 So today we've got Kevin Christopher George here who's going to talk about like the fact that many digital transformations fail but they have to and he's going to guide you through how we can make this a better process. So Kevin is with Green Merrick's consulting and comes to us with a background from companies like Oracle and Blackberry. Kevin has learned early that technologies should always serve a measurable focus purpose. So he's leveraged his career experience to help develop into a role of a trusted advisor of nonprofits and companies of all shapes and sizes and now with that I'm going to pass the virtual mic over to Kevin. Thanks so much for for including me and let me join in on this session and share some information that is near and dear to my heart. The focus of this conversation is how to set up digital transformation for success and and one of the ways that I look at this and we'll get into my background briefly is around developing relationships with your cloud technology partners and I'm going to use SAS software as a service and cloud interchangeably. I'm talking about the same thing. These are those software organizations or companies that host their application in the cloud. Okay that's what we're talking about and they have teams and resources that can help you build better relationships with them and the focus of this conversation today is to help focus on what you can do to set yourself up for success so you don't end up with some buyers remorse later on. Okay so my name is Kevin. I've got 15 years of experience in the technology sector across various areas. My friend Elijah mentioned this couple of them with Oracle and Blackberry was also another organization called Koopa another cloud technology company. The last 10 years roughly have been spent as a cloud customer success manager or a CSM and now I'm an advisor with green rights consulting now it's sole proprietorship. This is the key thing and I want you to really understand where a customer success manager or a CSM fits into the picture because you might be wondering who is this guy yeah I get he works in tech big deal and I want to paint a picture help you understand where CSMs fit in terms of what it means when you buy software the cloud software. So let's walk through this process right at the first end you've got your laundry per character the sales guy or girl they hear your motivations they create a vision they pitch offerings and negotiate with you and then they close a deal or the contract and it could be as simple as you going to the website entering credit card information and subscribing to the solution or you could be issued an actual contract where you got to go through the terms and conditions sign it send it back there's an invoice associated all that good stuff that's the sales side of the house then you get into the implementation phase and for our office phase folks out there hopefully you recognize this but at the implementation phase this is where the implementation team is setting up the vision that the sales rep created in the product they're adjusting the settings they're testing things they're helping you with training and they're establishing some of the processes and best practices with how you're going to use a solution okay and you would typically see this kind of this kind of floor model with some of the larger applications when you think of things like HR applications or finance and accounting or CRM and campaign management solutions those type of solutions typically require some element of implementation and then we get to the post sales side of the house and I highlight in green because like that's where the CSM fits so after all of this stuff has happened we're in a group that comes in and says like I'm listening right so you've gone through the implementation phase you're starting to look at how to use the solution and where the CSM is really focused is on how is that usage going first orders are you actually getting any return on investment are you successful with the product are you willing to be an advocate for us as a software company are you willing to tell others about the great experience that you're having with the solution we're also involved in support and escalation so when things go wrong sometimes it's the call to the support team but oftentimes it's also a call in parallel to the CSM team to say hey there's a big issue here can you help get us all faster and then there's elements of ongoing education so what's really cool about software as a service or cloud solutions is that they're constantly growing and evolving and getting more functionality to them and it could be hard to keep pace with that one of the roles of the CSM is to make sure that you are aware of all the tools and resources available to really get the most out of that solution as it grows and evolves and then the last one and this is the one that's really important and speaks to this conversation is we're responsible for the contract renewal so you might have signed on for one year three or five years whatever it may be but the CSM typically in most situations is responsible for coming back to you and saying okay it's been three years how are things going are you ready to sign the contract and so being in that kind of post sales area environment as a CSM working at a technology or a SaaS cloud company we get to see it all we get to see all the pain points we get to see things we're like oh I'm not sure that should have been sold that way or positioned that way or maybe we missed something the CSM see all of that stuff and that's the background that I'm bringing over the past 10 years or so working inside cloud technology companies just a quick poll and I'll see if this resonates with you but raise your hands if you have a