 Hello everyone and welcome to our next EDW session called how DAMA International implemented a new website and membership system. Today our presenters are April Reeve, Director of Product Master Data at Bristol Myers Squibb, Frank Cadwell, Managing Partner at D3 Information Services, and Jared Young, Business Systems Analyst Westlake IS Hardware. Hello audience members are muted during these sessions so please submit your questions in the Q&A window on the right of the screen, and our speakers will respond to as many as possible during this talk. Please note there is a linked form at the bottom of the page titled the EDW Conference Session Survey. This is where you can submit session feedback and we encourage you to do so. Also there is a small icon to the lower right of your screen which will enlarge this window with the speaker and slides. So with that housekeeping stuff out of the way, let's begin our presentation now. Thank you and welcome April, Frank and Jared. Hi, I'm April Reeve and Jared and Frank and I are on the board of the DAMA International. DAMA stands for Data Management Association and we're going to talk today about our experience in creating a new website for the organization and a new membership system. So Frank if you can advance the slide. Thanks. So as I was saying Jared is, he is the VP of online services for DAMA International and also the VP Webmaster for the DAMA Kansas City Chapter. Next slide please. And Frank is, he is the VP of operations for DAMA International and VP of communications for DAMA Minnesota. And if we go to the next slide, I'm the VP of financial services for DAMA International and the VP of financial services for DAMA Philadelphia. So we're all active in both our local chapters as well as the international organization. And so this gave, so we got together to, to change our, our membership system and our website. Why did we need, we're going to go over why we needed to do that. The planning for and staffing of the project, selecting the solution, what our website can do, the look and feel which is very important. And the implementation and ending with lessons learned and hopefully we'll have some time for questions. So why did we need to change systems. So our legacy system was running a customer relationship management software package that was a version no longer under support. We were also running a custom development tool for our, for our certified membership testing results that was also no longer under support. And we were running on an operating system that was no longer under support. So basically, the rest of our lives were going to be about about upgrading versions of our software to run our system. And in the end, we were just going to end up with the same system. We had some funny reactions from people who looked inside and said, No, I don't want to be involved with your organization. You guys are too, too boring. So, so we, we had a real need to get off of the current system. You know, unless if we had had a serious problem, we not have been able to recover. And we weren't too excited about the current system in terms of the look and feel anyway, functionality wise, it was, it was pretty good. So going on, Frank. Yeah. So, one of the things that we really had to come up with was how to plan and staff for the project. So one of the biggest things that we were that we had to understand at first, which may not be things that people have to worry about in their organization is that our board is totally a volunteer board. So everybody on the board is volunteers. There's about 15 or so people. There's there's eight or so voting members and then there's more advisors and other other staff other volunteer staff to make sure that we take in different opinions and different thoughts and all those sorts of things that we had to maneuver. People had different priorities. They also had only so much time because again it was a volunteer organization. So one of the, and along those lines, it was kind of bringing everybody together to get everybody on the same page. So one of the biggest things was prioritization, what might be most important to the BP of professional services might not be the most important thing to the BP of membership. And so it really had to get down to finding common ground on what was the most important thing in the prioritization for Dame International because we were not going to get to all of the things that we were going to do overall for the website. In fact, we're doing multiple phases and we're heading into another phase right now. And one of the things that we had to do was get back to just the basics of functional requirements, which I know is boring and it's not fun to do and all those sorts of things. But we really had to sit down and we sat down with a matrix and we went and we said, what, what do we need on this site? What absolutely needs to work and what can be put off? So things like making sure that we could still process memberships, making sure that we could still sell the DIMBAK2. All of those things we had to make sure that they were front and center and that they were going to get done. So we had to the whatever we went with it had to have some sort of a membership piece, basically a CRM system, but a very basic CRM system. And we also wanted that incorporated into the website. That was one of the issues that April described, which was we had all of these different systems that were kind of that we had that had been integrated by the development staff. That are the development team that had done it at first and it was getting really hard to upgrade. And one of the most important things in bringing us all together was having a full-time project coordinator. So we did pay for a contractor to come in and basically coordinate the project and making sure to herd all the cats. We were very fortunate that we got a very good project coordinator. He came in and he was able to make sure that he took up things with the volunteers and he was able to push people and make sure that we got our work done. But at the same time did so in a very polite and orderly way. So people really liked him and he also got along well with us and he also had a little bit of development background, which helped as well. So one of the biggest decisions that we had to make was whether we were going to do software as a service or whether we were going to hire in custom development. The one thing that everybody did agree on is that because we were a volunteer organization, we were definitely going to have somebody else do the work and