At Your Service!

Change and the Church - Example

2008-05-07T20:08:00Z

Example

Church project managers and Fellowship Technologies can plan, convert, configure, install, train and deliver, but church leadership sets the tone and climate for change. If you are not seen as a participant in the change or are aloof and isolated from it, you'll undermine the project.

Fully participate in the change. Endorse the change decision, the implementation project and the system. Put your support behind the implementation team and ensure that it’s seen and noticed.

Support your people by giving them the time they need to complete their implementation tasks.

Once the system is live, use it! Look up phone numbers. Run reports. Look at metrics. Monitor your staff’s follow up on people’s requests. Use the system yourself, and let your staff know that you expect them to do the same. You can encourage the adoption of Fellowship One by letting staff know which reports you’re interested in, and asking them to enter information from their ministry areas into Fellowship One so you can run your reports.

Once past the change barrier, Fellowship One will dramatically increase your church’s capability to carry out the Great Commission and Great Commandment and to expand God’s Kingdom in your community and around the world.

With permission by Brad Merkle
A Former Delivery Manager at
Fellowship Technologies

Change and the Church - Grace

2008-05-07T20:05:00Z

Grace

Agree to create an umbrella of grace during the time of transition. For a period of time, there will be no experts on the new system. Give people a chance to poke around and learn [review on demand videos and participate in Ask the Expert Sessions]. Communicate, model and reinforce this key component of the Christian life. People are much freer to take a chance on change in an atmosphere of grace.

Communicate the grace message to your congregation too. They can make the transition to new check-in procedures and contributions posting processes much smoother if their also extended grace.

Some of your staff will need to spend extra time on system-related issues during the transition and go-live phases of implementation. Give them the time needed to do a good job on these important tasks.

We as parents have considerable grace for our children, in this situation the end users are very childlike moving into a new product. Another area where children look to us is through example. In the next and last blog we will discuss serving as an example to your staff.

Change and the Church - Narrow

2008-05-07T20:04:00Z

Narrow

Keep the implementation project manageable by narrowing the scope of change. Change too much too fast and you’ll overwhelm people. Fellowship Technologies can work with you to keep the extent of change in check. We can help you develop a rollout plan for adding new functionality and making it available to more groups within your church. The principle here is to the “KISS” principle; keep it simple and small.

Even if you follow the first part of this formula, you are still certain to encounter resistance, so grace it the key for those who continue to struggle. Next time we will touch on grace for those in need.

Change and the Church - Adapt

2008-05-07T19:18:00Z

Adapt

Fellowship One surfaces many new opportunities for your church. One opportunity that sometimes gets overlooked is the chance to learn some relevant new technology. The days of packaged software and client/server architecture are quickly fading. Fellowship Technologies is a Software as a Service (SaaS). The SaaS model is widely acknowledged as the future of software distribution and usage. By giving people a chance to learn Fellowship One in particular and the SaaS model in general, people can acquire skills that have much more headroom than the ChMS packages churches use today.

Adjusting and adapting to anything new requires patience, humility and trust. If communication flows freely and the project stays in perspective, it’s much easier for people to adapt and adjust. When staff sees this as an opportunity for their own personal growth, as well as contribution to the growth of their church adaption can come more easily.

However, there is one thing to watch out for as you roll it out and that is being too broad. Next time we will touch on keeping the project Narrow.

Change and the Church - Heart

2008-05-07T19:15:00Z

Heart

The membership database or church management system (ChMS) is a fundamental tool in a church’s IT support infrastructure. Changing or replacing it will impact people. They’ll feel the change.

Because changing the system creates some additional short-term work for those directly involved in the conversion project and can add temporary hassles for others, people can sometimes lose their perspective on its importance.