computer that has a cd or dvd drive in it and think about these questions right so another one if you have a yahoo or a hotmail or an aol email account hopefully I'm not dating anybody here too much I know I've got one of these I'm not going to say which one but I'm slightly embarrassed and my friends may funny me about it you've actually read through an entire software terms and conditions agreement right think about that I've actually spent the time especially working in your nonprofits when you buy software or you sign up for a new subscription have you actually sat down or read through the agreement or is it like well the demo looked good I saw a lot of my my peers said that it's a good solution and we're going to sign on the dotted line and then you get by just fine if your internet connection has to go back to dial up now I'm thinking back to the days when I started first started getting on the internet and the days of using dial up and when I switched over to my high speed connection and I know I couldn't go back but all of this speaks to the times have changed right I think we're all aware of this we're not out there installing CDs anymore we've got these new email platforms we have really complex terms and agreements and subscription agreements with software and we rely on high speed internet access to give us access to these really cool and innovative technologies that are in the cloud and because times have changed our relationship with technology has changed it's not just the case of buying a CD and inserting it installing it and then you're off to the races you got to think about the relationship that you have with that subscription with that provider over the course of one three five however many more years okay and that's what really what we're going to focus on today and so like why are we talking about cloud I'll hit you with a few stats so right now companies running purely on SaaS from 2018 and projected to the 2023 going from 51 percent projected all the way up to 86 percent this is from a B2B tech reviews finances online so the pace of growth in the cloud sector is not slowing down at all the unfortunate thing and this is why we're on this conversation is that it's not all rosy so some of the biggest challenges for organizations engaged with SaaS today or cloud today are things like security right governance and compliance your team may lack cloud experience and when I think about cloud experience I'm not even just talking about the actual use of technology I'm talking about the process of actually searching for researching and buying and contracting with tech with cloud technologies it's vastly different than the old model of buying it individual or on-prem piece of software and installing it going with it privacy concerns that's always a major issue vendor lock-in and we'll talk about that as well you bought this cloud solution you're locked in with a contract and you may or may not be getting enough value out of it or hitting those KPIs you got to hit and you feel kind of stuck cost an obvious and unfortunate one especially in the nonprofit sector where we're so constrained by or have such a big focus on how to effectively use those dollars that we've really we've secured from our donors lack of visibility and the last one obviously is unplanned outages so as you see this despite its importance organizations have a really tough time when it comes to being truly successful with with SaaS or cloud solutions and so this lends to the most important but the least known metric and this is from another study from N10 where they went out when they asked various nonprofits how often do you actually evaluate the return on investment of your technology products and services and you're seeing this massive number right 19% they don't know meaning they don't ever go back they're not sure about how they're evaluating how they're actually getting value out of the product that they buy or the solution that they bought and 46% like really or not at all it means it's an afterthought so they invest it all the time energy effort setting up the solution going through the implementation training their staff and a few months out a couple years out they're like yeah we're not really sure if we're going to value out if we don't really evaluate that and so this steps to the title for this this session really is digital transformations a lot of them they struggle to be considered successful and this research done by the Boston Consulting Group back in October 2020 says that only 30% of digital transformation initiatives are successful right where successful means limited or no value created or some value created but not all the targets were met and there is limited long-term change like that bucket of 70% of these organizations that have went out and tried to do digital transformations have actually found that they haven't hit the value that they were expecting yet and so for the remainder of the session what I'm going to cover with you is like what contributes to a strained relationship what are the signs that it's not going so well and then how to write the ship if possible and this is really geared towards those nonprofits out there that are either thinking about making a technology purchase decision with a SaaS cloud provider or they are in the process of considering whether or not to renew an existing subscription with a cloud provider so what contributes to a strained relationship first and foremost poor communications and this is when it just doesn't seem like the other side is really listening or may not even understand the challenge you're trying to solve and this is going to get manifested through some of these other steps I'm going to show you team changes so this happens often and this can be on your side or on