Accelerating the Dynamic Church : SaaS

2007 OnDemand Conference

jhook — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:50:00 GMT

One of my commitments to our partner churches is that Fellowship Technologies will stay current on what is happening in the overall software and technology industry. I came from that market and want to bring the best business and technology concepts from the commercial world to the church world. Along that vein: we are currently moving Fellowship One to be more Web 2.0-like; we are building our new functionality on a new architecture (MVC) that will allow us to develop new functionality rapidly and be more agile; and we are committed to put custom reporting tools in your hands so that you can directly access the data. And that is just the start!

One of the ways we all stay up on technology is via the Internet, through articles, blogs, etc. But that is not enough! I believe it is imperative to attend technology conferences and events to learn, affirm and network with others within the industry. One such conference is SIIA’s OnDemand Conference.

I wanted to attend last year, but chose not to due to the cost and timing. This year I took the plunge and made the trek to San Jose last week. I am glad I did!

In short, the opportunities and challenges other SaaS’s and their customers have are very similar to what we all together are experiencing. There were numerous presentations about: how processes are essential to successful application change; what was once hard to accept concepts about data being stored off-site are becoming non-issues; and it is not just a way to deliver software over the web more cost-effectively, it is about collaboration across departments, business partners, even competitors; and putting the customer at the center of the experience.

I am convinced that Software as a Service is the future of many application solutions, especially for the SMB (small and medium-sized business) market. By the commercial definition, that includes nearly all churches. The total cost of ownership, the integration capabilities via the Internet and the future of computing, all point to the fact that this is the way. Like other forms of new computing, it may that some time to truly take hold, but the value proposition is enormous and, in the long run, cannot be denied.

Grace to you,

jhook

Managing change versus avoiding change

Jeff Hook — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 22:53:00 GMT

Although I used to think that you should not break something if it is not broken; I am now convinced that in order to make improvements, change must happen and that change requires you to break things in order to build other things. If change is to happen, old processes and old habits, no matter how well they are working, must be broken to make way for the new. However, change does not just happen on its own, it must be managed; thus the term coined by the large management consulting firms - change management.

In the relatively short period of time we have been a company we have seen some churches manage the change to our software very successfully and then others who have failed miserably. It is amazing how the ones that manage the change well seem to embrace the software and are excited about the possibilities of having a new tool at their disposal. Then again, not unlike corporate America, many times the churches that fail at the change management aspect of a system implementation blame the software for the failure.

But as the solution provider, I see a different aspect of their failure because I see many other churches that are being successful with the same exact software. That is one thing about a true SaaS (Software as a Service), the system that one customer uses is the same as what all customers are using from the code base (capabilities of the system) to the servers (performance and response times) to the support departments (Delivery, Training and Technical Support). Since it is the same software and the same organization supporting that software, there are only a handful of variables that can cause the differences: business processes, data quality, network configuration and performance, success of the training of the people and change management.

To eliminate as much of the change management problem as possible, consider the following guidelines during project planning:

Provide leadership from the top - do not allow failure to adopt the system by the staff as an option;
Establish a sense of urgency to get the project done - no one wants an implementation to take longer than it has to;
Get all of the influencers and users of the system on board; do not let anyone shoot from the bushes; if they do not want to be part of the new solution then they are part of the old problem;
Create a vision for the church and how the new systems and processes are going to enable that vision to be achieved. The only way to rally behind change is a new vision or a burning platform that requires change no matter what! Even with a burning platform situation is present, casting a vision creates a rallying point which the organization can strive for during the tough times.
Communicate the vision - over and over! Staff needs to be reassured that leadership believes in what was once said. By repeating the vision, people have no excuse to getting the message and thus getting behind the vision.
Encourage "out-of-the-box thinking" that can get people envisioning how things can be improved.
Plan for and create early wins to build momentum. This process should be active not passive - look for who has the most to gain from the changes and implement their system capabilities first. Look for those on staff who have the most to lose because of the new system and isolate their ability to sabotage the project. Celebrate the early wins, but do not let up thinking that the job is done.
Hire and/or develop the employees who can implement the vision. Do not let "avoiders of change" short circuit progress. Do not allow the staff the option of going back to Egypt to make bricks! Reinforce the vision and the reasons for the change.

Change is never easy; I guess it is engrained in how God made us, at least some of us. But by doing the right things the right way, "change" can be successful. Conversely, doing the right things the wrong way or the wrong things the right way will not be successful. Shortcutting the change management process can lead to frustration, disappointment and ultimately failure. But also remember, improvement requires change!

Grace to you as you go out and improve,

jhook

IT Headcount – How “loaded” is your team?

Jeff Hook — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 01:18:00 GMT

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

Cost Considerations – Part 2: TCO – Total Cost of Ownership

Jeff Hook — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 13:07:00 GMT

In part 2 of my 3 part series on software cost consideration I will address the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) concept and why the price of software itself, whether it is a SaaS (Software as a Service) or of the client-server flavor, is just a portion of what needs to be taken into account when considering your software alternatives.

To start with, let’s define Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). TCO was originally developed in the late 1980’s by the technology research firm Gartner to determine the cost of owning and deploying personal computers. Although a new concept at the time, over the years it has been examined and refined to the point that it is now one of the more relied upon methodologies to evaluate the true cost of deploying computer systems. Basically, TCO consists of the direct and indirect costs incurred throughout the life cycle of a computer system, including deployment, on-going operations, maintenance and support, as well as the user costs associated with the business operation.

Direct costs are usually visible and sometimes are even budget line items to themselves. They include hardware and systems software, acquisition and on-going maintenance; operations which includes technical operations, help desk support, network costs, computer room space and utilities, such as electricity and cooling; and, administration costs associated with the above like technical and database personnel.