also support the system. But the question was how one of the biggest questions that came up when we were planning this is how can the website be updated and how can it be updated most easily. So that was one of the things that came into play because as is noted here, we looked at various products out on the market. Of course WordPress being one of the most popular. And while WordPress is great, it would have been more difficult to have anybody from the board per se make some changes or updates to the website as needed. So that while it really became kind of a debate amongst the group, amongst the committee that was working on the website, that's eventually what kind of put WordPress out of the running. So eventually we all agreed that software as a service was the best way to go because also some of the other advantages of software as a service is it's upgraded automatically. We didn't need to worry about paying external developers extra time in order to upgrade. We also and so since it got updated automatically that was a lot easier to deal with. Some of the vendors that we kind of work through. We had about four vendors that were in play. One of them was really just not very interested in our business are interested into talking to us so we that that kind of went by the wayside pretty quickly. Another vendor just wasn't good doing international chapters they were really just in the US and we are an international focused organization. So that kind of threw them out of the running. And then the third vendor was not making commitments as far as being GDPR compliant. And then we wound up going with Silkstart which is a relatively new player but they were willing to make those types of commitments. And of course for us GDPR is vital. We are a data organization so we need to be wary of all those things. We need to be aware of all those things. Also Silkstart had again the basic CRM functionality that we were looking for and the ability to do mailings and all those sorts of things functionality that we needed. Hey Frank and also yeah go back a slide for a second. So do you think that cartoon looks like Jared. It does kind of actually that was good. Other than the red hair. Yeah. No that is good I like that. I don't know maybe we should ask Jared he might be mad at us. Well in the current world the suit doesn't match because I'm covered in cleaning clothes most of the day. There you go. And then the last thing was you know we spent we spent a lot of time kind of looking also at future needs. So while we weren't going to do those future needs we want to make sure that we had those in mind. So some of the immediate things that we had to take into play was making payments having easily updateable pages making sure that we could connect to the certification links making sure that people could do the research that they needed to do about chapters. Events making sure that the publications were available so we have contracts with publishers and the people that publish the things and to make sure that at least the existing members only content would be available to our membership that was currently available in the old old website. Things that we kind of put off into the future were things like more community based stuff so one of the things that we're trying to do is make it easier to update the DIMBOC so we can get more feedback and be more efficient with that. That's something that's going to be worked on in the future. There's also many much other functionality that we're starting to go through that hopefully will make it even better. But this was the minimal functionality that we needed and it was as April describes a bit of an emergency situation because we couldn't even upgrade the OS in the current system. So as April describes or described before in the agenda another big piece was the look and feel. So our old website was as we described boring and old fashioned it was very text based. It wasn't it didn't have a lot of liveliness to it. We were also kind of locked into the software. So to give an example of kind of how old the system was or how it really didn't work for us if we were. I was the membership VP when we were doing this at first and when I needed to look up a member in the actual website system. I would actually have to go through pages and pages because I could not actually search on a person. I could do is order it by the way that I wanted by the way I might want it ordered. It was two different systems that kind of connected the CRM to the actual web users. Therefore there were these key field tie you know field ties that integrated the two things but if they got out of sync then you had more problems. And also you know as April described you know we had members that were frustrated as well as chapter folks we had broken links that were either difficult or impossible to fix because we couldn't find them and just a lot of issues like that. So in while we were just bringing the functionality and this brings me to the second bullet while we were just looking for the functionality that we needed. And just pretty much transferring the existing functionality we wanted to have a much more friendly way of presenting that information. Therefore one of the best decisions we made also was for a short period of time to bring in a graphics design. They were able to take our basic color palette which was basically blue and white because that tends to be easiest to read. But also made it interesting and you'll see that and making sure that the visuals were useful as well. And bringing the visuals to the users in such a way that the users were focusing on what we needed them to focus on or what we felt like they were probably going to want to focus on. And then as we described the look and feel is really everything so we needed to make it easier to navigate. We wanted to make sure that there were good breadcrumbs and that people could get back to what they needed. And so we when we were deciding on a vendor we really looked pretty hard at the demos making sure that they were that they were easily designed in all of those sorts of things. The last thing to which was not a trivial item for us and while we haven't actually implemented it yet. We want to make sure that there was different that they could support different multiple languages because at some point for obvious reasons again being an international organization. We want to make sure that if we need to present the websites in different languages as we evolve that that can be done and they could support that as well. So that's how we