Blog
May 22, 2024
Seven Considerations When Transforming Your Enterprise IT Stack
Are you an Advancement technology leader looking to transform your enterprise IT stack? These key considerations could make or break your next big project.
You know Advancement. You know the market, the players, the different options—and you know your team. But what else do you need to work through to maximize the likelihood of success for your Advancement CRM implementation?
As someone who has led, from start to finish, a comprehensive digital transformation in the Salesforce ecosystem at an institution and been part of several other implementations, I found each of these to be crucial to our projects’ ultimate success.
1. Start Change Management Early
As the joke goes, when is the best time to start an annual giving department? Answer: 25 years ago. When’s the second best time to start an annual giving department? Answer: Right now.
Change management is the same. If you haven’t established a culture in your organization that is comfortable with change, now is the time. And for a project like this, it’s not just about your organization writ large. It starts with your Advancement leadership peers. Are they committed and invested in the project’s success? Will they support you when you are in the thick of the project and a competing initiative arises? Who owns the project budget? What ROI do they expect? Is your VP for Development or Advancement bought in? Is your team (i.e., the doers and those that will carry the heaviest load in the project) on board? Is there an excitement around learning new technology?
Answering these questions will be crucial to finding the gaps in your organization and developing your change management strategy. A common thread in the most successful projects: a real investment in change management.
2. Find a Partner
Find a partner, like Attain Partners, UC Innovation’s trusted ascend implementation partner, who understands and executes Advancement-specific implementations and has resources and expertise to help you prepare for your implementation.
Some of the best projects I’ve seen invested early in project readiness (a ‘Phase 0,’ for example). Ready, aim, aim, fire is a plausible approach for a project of this magnitude. As with change management, this starts immediately (preferably well before the project begins). Need help with change management? At Attain Partners, we have dedicated change management experts who can help you navigate through every step of your journey.
3. Engage Your Community
One of the (many) admirable qualities about higher education, and especially within the Advancement community, is that we are open to sharing with each other. We don’t see each other as competitors. The collegiality across organizations is incredible. There is also a growing community of organizations and leaders that have started to make or have already made the transition to a modern CRM platform within the Salesforce ecosystem. Find them and learn from them. There are several ways to do this:
- Get referrals from partners: Implementation partners, ISVs, and vendors are often willing (with permission) to share peer shops that are making or have already made the same journey.
- Get on the road
- Attend conferences
- Technology vendor conferences like Salesforce Education Summit and UC Innovation’s Innovation United – ascend User Community Meeting (aUCM) are great resources for learning about the Salesforce ecosystem in higher education.
- Industry conferences including CASE Conferences (CASE DRIVE, in particular) and aasp Summit, are all great opportunities to connect with Advancement technology leaders.
- Do peer site visits
- During the selection process at my previous institution, we visited several universities to learn from their Advancement shops and hear their firsthand experiences of their projects.
- Attend conferences
- Listen to webinars: If you have a limited travel budget, there are many online resources from Salesforce, CASE, and aasp where you can learn more about the Advancement technology landscape and best practices.
4. Consider the Total Scope of Your Digital Transformation
CRM, Alumni or Donor Portal, Marketing Automation, Analytics—these are all important and incredibly complex projects on their own. Are all in scope?
Even the most well-resourced Advancement teams struggle with both the execution and deep thinking required to deploy those solutions effectively, especially when trying to implement all at the same time. Consider chunking out those projects. One approach is starting with the CRM + Portal. This is the heart and soul of your solution.
If the ecosystem (like Salesforce) is new to your team, another option is starting with something like Marketing Cloud. It’s a smaller project (smaller than a CRM implementation, at least!) that can get your team familiar with Salesforce, serve as a first run at the important components of a project (project management, change management, training, etc.), and is a powerful tool for alumni engagement and annual giving.
5. Prioritize Staffing and Training
When advising shops, this is typically one of the top questions that gets asked. What staff do I need for the implementation? How do I upskill for Salesforce expertise? What staff (net new, in particular) will be needed post-go-live? As with most of the answers to these questions, it depends. You will absolutely need a team willing to learn new things and put in the effort to get through a project of this magnitude.
One of the best resources for learning about Salesforce is the Trailhead platform. It’s free and has an incredible amount of resources. Beware, though, it can be overwhelming, so leaning on peers who have made the journey can help navigate the plethora of available training modules.
6. Streamline Information Delivery/Reporting
Preparing for an implementation is a great opportunity to complete a reporting environment audit. Not only should you assess which reports are being run (how often, by how many people), but you should also affirm the metrics and KPIs those reports measure. Given the average turnover of a VP for Development, it is not uncommon to have reports that measure a previous VP’s key metrics that are no longer valuable to the current leadership. Liberally apply the KISS principle here. An informed reporting environment audit will inevitably lead to deeper conversations about your data, which is another critical pre-project consideration.
7. Manage Data Effectively
This could be an entire write-up on its own, particularly around data health or data cleanliness. At a high level, leveraging your reporting environment audit is a good starting point for assessing your data. It’s important to begin thinking about the data you will move from your old system and whether or not you plan to bring into your new CRM.
To give yourself some options, I would recommend leveraging a data warehouse (a broad term, to be sure!) as part of your digital transformation if you don’t already have one. Having one in place prior to your implementation allows for more flexibility in the many “will it come with us, or will we leave it behind?” decisions you will have to make. Unsure if you will need that data point in your new CRM? Push it into the data warehouse and make the decision during the implementation—or even after. To use the “moving to a new house” metaphor, having a data warehouse is like purchasing a storage unit. Not sure if your great-grandmother’s armoire will fit in your new living room? Put it in the storage unit and decide later!
There is much more to consider around data because, after all, it is the lifeblood of your CRM. For more information, check out these Attain Partners articles: Salesforce Data Storage Options for Nonprofits and Key Strategies for Successful Data Migration. Or let us connect you with one of Attain Partners’ talented Advancement data experts—contact us today.
Attain Partners – Advancement Leaders
This may seem overwhelming, but an incredible community is ready to help your organization. With 19 ascend certifications (and counting!), Attain Partners has experienced and proven Advancement technology leaders who would love to partner with you on your digital transformation journey. We partner closely with UC Innovation for ascend implementations. Connect with us today to start a conversation!
About the Author
Christopher Campbell is a Principal and the Advancement Advisory Lead in Attain Partners’ Attain Digital practice, bringing nearly two decades of experience working in Advancement. He started with the Oklahoma State University Foundation in December 2004 and served in several capacities during his tenure including helping secure private funds for the football stadium’s $300 million Next Level Campaign, overseeing the Prospect Development Team during OSU’s comprehensive campaign, Branding Success which exceeded its $1 billion campaign goal eighteen months ahead of schedule, serving as the Senior Associate Vice President for the Information Strategy Business Unit, and leading the successful implementation of a Salesforce-based advancement CRM solution. Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2002 from the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University, majoring in Management Information Systems with a minor in Marketing.
This post originally appeared on the UC Innovation LinkedIn on May 22, 2024.
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