The Small Enterprise Education and Promotion (SEEP) Network, an international best practices network for micro-finance and micro-enterprise organizations, was chosen by CITI for a Holistic Technology Assessment through a competitive grant application process open to existing and new clients.

The Challenge

When SEEP updated its five-year business plan in 2007, it became evident that the organization would undoubtedly experience the challenges of changing systems, structures, and staffing. These changes needed to be effectively managed in order for SEEP to efficiently define and develop improved internal processes and technology solutions.

SEEP staff reacted to this challenge by developing a scope of work for conducting a business process assessment to make sure that cutting-edge information and communications architecture, infrastructure and technology would be in place to maximize success. The proposed assessment would also help to identify specific metrics to measure success, efficiency and the cost-effectiveness of SEEP services to members.

Our Approach

Community IT Innovators offered the Holistic Technology Assessment grant at exactly the time when SEEP needed it.  CITI employees from across our service areas came together to provide a holistic technology assessment grant (valued at approximately $15,000) to SEEP.  We worked with SEEP to provide a high-level, concise holistic technology assessment examining existing systems, new ideas and technology needs, the human dynamic, and the need to manage change to successfully implement a forward-looking technology plan.

CITI consultants met with all staff and diagrammed existing information processes, which looked like this:

We analyzed their needs and reorganized their processes into functional areas. Several recommendations were made, a few key points are below.

• Moving into a business process orientation would help ensure centralized support for all tasks and activities across program areas.
• Institutionalizing a way for solutions to be chosen and implemented as an organization would greatly benefit SEEP.
• The association model seems to best fit what the organization does and how it functions.
• An Association Management System (AMS) should be considered for the primary backbone of all of SEEP's information management.

The below diagram of the reorganized business processes, along with an extensive matrix of prioritized recommendations and a possible time line for implementing the recommendations, were presented to SEEP.

Outcomes

In order to comply with the timeline of internal priorities, SEEP partially implemented one of the recommendations of the CITI assessment to inform a short-term software selection process - "Engage a consultant as part of the software selection process for an AMS to verify and prioritize requirements for a CMS and collaboration platform." A third-party consultant team was hired to work with SEEP staff to define the functional specifications that would enable SEEP to deploy its internet, extranet and intranet during early 2009.

A marketing and communications expert was hired to develop a strategy for the Member Services area. In addition, a professional organizational consultant began working with SEEP staff to identify challenges in the working environment and clarify roles and responsibilities, one of the recommendations of the CITI assessment.

In late 2008, SEEP executive and management staff accepted the software and hardware recommendations of the consultant team who developed functional specifications for SEEP's internet, extranet and intranet. As part of this consultancy, the team analyzed three association management systems. It was felt that to meet the short-term requirements prioritized by SEEP, the organization would leverage SharePoint on which to build SEEP's basic IT architecture. Future consideration of an AMS/CMS will depend on the total cost of ownership, ease of scalability and the degree of customization required to interface with the existing IT platform. The SharePoint platform will resolve many of the deficiencies noted by CITI with respect to data security, access and file organization, at least in the short term.