the technology vendor side especially nowadays when we're talking about the great resignation or people just leveraging their experience and going to try out different things is that people move around all the time the unfortunate thing when you consider that is that it leaps the lost knowledge that person who was an expert in that cloud-based HR application they might take that knowledge with them on the vendor side that rep that you dealt with that knew exactly they really listened they understood what you were doing with the solution why you wanted to buy it they might get promoted or move to another company all together and then you lose some of that relationship you lose some of that knowledge that you had with that vendor as well so those team changes can be really disruptive misaligned objectives and this one is a tricky one because I think apparently we know that there can be misaligned objectives between a technology company that's trying to sell us more modules or more users or more add-ons versus what our non-profit organization might view as an objective which could be increasing efficiency securing more donors so more donations to your charity these are misaligned objectives one side wants one thing the other side wants another thing and so sometimes you can find that you're not necessarily speaking the same language the really forward-thinking innovative and understanding technology organizations will understand that in order for them to be successful you as a non-profit have to be successful so that alignment is getting better but there are still situations when that misalignment can be a bit of a challenge broken promises definitely contribute to a strange relationship right so this is expectations versus reality versus reality I noticed that in my history as a CSM this was often uncovered during or after the implementation phase where you know the folks at the non-profit the customer side are saying we saw that in the demo and like why don't we see it being set up right now like where is that function or feature that that cool thing that we saw why isn't it present in the solution technical issues I think we all know they're going to happen it's when they happen too often right this is this can definitely cause a strange relationship you buy this new flashy software your users are using it and then you're consistently getting outages or issues or product challenges with it it just lets people start to roll their eyes and can really start to hit the reputation of that technology per provider within your organization Hey Kevin just a quick follow-up here coming in from Monica in the chat who's actually if you could just give a quick definition of what is digital transformation ah sure yeah sure absolutely so digital it's funny because it's such a broad topic and set of terms but digital transformation and I'll try to do my best to define it is the adoption or use or implementation of technology solutions to to advance your organization's purpose by making things more efficient more streamlined it's really taking a step towards investing in technology and the organizational changes associated with that technology to propel your organization's purpose forward okay I don't want to get lost on digital transformation just being we're buying software it's not just that it's actually the combination of of purchasing finding and purchasing solutions and technology and investing in it and learning about it but it's also ensuring that you've got the organizational change you've got the right team members and people in place to make sure that you're successful with that or with that purchase or with that digital transformation initiative and so this conversation that we're having right now is focusing on as we embark on that digital transformation as we're going out there and putting out RFPs and doing research and googling different types of software and solutions let's not forget that there is a really important element of purchasing that solution that is is founded on your relationship with the vendor that you're about to buy from okay does that help Elijah yeah that's super helpful and just to others feel free to drop your questions into the chat and I'll through the course of the event drop in and ask them for you awesome thanks what a great question because it's such this it's just really broad and amorphous kind of term that we see a lot of and I think a lot of folks have have sometimes struggled with how to accurately define it so great question all right so we talked about things that can strain our relationship with your technology partner and provider right now some signs that things are not going so well decreased usage so when you realize that your team isn't utilizing the solution to the extent you thought they would you invest it in some amazing CRM solution that's going to help you connect it and work with your donors and keep track of what they're donating and and all that good stuff all that function I that's promised but then you find out that your team is still leveraging like Microsoft Excel because they don't really trust that solution or they find it to clunk your Clujie and they want to use their system that they've already got that's a bad sign right because you go and you purchase these solutions because you want to eliminate I'll call them bad processes slow process inefficiencies so decrease usage is a share sign as a sure sign sorry that things aren't going so well no or low responsiveness so when you reach out to your technology partner for support for assistance training even best practices and your requests your calls your emails they go unanswered or they're very delayed that's a sign that they're not invested in the relationship to the greed that they need to be and that you'd