wound up selecting the vendor and then Jared will start discussing around the implementation and more detail on the actual website. So as as April and Frank have already alluded to the web the old website was very dated. There was a lot of text that was difficult for users follow. It was very hard to update the site was developed using very rigid and customized tools and the web host actually wanted to shut the system down. They ended support because they needed to update their web hosting operating systems and if they were to have done so it could have crashed the website altogether. So we needed to change things as soon as possible. Additionally the chapter information was old and couldn't be up easily updated. So the chapter page was out of date in most at most times. This gives users the wrong idea of the location of the active chapters in the data community. We needed something new due to the ability to update the site that needed to be done. What you'll see at the top of the homepage here. There are some key elements that are important for the website that we tried to follow. And the homepage is a good example. First and foremost the homepage is there's no clutter. It's very straightforward. We wanted to make sure the website was clean and simple. Additionally the graphics are designed to draw attention to where we want the users focus on so they can get where they want to get right away. And there's three main things that Daymai does and the websites bring are used to those things quickly. The three things that we want them to be focused on are the CDMP and the DM bottom. So you can find resources, you can get trained and you can get certified. The focus boxes in the middle of the website bring that focus very clearly and very quickly to the users. The second big mission was to generate the community. So in the menu at the top a person can join Daymai and it's very easily to log in with the login button. Third big piece is the homepage right away is in the chapters area. This is also easily gotten through the menu at the top. The chapters areas is where the chapters are located, directions and forms for creating chapters. Daymai continues to add the chapters and they are a huge piece of the international community. The site is very consistent. The main color as Frank alluded to is blue and white, which not only are easily read. But they're also calming colors, which in our industry helps with the stressful environments that some of us are working in. It's not exciting, but it's easily read and it's calming to those of us in certain sectors of the data management profession. The menu is always available to the user and can be used to get back to the homepage or quickly get where you need to go. Additionally, the fonts are simple and well and simple as well but very consistent throughout the page or the website. The third key element in the readability of the website, the old website was busy with text that was not readable. We used a good graphic designer as Frank had mentioned who helped us create useful icons and other items that make websites more readable. By using the how to the box tool we were able to take advantage of alternate text and other elements that help with search engine optimization, which SEO as we all know is very useful and it was non-existent on the old site. The fourth key element was making the site look good on a phone or a tablet as many of us access the internet via mobile devices nowadays. We need to make sure that we engage people the way that we want to be engaged, not the other way around. The fifth key element was quick loading of pages and the website is simple and will load quickly by keeping the page simple. We have fast load times even on slower connections. Could you switch to the next slide? I think I actually jumped one. But the other thing you'll notice is there is a third color. And there's a reason that we used green. Not only does it go with current color scheme, but it brings attention to key factors or key elements on the site so that you can. So it brings your attention to those elements. So for example, the letter from the speaker and the button at the top right. It allows you to quickly identify some key elements on the site. The president's message obviously is highlighted in green because we wanted to bring attention to that so that we could. So the users could quickly identify that information without having to get to know what Dama international is all about. One thing that I remember from the design was that you know the website designer was saying you want to have the to be very actionable. Like what are what is it you want to do here, right? You know, join a chapter, join the central membership or, or, you know, get certified as a data management professional. These are all it's really easy to see those that those are the action items that that are clear on the on the homepage or join us online for enterprise data world. Yes, which is what it's. Yes, it's definitely a call to action design. And that is what we were aiming for. So the website describes and then has a quick link first find, you know, find a chapter when the user visits the website for the first time they have no idea chapter exists, or if they, if they want to find out there's a very quick index of the existing chapters so that they can find something local to them and get it become associated with that chapter. Much like the chapter box, the membership area describes what it means to be a member of daylight and then has a button to join that takes will take users to membership area to sign up. Much as a shown, the website is easily not navigate to navigate read and understand which are key elements which we were looking for. Additionally, when time comes the vendor we chose can represent pages and other languages as Frank has previously spoken about, which was a huge decision. A huge factor in the decision that we made with the vendor we chose. Frank, can you advance the slide. And I'm going to touch base on a little bit of things that have already been discussed but the implementation went very well because we had key help. Being a volunteer board, we needed all of us, you know, could not dedicate as much time individually as that was required for this project. So we hired a very talented project coordinator and graphic designer to help us along the walk, help us along the way. And actually, the project coordinator is currently still assisting us with the upgrades that we plan to do. Along with that, every page was reviewed and tested by the subject matter