Seminar offers low cost Smart Solutions

The morning session gave attendees the chance to listen to experts in these technologies on how they could be used to transform service delivery, information management processes and online communications.

Speakers included:

• Seamus McAleavey, Chief Executive of NICVA – “A third of organisations thrive in a recession”
• Ciarán Hayden, Synovations – “Transforming your organisation with CRM technologies”
• Geoffrey Ready, Avec Solutions – “Slash your IT budget and improve efficiency with online and open source software”
• Michael Hughes, Invest NI – “Online marketing and social media primer”
• Mark Fitzsimmons, Microsoft – “Microsoft cloud services – exploring Office 365 and other services”

Attendees used the afternoon session to further explore the practicalities of, and potential issues with, implementation of these technologies.

The key message to emerge from this seminar is that small organisations can benefit most from technologies such as Client Relationship Manager systems, social media, and cloud computing. These technologies offer low cost solutions to voluntary and community organisations and can be used to address information and operational problems, radically improving how they do business. The kind of change and innovation needed to keep ahead in today’s climate can be achieved much more easily and economically than is often perceived.

Given the wide range of activities that voluntary and community organisations can be involved in (campaigning, service delivery, membership services, legal monitoring, information management, training, advocacy, research, collaboration, to name a few), problems have arisen around duplication of effort, measuring and evaluating impact, information security, reporting, and strategic planning.

The positive message to emerge from all the speakers is that solutions are available to integrate systems and tailor them to the specific needs of your organisation.

However, several speakers issued a note of caution, advising that successful integration of solutions into an organisation is not just about the introduction of new technology. A much more strategic overview should be taken with people and processes considered alongside technology to achieve maximum benefit.