You must emphasize to your staff and congregation that the heart of your ministry will not change because of Fellowship One. Reinforce to your staff and congregation that the core of the church’s mission and purpose will never change. The forms may change, but the function never will. You restore people’s perspective when you say, “Yes, we are changing this part of our ministry, but it’s just a tool, it isn’t the core - here’s what will never change…”

• You are changing some methods, but not your message
• You are changing some technologies, but not your tenants
• You are changing some processes, but not your principles
• You are changing some computers, but not your commission
• You are changing some software, but not your soul

Often technology gets a bad rap for many reasons and often feels like a weighted change within the Church. If the staff, congregation and leadership are able to place the change in perspective, it can help them adapt. Next time we will dive deeper into the third letter of the acronym, Adapt.

Change and the Church - Communication

2008-05-07T19:13:00Z

Communication

Communication is the most important of the six change factors. All the other factors depend on effective communication. It didn’t take long for Fellowship Technologies to realize that some of our early implementations faltered largely because of poor communication. At least 8 key groups of people must communicate well in a successful implementation:

• Fellowship Technologies (the company: product development, support, testing etc.)
• Fellowship Technologies Field Consultants
• Church Project Manager
• Church Leaders
• Church Staff
• Church Volunteers
• Church Congregation
• Other Church Vendors (web designers, Internet service providers, hardware vendors, etc.)

Successful implementations depend on far more than flawlessly executing tasks like data conversion, system configuration, hardware installation, etc. Our rollouts are most effective in churches where project leaders and church leaders communicate well and set appropriate expectations with the staff and congregation. Switching to a system like Fellowship One without effectively explaining the need for change, the implications of the change, or the benefits of the change, can lead to all the classic signs of poor communication, including suspicion, fear, confusion, distrust and rumor.

Communicating with your people about the change to Fellowship One is so important because many of them won’t know the most basic facts related to the change decision and how it will affect them. Many times, resistance stems from simple questions or concerns that aren’t heard. Taking the time to listen to your people and develop an effective communication plan will reap great rewards in a successful implementation.

Fellowship Technologies has a number of resources available to help you develop a plan to effectively communicate with your staff and congregation about the system change. Sample communication plans are available from Fellowship Technologies. Your communication plan should contain four simple components.

• Who to tell
• What to tell them
• When to tell them
• How to tell them

A good communication plan that is well-executed is the salve that smoothes any rough zones in the implementation process.

Communication seems to be key of any healthy relationship. So as we communicate let’s remember to commutate with heart, which by the way is the next letter of the acronym. We’ll look at that topic in more detail next.

Change and the Church - An IT Perspective

2008-05-07T19:11:00Z

Change and the Church – An IT Perspective

Change is inevitable, progress is not
Bertrand Russell
Progress is a nice word
Progress starts with change
Change has its enemies
Robert F. Kennedy (paraphrased)

“What is the most challenging part of your job?” a friend asked me as we were catching up the other day. After thinking for a minute, I realized that the answer had nothing to do with technology. Rather, the most significant factor I face in successfully implementing Fellowship One in churches all over the country is resistance to change.

Most churches don’t like to change. At first, this seemed like the normal byproduct of the fact that churches are comprised of people – and most people don’t like to change. Then my friend made a startling observation. “Isn’t it strange that the church should have such a hard time with change when its mission and directive is to implement the most radical and extreme change imaginable – taking people from darkness and death into light and life through the transforming work of Jesus Christ?” After that conversation I realized that if I could learn some skills to help people manage the change to Fellowship One, I could significantly impact my company’s ability to successfully implement the system, but more importantly I could better serve my churches and minister to those who struggle with the change.

Of course, prudence, responsibility and due diligence are important when churches investigate the purchase of new software, services or other items. This paper discusses the challenges of implementing change once the church leaders make the decision to move to Fellowship One. It doesn’t address the buying decision process.

“Change” is an emotionally packed word. For some it is invigorating and exciting. For others it is terrifying and threatening. Most people’s lives are based on routines – doing the same things the same way, day after day. Their unspoken, and often unconscious, expectation is that everything will stay the same. As soon as you interrupt their routine, they resist. An individual’s reaction to change is complex, but certainly involves personality, temperament, giftedness and life experiences. Yet somehow, the strength of a church’s resistance to change seems more than the sum of each individual’s resistance; something in the structure of most churches seems designed against change.