expert. For example, membership VP was involved in the membership section. The VP of chapter services was involved in the chapter service area and professional services was included in the CDMP and the unlock areas. This ensured that we were creating what we were creating was community commuting communicating necessary information to the users of the website. As in most projects like this data migration was the hardest part. And just because we're all data data management professionals doesn't mean we know how to do it the right way. So there was a learning curve for us to do to migrate from our previous help me out April. System. The membership system. Oh, so VCRM you mean. Yes, yes. Thank you. There was there was a little bit of a learning curve from migrating from one database into the next. So there took a few iterations for us to get all of the information we needed along with the certification information that we wanted to preserve moving forward. I thought that it was interesting that, you know, you get into some sort of, you know, you have to make decisions that we had to make some decisions that didn't work didn't really come up with previous implementations. Right. So, you know, for example, if you know, do we still can we still send things to expired members can we keep expired members on our contacts list. And what about contacts like code did we really have the the appropriate permissions to set to keep them on our contacts list would we have to ask, you know, for their approval to send them information or even to keep them in our list. Yeah, I think that's a really good point because the previous website was done pre GDPR. So we really had to pay a lot of attention to the GDPR requirements and making sure that we purged people from our data that should no longer be there. So yeah, that's a really good point April. Thank you. Yeah, which it's, it was, we focus on GDPR but we've got, you know, we've got California and we've got Brazil that have also implemented similar privacy acts so there was a lot of, there was a lot of tiptoeing around that subject. And as data management professionals, we try to understand and implement according to, you know, to to practice what we preach right. Yes, yep. That is correct. Going on to the testing the financial transactions we we did a lot of testing prior to going live. And we did have a few bumps in the road when we actually went live. But they were quickly ironed out. And we are have been moving forward. And not only have we successfully implemented the financial transactions, but the the user base has actually gone up. And I believe that's attributed to multiple things. During the process of updating upgrading the website. There was a process of reminding users that their memberships were expiring. And also the fact that the website is it just looks better. It looks, as I say, we brought Dama into the 21st century, which may sound funny to some but that is effectively what we did. Okay, I'm not really sure I have much more to say, but the primary function of the website is to enhance the member experience, and we think we've increased membership, and I believe we've successfully done that. Right. So the in our, sorry, website is dama.org, right, we've got it up on the right corner there on the slide, if, if you want to check it out. And, and see if if you agree that would that the look and feel is so much better. So, kind of, you know, we'll go through these lessons learned. These were the ones I jotted down at the time but there was really so much more we did learn from this project. So, you know, I think that that we had all had experience building websites and, you know, and building websites for our chapters. And we all knew how easy it was to get into the position we were in which is, you know, that you're out of date with your with your software and your operating system and, and, you know, all these upgrades are needed. So, you know, especially when you have an organization where people are are coming in, you know, once a year you're getting an influx of new people. It's very difficult to transition that that support of your of your website and stuff and such. So, SAS solutions really did make the most sense for us and we've been pretty pretty happy about that. So, volunteer rate resources, right, they, you know, they can't always meet their commitments and your timeframes kind of stretch out a lot longer than you would expect but, but, you know, that would that's our organization where we're all volunteers so what we thought we could do in this took more like a year but, but in the end, we got it done and that was that was pretty great. And the website I think we, you know, we really like the look and feel now of the website and we weren't really getting that just from a technical change migration of our website. We needed to bring somebody in who, who had that expertise who had that, that, that I, for what, what a day, what a website needed to look like and how to achieve that. The other thing that was really pretty great here was that we could afford to actually pay for a project coordinator and a website designer. And, and that was very lucky, because, you know, not all chapters, for example, have the resources to, you know, to pay for a paid resource and and they do great jobs with just volunteer resources and and that's tremendous. We were lucky about that. We would have liked to have had a dedicated test environment. But we didn't have one. We're going to add that, you know, into our environment coming up that's kind of one of the next things we want to do. So we maybe could have done a better idea of a better job at documenting what our test cases needed to be because so that we could have, you know, ensured that all of the functionality of the website was working. I think we did but but, you know, really documented that that we were covering all the functionality of the website to make sure. So, and then, you know, kind of the last note is that. So the, it was a small startup vendor that we went with. And now, maybe we're not as happy with them as we'd like to be. Because, you know, when we ask for things that are just normal operational capabilities, they want us to pay for custom development where they say no, we don't have that we're never going to have that. So, you know, you're balancing the pros and cons of going with a with a smaller vendor with the fact that, you know, they're, they're very anxious to please and they and they really want your business. But maybe they're not as experienced as as we sort of would