I recently returned from a lunch with the head of IT for a mega-church here in Dallas, who also happens to be one of our customers. One of his parting comments was one I have heard him say several times before about the size of his IT staff versus that of the typical mega-church in America.
The comment refers to the fact that many of his counterparts are amazed that this church does not have programmers that develop applications for the church. He consistently tells them that with Fellowship One, the church’s application needs are more than adequately addressed, especially compared to something they could build on their own using the same dollars. At other large mega-churches, he has seen five, six or in one case, 12 IT staffers to support the IT needs of the church. For what purpose? So they can develop a series of capabilities that the church needs now, only to have it change when the church grows and the needs change. In this mega-church’s case, to support a church staff of around 200, he has a staff of three, none of which are “programmers.”
When a church considers meeting its IT needs, it must consider not just the cost, but the effort and risks associated with recruiting and retaining solid IT talent. Here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, finding top IT talent is a challenge even for a company like Fellowship Technologies - and being the home of a good number of universities and the “Telecom Corridor,” we probably have an easier time than most. Unless a church wants to go “off shore”, IT resources in this country are not going to get any more abundant or any less expensive – there are just too many opportunities for the number of graduates coming out of colleges and tech schools.
As a result, many churches are attracted to the long term value proposition of a Software as a Service (SaaS) because they realize the pressure this relieves in having to constantly keep up with the ever increasing need to invest in the scarce resource called IT personnel. That said, we also see a resistance on the part of those very resources not wanting their church to embrace SaaS because of the infringement on their careers and thus livelihood. However, more IT staffs are beginning to realize that the only way they can meet the ever increasing information needs of the church staff and congregation is such an offering. And instead of threatening their position, these IT personnel begin to realize that it frees them up to do other more unique things that the church requires including managing an ever increasing set of IT providers from telecom to audio/video, improving the church’s website to always meet the needs of the various ministries and teaching the congregation how to protect their children from the worldly exposures of the world wide web!
In most churches I have seen, the demands on the IT personnel are greater than their capacity to deliver – not because of the quality of the people, but due to the extent of all the things asked of them relative to the budget they are given. I honestly believe that churches can extend the value of their IT dollars by off-loading the applications to a Software as a Service vendor. As my earlier posts on F1 pricing conveyed, consider the costs of the components, consider the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and consider the overall value of what is provided and how it can be utilized; SaaS is the cost-effective means to providing the information needs of a church. Sure, you can “buy” a church database that functions as a glorified Rolodex for less than the monthly or annual fee of a SaaS, but its limited functionality provides such limited value.
Grace to you as you go out to best utilize your IT personnel,
jhook