But in order to take advantage of a powerful new technology like Fellowship One a church must change certain systems, processes, methods and maybe even roles. To successfully implement Fellowship 1, the implementation team, led by Fellowship Technologies’ Delivery Manager and the church’s Project Manager, must be sensitive to the church’s change barometer.

I’ve used the word “CHANGE” to form an acrostic that emphasizes six key factors in successful Fellowship One implementations relative to the change phenomenon:

Communication
Heart
Adapt
Narrow
Grace
Example

Now that the stage is set we will walk through each of the letters that comprise this easy to remember acronym in the following weeks. Look for Communication next time.

Change and the Church - Introduction

2008-05-07T19:09:00Z

The only constant in life is change. There are normally two ways to accept this fact:

• Yes, and I don’t have to like it.
• Yes, and I will adjust because change is part of life.

Which of the above responses depicts how you respond to change? Your response can determine how pleasant or miserable the experience of change will be for you.

Serving on the staff of a new and fast growing church for eight years, change happened so rapidly, I often did not know if I was coming or going. In the beginning, I went with the flow of all the changes happening around me, then resisted. I became weary of change as it occurred so often, then overtime gave up hoping that things would stabilize. In the end, I finally learned that change is good. Whether change yields positive results or not, I have chosen to embrace change in order to be content while growing through it. It is been my experience that change promotes growth.

It has been said, hindsight is 20/20. Looking back on my experiences, I can see that the life cycle of the new and fast growing church is very much like physical life cycle; (infant, toddler, adolescent, pre-teen, teen, young adult, adult, middle age, and senior years). The maturity of the church, staff, and leadership all seemed to step through each parallel cycle. There were many changes during those early years; many good, many not so good, but change occurred nonetheless. Change happens all throughout life, so we can choose to fight it and be miserable or choose to embrace it and be content. Which will you choose?

In my current role as Customer Care Specialist at Fellowship Technologies, my observation is that change to a new ChMS (Church Management System) for many churches is difficult due to unpreparedness for that change. A friend of mine, former co-worker from the church I worked at and a previous Fellowship Technologies Delivery Manager, wrote a very nice article regarding change. I would like to share it with you over the coming weeks. I believe it will give you a new perspective on change as it relates to IT and the Church.

My hope is that the article will introduce you to strategies to assist in change. Because time is often a constraint for each of us and I believe this information will benefit many, I am breaking this down into a series of posts. Next time we begin with “Change and the Church – An IT Perspective”

Introducing

2008-04-30T16:54:00Z

As you may already know, we are searching for qualified candidates to add to our Support Team. We are blessed to have just hired our new addition, Barbara Perser. You may start hearing from her soon as we rapidly bring her up to speed. Barbara comes to us from a rich background in customer service. We look forward to the abilities she adds to the team and we hope you will see those gains as well.

Strategically, we will be aligning our teams so that they support a defined set of our client base. We hope to continually build a relationship over time which will allow us to learn your organization and assist you more effectively. Please stay tuned as we bring these changes to life!

Now Seeking

2008-03-12T17:02:00Z

Do you know anyone who is interested in working for Fellowship Technologies? Are they passionate about helping others? Do they love interacting with ministry partners throughout the world? Do they love serving the body of Christ? Do they consider work a form a worship? Do they want to help empower the local church through advanced technology?

Fellowship Technologies is growing rapidly and we’re seeking passionate and qualified individuals to join our Customer Support team. Click here for details of the job description and qualifications.

If you know anyone who is interested in our joining our team, please have them submit their resume to careers@fellowshiptech.com and mention that they heard about it from this blog.

Support or Education?

2008-02-20T20:31:00Z

As a support team we struggle to find that fine line between assisting the church with product functionality or directing them to our Education team for additional training. The Support team exists to assist churches in resolving issues and answer basic feature/function questions. Occasionally, we run into situations where the church staff member would benefit from some additional product training. Perhaps they are new to the church or are leveraging a new area of the product with which they’re unfamiliar.