want them to be right sometimes we need those answers quickly sometimes we're just really trying to learn about how to use solution more effectively so we can hit those KPIs get that return on investment that we promised our board and so when there's low responsiveness we struggle and say what's going on here constant escalations so often have to ask for higher ups to get involved in resolving various issues this goes back to those system outages those problems with the software solution if we constantly have to go back to the vendor or a partner and say hey we got to escalate this again who's your executive who's the head of support who's their who's their boss who's the boss's boss's boss that's a problem right that's a sign that things aren't really going so well in terms of your relationship with that partner complaints versus collaboration so I've seen this happen a few times where the approach towards resolving issues is more like a list of complaints that a customer or a non-profit will send over to their technology partner and while we understand that there is there's an urge to do that say hey fix all these issues try to approach it from a perspective of collaboration where the conversation isn't here's a list of all our issues go fix them it's more around okay we've identified a list of issues we've prioritized and we've identified which ones are like the top three and here are the quantitative reasons why there are biggest issues how can we work together on on resolving them right it's that you versus we mentality that helps you get things resolved a lot faster and then helps build towards the true collaboration I've talked about this one a few times lower unclear return on investment so I've seen this a few times the higher ups come to you with your non-profit and say okay we're looking at the budget we've invested 10 20 30 000 dollars in this solution like how do we prove that it's delivering what we thought it was going to approve and if you don't have access to a quick report or you can't paint that story that message using numbers that really show you're getting value out of it it's really hard to to prove that it's worthwhile doing that renewal that's a really difficult position to be in when you can't actually prove that you're successful with that solution and then this one not referenceable when your technology partner or vendor reaches out to you and says hey would you be willing to jump on a reference call for us and you're you hesitate you're like hmm I'm not so sure we want to do that or when your technology partner or a sales rep comes to you and says hey I'm about to do presentation and a demo and a pitch to another non-profit just like you would you mind if we use your logo on our presentation in front of them and your answers no please don't right that that's a sign that things are not going so well because it means you are not being you're not in a position to be an advocate for that particular software solution okay and so let's get to how to write the ship so first and foremost I have used these interchangeably and that was on purpose but consider the terms partner versus vendor vendors are easily replaced and partners are in it for the long haul and this speaks back to the fact that when you're entering into a software subscription it's usually going to last for one two three four or even five years that means that you're going to be working with that partner over a long period of time it's not a one and done situation and so start to infuse that language when you're working with them directly when you're putting out RFPs when you're even making having discussions internally start to talk about technology partners that you want to be in alignment or connected with as opposed to just vendors and will change the mentality within your non-profit the next one so once you've selected your partner be transparent talk openly about goals challenges timelines expectations the key thing here that I'll highlight is as you talk about those goals challenges and timelines and expectations keep them closely associated or next to the contract in the same folder attached to each other whatever you want to do whatever you want to call it keep it next to the contract that you signed with that vendor build a roadmap to success so collaborate with your partner on a path and steps towards success with the solution document that roadmap I've actually seen some cool graphics where it was literally a roadmap and it was okay purchase the solution now we're going to implement after invitation we're going to meet you know once a quarter and discuss the following metrics or KPIs once you document and then create that path together collaboratively collaboratively you're both in it together right you're both walking the path it's not you driving down the road it's you and your partner in the passenger seat okay now along with the roadmap monitor the metrics together right this goes back to how you prove that you're actually getting value out of the solution that the budget that you you you put into it is actually worth it and the way to do that is to monitor the metrics the key though is to monitor the metrics with your partner so work with them to build reports and dashboards and figure out a cadence with which in with which to monitor those metrics the key is that both sides need to be looking at the same data and this goes back to misaligned objectives right if you are sitting down with your technology partner and you know that you've got certain metrics and they look at them and they're like yep we get it we agree that all makes sense and you're constantly regularly looking at them there's no mistaking or there's no confusion around areas of responsibility or accountability who needs to do what in order to hit