Summary
Created an outreach events tracking process from the ground up fulfilling 3 fundamental needs:
1) Regulatory control and reporting requirements
2) Provided executive-level view of all outreach events, their status, and budget
3) Easily scalable to meet future demands
Skills Demonstrated
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Problem Statement
Current State
Over 100 – 150 event invitations can be expected annually at current outreach levels, with the capacity to attend 53. Invitations generally come verbally or via email and are loosely tracked in outlook email. Registration deadlines are frequently overlooked or missed. Last FY total event attendance was 19.
Gap
Lacking sufficient consistency and data points to be auditable
Desired Future State
All event invitations will be captured in a tracking system that is intuitive to use. All invitations receive a response in a timely manner, whether attending or not. FY goal of 53 events attended, in accordance with current staffing level capacity, reached or exceeded at or under budget. Additional requirements:
1) Tracked proper data points to fulfill regulatory control and reporting requirements
2) Provided real-time executive-level view of all outreach events, their status, budget planned vs. actual, and progress for the fiscal year past, current, and future
3) Easily scalable to meet future demands
My Contributions
Results
Challenges
Change management with a team accustomed to lower touch processes and little oversight.
No allocation for technical resources (development team) in the FY when we needed the work done, and no funding allocated for outsourcing
Resolution/Outcome
Outcome: Successful – exceeded event attendance goal for first FY in use for 200% increase YoY
Timeline: On-Time (~5 months from concept to delivery)
Initially built and launched a low-tech system using policies, SOP’s, a system of folders, and an excel tracking sheet. This allowed us to refine the requirements and look for development resources.
Successfully identified a developer with the right skillset in SharePoint to build out the final solution. Built and delivered all acceptance criteria and published new policy and SOP documentation to ensure proper use.
Next step will be to move the solution into Salesforce to consolidate all outreach manager relationship and event attendance efforts into a single system which also simplifies reporting and performance management downstream.
Lessons Learned
Insufficient change management planning led to frustration in the transition for existing staff ultimately resulting in un-expected staff turnover.
In future projects this lesson led to additional effort in leading change management efforts to help stakeholders understand what is changing, why it is changing, how they will be supported, and what is in it for them.