To properly assist the church in these situations we offer several different options to meet your specific needs:

•   FREE online help with embedded “how to” videos
•   FREE online library of training videos that you can watch anytime, anywhere
•   FREE Live Q&A Sessions featuring interactive Q&A with a Fellowship One instructor
•   One-on-one consulting time, onsite or remote, for a low hourly rate

The Live Q&A Sessions are relatively new but are an excellent opportunity to interact with a Fellowship One instructor, to get your pressing questions answered, and perhaps learn from the questions of others. These FREE Q&A sessions are held on Tuesday at 10:00AM CT and Thursday at 2:00PM CT every week. In addition, we generally offer Ask the Expert sessions Wednesdays at 2:00PM CT. These sessions change topics from time to time, currently; they are centered around the Report Library and allow you to interact with an expert from our Reporting Team.

To sign up for an upcoming Live Q&A Session, simply go to the Education Tab on the Experience.FellowshipOne.com community site, then click on “View class schedule and register” under the “Online Instructor-led Q&A Sessions” heading. Look for the classes titled “Live Q&A”. We have segmented the classes into two topics: People Care (for any issues outside of finance) and Finance.

We encourage you to attend an upcoming Live Q&A Session. We pray that you find it informative and helpful to fully leverage the power of Fellowship One.

Experience Education

2007-12-14T20:24:00Z

At Fellowship Technologies, we take education seriously. We understand that if we provide the right tools to get the users trained, the experience will be successful. We are working hard to make education easy to use and have made some recent changes that I think warrant some attention.

One of the recent changes we have made involves registering for classes. We hope to assist you in finding the training class on a dynamic calendar rather than a static PDF calendar that does not understand when classes are full or re-scheduled.

On the Experience site, we offer video recordings, live instructor-lead training, and on-site/remote consulting. Simply sign in and then click the Education tab to access all of our offerings. The most significant change is how you will register for classes. You will now register directly through our online presentation provider’s site. Links will be available from the Education tab on the Experience site.

The training calendar has changed in a way that we hope will provide you more flexibility in registering for classes. When you access the calendar, you will notice that it is interactive. As shown in the image below, any class that is available shows the word “Register” beside the class.

WebLink classes are private between one church and the instructor, which means that only one church is able to sign up for each session time. Register will change to Full and will not be accessible if another church has taken the spot. During registration, WebLink customers will be asked to provide information on what topic should be covered during the session. This will help us plan for the class. If you need a reminder of what is covered in each class please visit the Education tab. Click Download the course catalog beneath Fellowship One WebLink.

WebLink classes are fee-based. Training package purchases are still available from the Education tab. Once a package has been purchased, the confirmation message provides you with a coupon code. Fees can be bypassed during registration by using the coupon code.

If you do not wish to purchase a package, you can pay for an individual class while registering.

The Registration Confirmation screen allows you to add the class to an electronic appointment calendar (such as Microsoft Outlook). A separate confirmation message containing the same information will be sent to the email address used when the student registers. Students will receive reminder emails 24 hours and 30 minutes prior to class.

Note: Students may forward confirmation emails to any additional staff members who need to attend the training sessions (especially for WebLink students). We are still asking that the church try to arrange a time when all staff members can be trained at once. In our experience, this practice makes for a successful training session as the group can collaborate and agree on configurations together.

We understand that life happens and that on occasion it may be necessary to cancel registrations. We are asking our students to let us know as soon as possible if they need to cancel.

If you have any questions or concerns about the new process, please feel free to contact us by sending your question to education@fellowshiptech.com.

Coming Soon!