those metrics together now in line with that have regular quality meetings so I would suggest a tactical touch point at least once a month if possible and this all depends on time and energy and availability and strategic meetings at least once every three months ideally and it's during these strategic meetings where you're going to talk about the metrics you're going to go back and take a look and run that report together with your partner you're going to take a look at where we are on that roadmap you're going to talk about some challenges or things or timelines that are off this is your opportunity to bring that list of kind of challenges that prioritize list of challenges and have like leadership and executives on both sides come in and talk about those things openly and candidly together okay that's the importance of having those regular but quality meetings and then finally sometimes you got to know when to pull the shoot and and it's becomes an easier conversation to be honest with you because if you are doing the previous five steps there will be no surprises here if you're sitting down and meeting with your technology partner and talking about the fact that we both agree that these were the metrics that were important to us that we're going to increase our our total donors contributions we were going to be able to send out more emails and solicit more donations from folks we were going to be we're going to have increased number of attendees at our events that we put together if you both realize that you're not hitting those metrics it starts to beg the question as is this a partnership that is really working in what needs to be done to either drastically correct it or consider moving in separate directions okay but the key is to be ready for that conversation be open and be honest about it as well okay all right so should you need assistance as I mentioned I've started up greenmer it's consulting it's my sole kind of advisory and one of the key things that I focus on is how to help nonprofits navigate these conversations and discussions with cloud technology providers to call it my software as a service subscription assistance and really what it means is I'm an experienced set of eyes on your subscriptions I can take a look through the contracts that you've got the msa's all the language the emails that are provided and really help me make sense of what you signed up for and and what it actually means it's really someone on your side of the table at purchase of a software solution or at renewal time let's kind of say okay I'm going to sit with you I'm going to understand what your business is all about which nonprofits trying to accomplish and what you're trying to do and let's look at that in the context of what that technology provider is trying to set you up with what's actually showing up on the contract what are they saying during those demo sessions and those contractual insights lend themselves into the business side like the efficiency side what you're trying to what pain points you're trying to solve the legal side and by all means I'm not a lawyer but I've been on those conversations where I'm taking a look at a contract I'm taking a look at the legal language in it along with the lawyers and you need to be able to provide insight as to legal language and what the impact means for the solution that you're trying to purchase then there's numerous examples that I've seen of this one situation was there was a clause in a software contract I was looking at where it was you will not be able to include any personal identifiable information in the software in the cloud and this would obviously not work in the situation because the solution was a solution for registering event attendees and was going to have things like name email address phone number other contact information all this kind of thing so it was a legal clause but it didn't necessarily resonate with why the organization why the nonprofit was going to be using that solution in the first place and that's what I mean by illegal insight the last one is tech right so being able to understand what it means to buy a solution and a technology standpoint like what does it mean for your it team if you have one how is this solution going to integrate with other solutions how do you extract your data how do you move things around like all those insights are sometimes captured within the contract and within the software itself and so I want to leave you with this final quote from Kevin Kelly of wired magazine I really like this one because it captures the essence of what we're talking about here since the relationship involves two members investing in it its value increases twice as fast as one's investment this speaks to partnerships right before you're just going out and just buying technology because you saw a demo and you talked to a couple folks and they think it's the right way to go really understand that you're not just buying software you're actually forming a partnership a relationship with that technology partner and by forming that relationship and by being transparent and open and honest with them on both sides of the equation you have a much higher chance of increasing your success with your digital transformation initiative okay my email is there website green merits dot com by all means you can get a flavor for some of what I'm talking about here at my website and especially on my blog where I post typically about once a month on these kinds of topics but how to think about contracts how to think about going about building these relationships gotchas things you want to watch out for ball means feel free to reach out and chat with me there all right thanks so much for everybody Elijah I'll pass it back over to you to see if there's any