Indirect costs are always not so visible and may be dispersed across the church’s entire staff and congregation, including how its congregation interacts with the church for “church business and congregation administration.” Typically, the magnitudes of these costs dwarf the direct costs because it is spread over so many different areas of the church. So, to accurately measure TCO, the analysis must include all “end user” operations, including contribution reporting, event registration, children’s check-in, small group administration, volunteer recruitment and management, etc.

Another indirect factor that affects operations is system availability. Not having the ability to process and get to information when needed is a real, although many times hidden, cost. If the system is down for maintenance, it is not available for users to conduct their work - the more users who are affected, the larger the financial impact.

With a SaaS, most of the direct costs associated with the functionality of the application are rolled into the monthly or annual access fee paid to the solution provider. So when comparing on-going monthly costs, churches need to consider how much they spend to keep their member database operational. Many churches hire outside consultants to help write reports, defragment the database, and install software upgrades across all the PC’s at the church for the typical client-server system.

In our experience, many churches maintain multiple databases in their various ministries because their primary congregational database is not complete, not easy-to-use and/or is missing needed functionality. One of our recent customers was maintaining seven different databases that were never synchronized in trying to support its ministries. After converting to Fellowship One, they were able to shut down the conflicting information stores and move to a single consolidated system.

Another hidden but huge cost to consider is the operational costs associated with bad processes or bad information. As I have blogged about before, I’ve been dismayed at how poor the data management practices of churches really are. And churches seem to simply accept the concept of bad data – aren’t they aware of the adage: garbage in, garbage out? A friend of mine who heads up IT for a large church that has one of the leading client-server church management systems recently commented that frankly he did not know how much the old system was really “costing” his church, but he knows it is significant and a lot more than what they just pay to the vendor.

In my next blog, I will explore what I consider to be the most important concept associated with system cost considerations – Value. Something to think about, as long as the out-of-pocket costs are affordable, isn’t it the value of the things that can be done with the information more important than the costs themselves? If the value far surpasses the cost, then are the costs justified?

Grace to you,

jhook

New Functionality... Reports 2.0

Jeff Hook — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:22:00 GMT

Fellowship Technologies recently released our new reporting functionality we call Reports 2.0. Reports 2.0 is our foundational work that will help move Fellowship One reporting to a whole new level. This new release really leverages the power of AJAX so that the screens do not refresh when reporting parameters are changed or selected. The parameters are also defaulted to the most likely or most frequently used parameters. This will make running reports much, much easier for the typical user.

(Another powerful advantage to the "hosted", Software as a Service (SaaS) model over traditional "client-installed" solutions is that we released these new features to ALL of our customers with no action required on their part. No additional fees to upgrade. Nothing to install or download or convert. They simply went to bed one evening and they woke up the next day, logged into Fellowship One, and there were the new features accompanied by detailed help files, tutorials, and free training webinars.)

Reports 2.1 should be available towards the end of March and will offer the ability to save your reporting parameters under “My Reports” so that all of your common reports can be run without entering re-entering parameter values. Reports 2.1 will also offer other ease of use features but I won’t go into those just yet; I do not want to ruin the surprise of some great new features. Later this year we will be offering several other reporting tools and enhancements that will make the Fellowship One experience even better and more robust – features that no other vendor currently has on the market.

Grace to you,

jhook

A Whole New Way . . . Software as a Service (SaaS)

Jeff Hook — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 17:19:00 GMT

It appears that the vision and reality of SaaS (Software as a Service) has attracted the largest independent software vendor (ISV), SAP. SAP is a large enterprise application software company out of Germany that created a big craze in the 1990s and obtained a good majority of commercial America to consolidate its data needs under a single umbrella called ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). Evidently, after seeing Salesforce and others begin to erode its mindshare, if not market share, in the small to medium-sized market, the company decided to release its own customer relationship management offering over the web.

Now the only question is whether they can pull off having their customers switch over to their own web offering rather than take the opportunity to shop the other vendors at the same time. That is always a risk when the market begins to change! Many times customer behavior is not anticipated by the incumbent vendor.

I contend that just because a company can produce software for sale does not mean it can keep servers and infrastructure up and running to suit the client requirements. By the same token, although Salesforce.com has successfully blazed the trail in the SaaS world, that does not give it credibility if it chose to come out with a client-server architecture solution. Supporting a different type of solution is a different ball game than what a company and its culture is built to do effectively and efficiently.

If asked by its vendor to consider a new platform offering, a truly wise customer will evaluate its other options before jumping into the new offering of their incumbent vendor. Before automatically jumping into the new solution, ask yourself the following questions:

Is the new solution stable? Is it designed to be used as you want to use it?
If the offering is built on a different technology than the vendor’s “bread and butter” technology? Is the vendor proficient in the technology or just trying it out?
If the new technology does not catch on in the marketplace, will it become orphaned? And perhaps sold, or worse even, mothballed!
Is the new technology fundamentally different or the same in feature / function? If it is the same, should you really switch? If it is different, is it a complete replacement solution or complementary or just a bolt on?
If switching requires a significant amount of change, why not look at other options to see if they match up better to what your organization is trying to accomplish?

I am frequently asked to sell Fellowship One as a site-license and let the customer operate the software on its own servers. Operating a web-based transaction system is more than most churches can take on. And more often than not, those churches that have the fortitude to take on such an endeavor are not fully aware of all the costs to do it right. The infrastructure required to secure the network and the talent and expertise required to keep it up and running is expensive. Even for our largest customers, the Fellowship One monthly fee is a fraction of what it would cost a church to operate it themselves.

Grace to you,

jhook