In the future, we plan to update our video training delivery. We understand that the WebEx proprietary video player proves contentious for some users. Our plan is to re-record all of our training sessions in a flash format to allow for easy distribution and streaming. The flash format will also allow us to “chunk” these videos down to 6-15 minute segments. The videos will then be chaptered from our current course catalog. The chapters should assist your staff/volunteers to easily identify the “chunks” they should view as well as condense their training time by eliminating the need to watch an hour of video for the 15 minutes of content they need. The chaptered environment will allow the Fellowship One Champion or Project Manager to “package” classes according to specific roles at the church.

We are very excited to introduce these projects and I welcome any feedback you have to ensure we are on the right track.

May I Have Your Incident Reference Number Please?

2007-12-01T04:36:00Z

In the recent months, I have been making it a point to get out and build relationships with our clients. This does not mean sending an email, taking a survey, or talking over the phone. It means face to face meetings at YOUR location understanding YOUR issues and challenges. These trips have been a fantastic insight for me to understand how our current product and service offerings are affecting your daily work (good or bad). I believe the only way to truly understand the needs are to understand the big picture and the situations.

During these visits, I heard a very common “complaint” regarding our support team. The main complaint is this, “Why do you force us to submit an incident reference before calling your 800 number”? After explaining the scenario to the users I have met with, I think their mind set changed. While on the airplane, I decided to write a blog about this topic, not only to communicate our reasons, but to solicit feedback on ways we can improve.

Being a support center and a voice for the client at Fellowship Technologies, we require that any phone call, email, or conversation about our product be logged into our support management system. The main reason we require this is for the data. We like to understand what the hot topics are, are there any patterns to incidents, are most of these issues education items (if so, how can we do better in education), etc… It basically helps me communicate real data to our management team on how the product is performing and what the pain points are in the application. Secondarily, it holds our support team accountable for resolving the issue from start to finish by creating a tracking mechanism of your incident (kind of like tracking your FedEx package). We hope to continually increase your view into the steps for resolution of your incident. Lastly, it provides a work flow mechanism in which we can efficiently assign tasks to other teams should we rely on their service for resolution.

To answer the question “Why do you force us to submit an incident reference before calling your 800 number”? I can say that we DO NOT require you to submit an incident before calling (keep in mind that your current edition of Fellowship One may not include phone support). I do however; strongly encourage you to do so. My motivation is not one sided. The concern is getting resolution to your incident as quickly as possible. While I know we have room for improvement in this area, the idea is to save you valuable administration time on the phone.

Submitting an incident is a completely automated process from Fellowship One to our support management system. This means we simply match your information from your user record with that of our support management system programmatically. If your account does not exist, one is immediately created in a fraction of a second. If we create the incident for you, we must ensure your record currently exists or create a new record for you. There may be times when we can’t find your name because we misspelled your last name or your church name has changed and we did not have it on file. Any number of reasons could delay the time you are on the phone just in the administrative tasks of making sure we tie the incident to the correct user.

The most important reason we ask you to create an incident is for your own security. In the Internet world, we are all too familiar with the tactics a devious person can pursue just to get valuable information. If you submit an incident over the application, we are more confident that you are a registered and authorized user of your church’s database. Should we just create accounts for any user that calls in stating their name and church, we run the risk of mistaking their identity for a valid user of your system. We take the security of your data very seriously and want to ensure we only speak to active, authorized, and valid users of your church’s database. Phone verification and emails are not secure enough to provide that confidence to our support team.

If you are having an emergency in the system (check-in outage), I would not expect you to submit an incident before you call. We certainly will handle those issues and try to eliminate any administrative tasks you would have to perform so you can focus on the issue at hand.

If you do not have an urgent issue, but you still need to speak to someone fairly quickly, here is what I have suggested. Simply submit an incident, briefly state the problem, and let us know you are about to call. (e.g. when searching for a person, an error screen appears and I am about to call). Your incident will be submitted, you have a reference number to provide the support specialist for quick look up, and then you can just carry on your conversation describing your current road block. We are then confident we are talking to a currently active and authenticated user of the church’s database. You have also eliminated the time it would take on the phone to create an incident for you or create a new record if you had not previously submitted incidents though Fellowship One.