outstanding questions love it that sounds good so friends throw things into the chat and and we'll start coming to those questions in just a moment to start us off I've got one question in my back pocket which is so when I'm starting to go about the process of just deciding to buy some new software who should I actually include in that team and into that decision-making process is it something you're just like go do it yourself and don't let other people slow you down or who should be part of the mix that's a great question it and it's one that I've seen firsthand in my experiences working inside cloud technology companies what happens a lot of times is because the software solutions and their design this way are really easy to use we like the demos we understand how to click through and navigate and our digital literacy is really getting up there it seems like we just go buy it on our own we see it we know what it does we get the flavor for it and we're like okay you know what I've got it I can figure this out and we're good to go that unfortunately leads to sometimes is buyer's remorse when you leave out critical or important teams like legal like it and I've seen this happen in situations where a line of business someone in HR someone in finance they go and they find a solution and they buy it and then later on after the contract is signed after it's been implemented someone in it catches wind of it or someone on the legal team catches wind of it or it's time for renewal and more questions are getting asked about why are we buying more users and more modules and all this kind of stuff and it becomes a really contentious difficult conversation because you've already locked in that relationship with that technology partner for one three or five years and so my advice to anybody is if you have access to an IT team illegal team within your nonprofit of course is to pull them into the conversation include them and say okay I'm thinking about this I'd like to get your insight can you take a look can you just make sure I've I've done my due diligence across the board yes we like the functionality that it provides but I also want to get the perspective of our legal team just to make sure these clauses are okay and I want to get the perspective of our IT team to make sure this solution fits within our infrastructure okay I've seen some unfortunately some I don't say horror stories but some unfortunate situations where after a contract is signed there are fundamental things that are missing that are important especially for the nonprofit sector that often has very sensitive information housed within some of these systems right yeah bring it to other teams even if it feels like it might slow you down a little bit because it will save you infinite pain after absolutely absolutely fires remorse too often if the wrong folks or folks are left out of the conversation altogether and I get it there's an urge to we got the budget we gotta you gotta use it now I get those pressures I understand that but consider the tail end of that if your team members your critical team members aren't included later on right so Emily I've just given you the power to come on Mike I think you've got a great comment here in the chat if you want to pop in love you to ask it here with the rest of us otherwise I can read it out on your behalf here we go Emily it looks like you're on your way yet thank you sorry just takes me a minute to find all the little buttons I'm actually was just writing another comment just because I'm in BC in Canada and legally we can't store personal or certain types of private information on a server that's not in Canada so I'm always looking at where you're trying to read through all the background on stuff and it's hard to find organizations or digital platforms that tell you where they actually store sure your servers are but but yeah I'm in the middle of trying to just do get people to use Google Drive what I'm and I'm running into resistance with that because there's just no yeah that's the biggest challenge is having people buy into storing the files online so that everybody can access them so we don't have to go into the office and track down please email or the phone number in order to contact members yeah that's such a great point Emily I ran into that a lot with the cloud organizations that I worked for as well requirements to have data stored within a certain data center a certain geographical region for a host of different reasons and certain providers are actually able to accommodate that when you have that conversation with them and talked about why it's so important I'm not sure about Google and I would say probably maybe Google but also probably Dropbox sometimes what I've seen is flexibility around being able to choose what data center you're going to have your data stored it now it depends on some of the clout that you might or may not have with that particular vendor who you're talking to on the sales team but for a lot of situations like that there are technical responses it's or answers to it it's do you feel equipped to be able to have that type of conversation with the partner knowing that you're going to be spending valuable dollars on it as well I think it's a fair question to raise especially those legitimate concerns on the other side like you mentioned it's getting used to cloud technologies and realizing that it's in the cloud and while it might be backed up in one geographic region it's probably going to be backed up in another one so there's that element of it too and it lends itself to a broader conversation around overall data security and strategy but you hit the nail on the head with having that kind of tough conversation about the legal clauses what's allowed what's not allowed and does it actually