5 Top Tips for Using Technology to do more with less
Pracedo’s Penny Townsend joined Robert Cade from Centrepoint, the UK’s leading homelessness charity for young people, to review their digital transformation project and look at how you can use technology to do more with less. Here are their top tips and recommendations for Non-Profits taking part in a digital transformation.
Objectives
Centrepoint started preparing for their digital transformation with Pracedo 6 months before the project commenced. They used this time to clearly define the objectives and align stakeholders.
The initial consultation with staff engaged over 60 Salesforce users and looked at the challenges they faced with the current system and but also what they wanted from a new system. This process created a blueprint to refer to when making decisions later on which accelerated development work.
Getting the team involved from the outset meant they were engaged with the project and when it came to actually launching it they became champions and were able to discuss why things had been done in a certain way based on their past experience.
‘This was a cost for the organisation to spend this time upfront but it also enabled us to bring multiple benefits to the project and certainly for us it was time very well spent.’
Robert Cade
Communicate
Communicating with your team, from stakeholders to system users, is vital for the successes of your transformation. This can come in different forms such as marketing the changes to your team, hosting regular town hall meetings or even newsletters updating everyone on the progress.
Keeping system users updated as the project goes along will increase user adoption after go-live, as they will be part of its development and creation.
Challenges
It is really important to tackle difficult questions from your Salesforce users throughout the process. Common fears appear such as:
- Is Salesforce here to replace us?
- Is the technology being used to control us?
- Will the system spy on us?
It is important to tackle these questions in the discovery session of the project so they don’t hold it back in later phases. This can be especially difficult during testing and can block user adoption after go-live. Balance these difficult conversations with some exciting ones about the new opportunities that technology presents.
Governance
Setting up strong governance within your organisation will help to make the transformation smoother and prolong the lifespan of your new system.
During the project, good governance will help to manage change requests and competing demands. The team itself should be focused on delivery and how best to achieve the desired outcomes.
After go-live maintaining this good governance will prolong the lifespan of your new system. Centrepoint’s decision to undertake this digital transformation in the first place was because a lack of governance had lead to Salesforce becoming complicated and not fit for purpose with lots of changes being made with no long term strategy.
Review
The final step is to be constantly reviewing, not only the final output but looking at the process, how the teams working together and the way things are being achieved. Remember to use the blueprint you designed at the start to check that you meeting the clear deliverables.
For more help with using technology to do more with less, you can watch the full webinar below!
You can also read our case study with Centrepoint here!