I hope I have provided insight into the reasons we ask for a reference number upon calling our 800 number. I have had experiences with other vendors where I could not even speak to a support team member until I have submitted an incident. We are not saying that you can’t call if you don’t have a reference number, these are simply the reasons we prefer you to have created one. So the next time you hear “Thank you for calling Fellowship Technologies, may I have your support reference number please?”, you understand the motivation for the question. I am open to and appreciate any comments you may have.

Use It or Lose It

2007-11-09T18:27:00Z

Did you ever grow up hearing your parents say "...use it or lose it!"? Studies show that when you utilize all of your brain's functions, your mental vitality grows. If you stop using portions of your brain, you are susceptible to discarding those areas, declining your mental vitality in your elder years.

So, how does this apply to the Customer Service blog? Over the years that I have been with Fellowship Technologies, it has become clear to me that one of the best ways we can assist our clients is to show them how well they are utilizing Fellowship One. How many times has Sprint or Verizon called you to say you were not utilizing your mobile plan effectively and on top of that, offered you a more cost effective plan? Our Customer Care department was created with this theme in mind. They are the champion for proactive care. This year, we were able to complete a project that would allow our Customer Care team to run a report on any client and evaluate their use of the application. We call this report the PAR (Personal Account Review). It is one of many tools we use to determine the overall health of a client.

The mission of the PAR is to assist our team in targeting clients who may not be utilizing Fellowship One completely. If they are not utilizing what they are paying for, we try to determine the reasons. Is it simply training or did the client know the functionality even existed? The attractiveness of the PAR is that it allows us to contact the client, know their utilization of the application, and proactively offer assistance on ways we can increase their use. There are times when during our discovery, we downgrade or upgrade the client's Fellowship One edition based on their needs. Staff changes at the local church are a big reason for the gaps in product knowledge. The person who bought the system is no longer working at the church, but the person who resumes control did not get the benefit of an overall demonstration of Fellowship One.

In the recent months, our Customer Care team has made this report available to each client so that you may review the report and analyze your utilization. The PAR can be found in the administration section of the report library under the folder titled Audit. You can also search by report codes (A1600 or A1602). You must have administrative report security rights to execute the PAR. We offer two versions; A1600 displays overall utilization for a period of time while A1602 shows your utilization month over month. Use the PAR in understanding utilization based on your Fellowship One edition.

The beginning phases of our Customer Care team's processes has provided insight into ways we can proactively ensure we meet your needs. As a learning organization, we continue to refine our process and target clients in a methodical manner. Who knows, you could be our next call. If you aren't using the application to the best of its ability, you could become apathetic to the functionality. This creates a stewardship gap and that is where we want to step in and ensure that your limited resources are maximized. Consider Fellowship One the brain. Do you want to increase your mental vitality? Use it or lose the momentum and vitality that Fellowship One can be for your church.

Service Side Up!

2007-11-01T12:23:00Z

Welcome to our new experience site. We have challenged ourselves once again to evolve our communication abilities and provide a complete service / sense of community for our users. Fellowship Technologies is definitely a learning organization and we appreciate any and all feedback related to our current direction.

This blog will primarily focus on ideas and ways Fellowship Technologies can best serve our clients. All too often, companies simply focus on the product. While I agree, you must have a great product that furthers the growth of any consuming organization; service is the ultimate tool to build relationships. Relationships turn into partnerships. Partnerships are paramount to fully utilize the resources of both organizations. Once that synergy is established, the two organizations are working toward one congruent goal, in our case, furthering the Kingdom.

We will be examining evolving service trends, throwing out ideas for service offerings, or requesting feedback on existing service. We look forward to this outlet for our clients. As stated before, being a learning organization requires us to understand that there is always room for improvement. Improvement through communication will be the key to unlocking the service needs of the local church. You are the consumer, we are the provider. The first piece to our puzzle, introducing the two parties for a relationship, has been solved. Now more than ever, we are ready to listen and act. We are At Your Service!

Lance Dacy