make sense for what you're trying to do as an organization awesome that's really helpful yeah I've got another comment here coming in from Kevin who I'm now going to throw on to Mike as well Kevin if you're still there I'd love to just pop on Mike otherwise I can certainly read it out for you as well oh I don't have a mic gotcha there is yeah you have to read it talk me to do that so from regular attendee Kevin Kwok we've got a great comment here which is I've experienced our HR team implementing a cloud solution for the hiring process but they did not talk to IT apparently a story we've heard before after we were locked into the contract IT then found out that the solution was cloud based and realized that it was missing a core module they're like if HR had consulted with IT you always see if only you had we would have been able to point that out before signing the contract yes I think this is a great comment that's reiterated about bringing more people into the decision-making process as much as you sometimes don't want to yeah but a great example thanks for sharing that Kevin yeah and it's not a case where it happens all the time but when you see it happen it's ah why don't you just talk to us it's not even an ego thing it's like we could have done this together and everybody there would be no missing items that we thought we saw in the demo there'd be no surprise costs there'd be no more buyers or reduced buyers remorse if we just approached this all together and really thought about what the desired outcome at the end was going to be and I think that that that comment that situation that Kevin kind of spelled out that's really what we're trying to avoid especially as nonprofits who have to be really diligent and pay attention to those precious dollars that we get access to to really push our causes for it for the for all the great reasons we have to put that extra rigor around what it means to spend money on technology solutions not just because they're cool and fancy but because they're actually going to deliver some meaningful full value to our organizations but this is also a really good reminder of just how cloud-based software as a service has really changed the whole IT process in the old days there was no way HR was going to bring software into the organization because it would have had to go onto the server in your closet and it would have been frankly impossible and now any of us can start the procurement process interesting but also as you see sometimes a point of pain the other thing that really stuck out to me from your introduction was the fact that they said there's a 30% failure rate I believe it was for for these like projects where people just feel like they're not actually getting the value and honestly that's really high I remember always looking at like the if you create your own IT project right it used to be like oh basically only 10% of them were actually fully security but the failure rate that the delays were so significant so it's one of the advantages of cloud is you're taking a battle-tested system that isn't just you so I think that was another thing that really stuck out with me which is like the blessing and the curse of the over trying to do is limit those curses and set ourselves up to try and avoid them as much as possible yeah no spot on Elijah so I've got another question coming in from Monica let's see if you're able to come join us here otherwise I'm happy to read that out on your behalf as well okay sorry about that you can hear me you're coming through great excellent okay I'm working in a consult really a general project base with an organization who has so far been using Google Forms, Excel, spreadsheets right they're doing well with that they do a lot of scheduling of our products for high school students and so they know they need tech but they are caught between two two different needs one they want to measure impact right what are they really doing what they say they're supposed to do according to their mission which they're struggling with both in getting the information back from schools organizing it analyzing it right and creating reports that's the number one need number two though is just all of their processes right they're constantly scheduling rescheduling setting up zooms there's a lot of possibility for automation and efficiency and so at first they were thinking we'll do it all and I've decided that it's just too overwhelming and that their big need is actually the measurement the impact piece so I'm curious just in terms of your expertise does it make sense to start small and to add on or do they go at all these and maybe a phased implementation but I'm worried that they're going to waste money and time and build systems that don't talk to each other to be honest oh gotcha got no such a great question Monica so what I have seen and I'm thinking through my years as a CSM what I've typically seen be the most successful approach is actually to start small now start small but it also includes an element of really in-depth planning around what the to be state will be right so we think about as is how things are going right now and then we think about to be like what do you want this processor system look like in the future and so I typically advise to start off small because you end up with a situation where as if you adopt too much of the solution or set up too many complex processes up front there's potential training issues integration issues you end up with a potential issue of shelfware where you bought all this stuff but you're only using about like half of it or like 25 percent of it and that's money down the tubes it's another kind of key concept we we sign on free software subscriptions for x number of the dollars a year but we don't really