have loved them today. Frank, Jared, any any additional thoughts in terms of the lessons? No, I think that pretty much hits the different lessons we had from it. I think the, I think hitting on the, you know, the the dedicated test environment and just kind of what we learned, I think from the data migration that even even Jared talked about. I think, I think those were the biggest things. And just to mention that, you know, as always, and as expected, and I think what everybody expects and knows that attends these conferences is that data was probably one of the hardest parts, even though it came towards the end, of course, like everything, because that's usually how it goes. But it was that took a little bit longer, I think, than than we would have liked. But again, you know, volunteer resources and those sorts of things, but we had to had to make it work. So those, I think, were the hardest things and just, you know, trying to make sure that we keep up with the data privacy laws. And that continues to be something that that is sometimes easier said than done. That's for sure. You know, there was, there was something that Jared brought up to that that I didn't make a note of here, but which was that our new website actually has less functionality than our previous website. In terms of our, our certified data management professional, well, we have a new administrator and they're, they're handling things. But we were, we were really looking to go with a minimum viable product here. Because we were in kind of a state of emergency and we really needed to get off of where we were before. And so, you know, and so, and so we went with the things we needed to have mostly. And then we're going to build on top of that. Right. And I think the other advantage of doing that is there were so many paths to the same place on the old website. And of course, I mean, that's kind of basic user interface stuff. But yeah, so we really did, you know, again, from, from where I started, we really did kind of go back to the basics in some respects, which was a good thing. Because again, you don't want to have 50 million ways to get to the same place because that just generates more confusion. So we really did wind up in a better place. And, you know, like Jared says, we finally got in the 21st century and only took us 21 years to do it, I guess. But hey, we got there. You know, we kept finding, we kept finding screens in the old, or, you know, in the old website that you couldn't get to from the homepage. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I had no idea we had that functionality, right. And, you know, when people would be, I don't know, buying things or, or doing things that, that we no longer supported. And, and we just had no idea that it was even in the website anymore. During the project, we would go, oh, we didn't even know that existed. And we absolutely have to have it. Yeah. That's also something that kind of extended our timeframe a bit because it's like, oh, there's something in this deep dark trove over here. And, you know, like anybody and, you know, I, you know, we sometimes the website is a little bit of an afterthought and they, they tend to get neglected. And this, this was no exception in some respects. And so there's just places that we wound up hunting around. And, you know, the, either April or project coordinator or Jared or whoever would go, you know, I just found this other place. What are we going to do with that? So, you know, when a lot of people were thinking, you know, at the beginning, and I don't think any of us were, but certain people on the board were feeling like, oh, we can get through this in a month or two. And there's just a lot more to it, I think, once you start kind of digging into it. Right. Right. There's definitely people who had never implemented a website little on a system before. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, you know, you can throw up a, you know, a blog site or something in a couple of minutes, but it's not going to product support your, you know, your corporation. So. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, I think we've gotten, I think we've gotten to and I don't see any questions, but so if, you know, we would love if. Yeah. If you guys had questions. Um, I don't see any, I'm not sure if I just don't have this ability. Hey, Eric. Hey, April. So just wanted to plug, right. So we have this book, right, the data management body of knowledge, the embark, we call it, right, from, from Dama. And it's like an, it's an outline with chapters on all the different main data management areas like data quality and data governance and data integration. And we wrote that one. So, you know, check it out. We a certification for data management professionals that you interest. So check out our website, Dama.org, and you can, and you can see how to learn more about our certification process and how you can be certified yourself. So there, that's the, the marketing pitch part of the present. Not too bad. Do we have any time for questions there? Do we have questions out there? Well, there haven't been any submitted by the audience. Okay. So if, if there's nothing else that you all wanted to add to key takeaways or anything. Then we'll go ahead and wrap up. We're just about at time. So. Okay. Yeah, I don't think, I don't think we have anything else if there's no question, unless you have any questions there. I do not, but okay. Well, thanks everybody for listening today. We really appreciate everybody's time. Sorry, I, you know, I got that little, that little cartoon for on the project coordinator, but I've actually never met the project coordinator, right? We are an entirely virtual organization and, and so our staff, even our paid staff, we've never, we've never met them. So just a, just a little note. Sorry, prank. No, that's fine. In fact, that's funny because I don't think we've even, I don't think I've even seen them on camera. So I don't even know, I think, I don't even think I know what he looks like. So, but, well, thanks there for all your help today and thanks everybody for attending. Well, thank you. Yes, thank you for this peak behind the scenes. And thanks to our attendees for tuning in. For the attendees, please do complete your conference session survey on the page for this session. Between sessions, you're welcome to continue networking with other attendees within the spot me app. And the next sessions will start at about 40 minutes after the hour. So we'll look forward to seeing you there. Thanks everyone.