The Relationship-Centric Organisation
MOVING AWAY FROM CHAOS
Are you having problems managing information about your organisation’s members, clients, stakeholders – in other words, your constituents? The good news is, you’re not alone.
We understand that your organisation may be struggling with volumes (or lack of) of information you’d like to track and manage. Most likely, one or more of your employees would be storing information about contacts in more than one place – an Excel file, a personal contact manager like Outlook, miscellaneous databases and perhaps in some cases, slips of paper.
Organisations who have constituent data scattered everywhere usually have irregular, one-size-fits-all communications and miss many opportunities to gain more value from constituents and grow relationships. They are underserving their organisations’ mission by failing to engage supporters more robustly.
Managing relationships through informal and decentralised methods is inefficient and downright chaotic. Time spent compiling a list is time not spent growing the list. Also, employees who take Outlook contacts with them when they leave take valuable organisational resources.
Poor management of stakeholder data translates to greater costs, lost opportunities, and decreased impact. Furthermore, isolated silos of contact data means that your constituents may only hear about one aspect of your organisation and only from people sitting atop those silos.
If your organisation doesn’t know where the most current contact information sits on a day-to-day basis, it’s time to move away from chaos and seriously consider adopting a relationship management system (RMS) designed by Digital Summit.
UNDERSTANDING CORE PROCESSES
To be honest, we can tell you now that there is no technology silver bullet for RMS. Rather, it is an ongoing effort that involves technology closely tied to our business analysis of an internal process – yours. This set of processes and supporting technologies are then used to acquire, retain, and enhance constituent relationships.
A common mistake organisations usually make is to focus on possible technology solutions from vendors before understanding their organisation’s goals and context. Before identifying the functions that a RMS strategy must address, such as – communications, partnership management, staff recruitment, or people relations, you need to first understand the core processes. For example: What does your organisation do when it first receives someone’s contact information? How does your organisation respond to inquiries? Mobilise support? Organise events? Report outcomes to management and staff?
To understand your current data situation, Digital Summit will itemize every place you currently store information about constituents and prioritise the worst inefficiencies in dealing with constituents. We don’t proceed to technology solutions until you have a clear picture of the current situation and lost opportunities.
By spending time with us defining your requirements first, you will be able to calculate your total costs over three to five years, including training, support, and maintenance as well as direct software costs, assuming that you’ll be re-visiting your decision in a year or two particularly as your organisation grows or as its programmes evolve.
Don’t short-change your organisation’s future by committing to a poor infrastructure because of budget constraints. Have a mind to build your RMS in stages.
NOT A ONE-TIME DEAL
While there are many tool providers that claim to support all relationship needs out-of-the-box, these claims should be met with healthy skepticism. Unless they help you to manage all of your interactions with all of your constituents, they are a part of the problem. Some vendors claiming to have a complete RMS still may require significant customisation to handle the broad range of your organisation’s actual constituent relationship management needs.
Focus on continuous improvement, not a one-time deal. As your organisation and conditions evolve, so must your constituent management strategy. Take the time to evaluate your RMS goals and processes annually. Are there new processes and data that should be included? Are there opportunities to consolidate systems?
THE RELATIONSHIP-CENTRIC ORGANISATION
Organisations that have contact data consolidated in one or only a few places, have regular targeted interactions with constituents with whom they cross-promote different aspects of the organisation and create opportunities to grow the value of their constituents are relationship-centric organisations. They maximise their relationships with supporters and they effectively engage an increasingly wide swath of constituents to take actions to meet their organisation’s goals.
We’ll help you get there. Contact us today. We’ll get back to you and establish communications to discuss how Digital Summit can help you become a relationship-centric organisation.