attribute like loss to value when it's not in use okay we bought it it's there we'll get around to it but it's now for every day or month that solution is not being used you're not getting the value which just erodes the whole business case so I lean more towards start off small like crawl walk run approach but at the same time when we talk about that concept of building a road map with your technology partner like that's when you should be able to sit down with them and say okay we're going to start here but here's who want to go you're the technology like guru expert you understand our business case because we've been completely transparent and open and honest with you and have our expectations and challenges let's build that road map together and if you do that really collaboratively and openly and honestly I think you'll realize that you're going to get more success with your investments in some of those cloud solutions as opposed to the opposite of saying okay let's buy all the modules now and turn everything on and then halfway down the road you're like okay wait a second we're not really using everything as effective as we could now the one thing I'll add on to that is the benefit of transparency in building that road map with your technology partners and vendors is that you can actually structure your contracts in such a way that it grows as you grow oftentimes I hear situations that are folks that like the deal that they gave us is a one or three or five year contract and this is what the cost is going to be for one three or five years know what I'm encouraging people to do not profit to do especially is like challenge your technology partners to get creative with a model that is conducive to your rate of growth your expected growth okay and they can do that there's there's ways of doing it it's it's not impossible again I sit on that side of the fence and I did it a lot of times it's got to ask the right questions and be able to position and talk about the reasons why you need to set up a certain way awesome that's really helpful I've just got actually a great comment coming in here from Kevin who was actually addressing the question about data storage needs with some of the cloud solutions so Kevin says to answer the question about data being stored in Canada Google workspaces for nonprofits does not currently allow you to have a choice of that data being stored in Canada however the Microsoft for nonprofits program most of them by the way are in the taxi catalog allows you to select where that data storage is happening so you could do that within Canada so that particular solution will can help address that concern that some organizations may have that's very interesting hopefully I captured that correctly Kevin I've also got a comment coming in here from Emily who do you want to come on mic for that one just about the one solution the one ring kind of approach or not yeah just that I wasn't expecting anything to fill all the needs and I think it's and it's and I'm approaching it as a very slow one step at a time so right now I'm using a free form filling out program but I can download it all into excel and I can store that information so I'm not losing anything but what I'm doing is I'm preparing the volunteers and the staff and the board to use an online form and once we max out our capacity and we need to purchase that solution then we can start looking at what solution we actually need but I'm still really new to the game of what solutions there are for our type of non-profit and I'm some it's been a huge it I'm not even a year into my position it's been a steep learning curve sure I can imagine drinking from a fire hose I think is the expression no I can completely get it and your approach to taking makes sense Emily especially as you ramp up and get more familiar with the systems and the tools and what else is out there but yeah if you're ever looking for a sounding board or someone to help out and helping out or assisting with things to watch out for things to consider you've got my email address and file means feel free to reach out anytime I've also got something coming in here from Monica has a question about starting small versus getting everything you need up front and I kept in touch on that with the talk about how you can structure your agreements to scale with your needs but Monica do you want to pop on mic just go deeper into that question yeah I think that Kevin answered that for the most part already I just wanted to also mention that I love how you reinforce the idea to be transparent and open I think I'd come in that there's this feeling I think sometimes about not putting all the cars in the table because you worry that the vendor might take advantage or they want to sell you way more and so I think that's really helpful to think about that to challenge them I think you had mentioned to come along on the path with you so thanks for that yeah absolutely totally as a CSM I found myself that much more successful and to be honest with you even more engaged or I felt like I was part of the team when there was that mutual trust that give and take and they were like hey this is what we're trying to do with your solution help us achieve that goal versus some of those situations where it was like no we're not going to tell you what we're really working on it's like we bought the software fix our list of issues and we'll talk to you later kind of thing it's just a different dynamic and I think that's why one of the key things I want to focus on was setting up a partnership versus just a vendor kind of relationship it sets the tone for the relationship for multiple years Kevin that's super duper helpful thank you so much for coming here sharing your expertise and for being so generous with your time