is, nonprofits have been doing more with less for years! Guess we should be glad that the rest of the IT world is finally having the same conversation we’ve been having with our clients for over 16 years.

One of my roles at CITI is to conduct audits of our clients’ IT infrastructure. This process is a requirement for the intake of new clients as it provides us the opportunity to assess needs and make recommendations for a network that is initially unfamiliar to us. Clients who are already receiving CITI infrastructure support also sometimes request the service. It provides an overview of network health and network effectiveness that does not necessarily emerge in day to day operations. It’s a little like wanting a physical from your doctor even though you’ve already seen her plenty for coughs and aches. The tech audit can frequently uncover an underlying issue that may not have been immediately apparent, or help identify potential efficiency gains.

One recommendation I’ve been making in these network audits recently regards shifting services from local servers to hosted solutions.  Moving services to the “cloud” gets a lot of IT media hype these days, but it really does make sense for a number of our clients, for some of their services.

• One example is email services. It’s true that the software licenses required to set up an Exchange server are almost free through TechSoup pricing, but the cost of owning and operating an Exchange server is not incidental nor is the cost of paying CITI or another IT provider to set one up. For smaller organizations, paying a per person monthly fee for similar service hosted on the Internet is often less expensive.

• Moving organization file sharing to the cloud is a less common recommendation, but one that we consider more and more. A hosted file sharing system often increases remote accessibility and generally comes with functionality not included in a standard local Windows file share (such as versioning and edit tracking).

• While somewhat outside the scope of an infrastructure audit, another frequent recommendation is to consider moving specific application needs to hosted solutions, whether it’s a CRM database or a corporate Intranet.

The cloud works because the resources supporting it have an economy of scale (shared among many users) with which local services often can’t compete. And the high levels of bandwidth available today allow hosted services to have a performance comparable to that of their local versions.  It’s not a solution for all situations and we still believe in installing local servers, but cloud computing is often a compelling option we want our clients to explore.