4. Much more than just a fundraising gimmick: mobile apps

Mobile apps, particularly those allowing micropayments, are a powerful weapon in the fundraiser's arsenal, although take-up of what is still seen as a new technology has been slow¹⁰. This is possibly because third sector organisations are currently mainly viewing mobile apps from a fundraising perspective. When considered from a broader operational perspective, mobile apps have considerably more to offer.

Many charities' fundraisers, volunteers and service delivery personnel are widely distributed, but may require access to IT systems, such as financial control, health and safety and human resources applications. Does the charity supply its key field-based personnel with laptops?  Should it insist volunteers use their own PCs, assuming they have one, with the attendant security issues?

Or, with a quarter of adults and nearly half of all teens already owning a smartphone¹¹, would sufficiently large numbers of volunteers have smartphones so that a mobile app is the solution? When spread across thousands of users, and when compared to the alternatives, the cost, and risk, of a mobile app is low compared to the potential benefits of knowledge sharing and compliance. 'Bring your own device to work' is a growing trend in the private sector that could also benefit the third sector¹².

5. Organisational resilience in demanding times

The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in August and September, and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations taking place in June, are once-in-a-lifetime experiences many in the UK will be unwilling to miss. Managers in the private sector are already planning for absenteeism as a result¹³.

Many workers are either planning holidays immediately before or after the games, or holidaying during the games to get away from them, as one in ten Londoners are planning to do. There may also be a resulting compression of annual leave taken in the remaining weeks of the school holidays immediately after the Olympics, which could place additional strains on maintaining organisational capabilities.

The games' organisers are warning of the strain on transport infrastructure and urging businesses, which includes charities in this context, to plan accordingly. A similar phenomenon is entirely possible, but much less publicised, during the Jubilee celebrations week in June or the Paralympics in August/September.

The impact of potential mass absenteeism on any organisation and its supply chain could test its resilience to the utmost, and could have a major impact on both fundraising and service delivery activities. IT is an enabler for remote working to mitigate the impact of transport reduction and 'sickies', but creating a remote working infrastructure is not something that can be achieved overnight. Many third sector organisations are likely to have resilience and business continuity plans in place. Now is the time to review those plans and perhaps put them into use as if head-office has been put out of action.  For those that do not have one then now is the time to consider putting a plan together.

Transforming challenges into opportunities

IT can be effectively deployed as the enabler for third sector organisations to overcome the funding and resilience challenges they face.

Investment in new and innovative IT infrastructure supporting service delivery can lead to productivity increases and cost savings. Effective application support allows charities to maximise the benefits from their existing IT investment, helping to generate further productivity gains and efficiencies without fresh capital outlays. Combined with supplier consolidation and outsourced supplier management, this allows third sector organisations to enjoy both cost savings and performance improvements.

The drivers of business interruption resulting from 2012's major events, alongside the need to reduce operational overheads, could lead to the adoption of new ways of remote working via mobile apps and more 'traditional' teleworking technology. Well specified IT solutions delivered by effectively managed IT suppliers have the potential to transform the sector, with 2012 promising to be the year of opportunity for the UK's third sector.

References:

10.    Third Sector. Analysis: Charities divided over the potential of phone apps. [Online] London; 2011. Available from: http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/news/Article/1084640/Analysis-Charities-divided-potential-phone-apps/ [Accessed 7th December 2011]
11.    Ofcom. A nation addicted to smartphones. [Online] London; 2011. Available from: http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2011/08/04/a-nation-addicted-to-smartphones/ [Accessed 7th December 2011]
12.    Rachel King/ZDNet. Bring-your-own-device becoming accepted business practice (survey). [Online]. Available from: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/bring-your-own-device-becoming-accepted-business-practice-survey/63811 [Accessed 15th December 2011]

2. Often misunderstood - application support

Organisations often don't invest enough time and resources specifying IT solutions. Not surprisingly, therefore, over two thirds of IT professionals admit they have been involved in IT projects that did not achieve the hoped for results⁷. Even supposed turn-key solutions, such as off-the-shelf software, can fail to deliver⁸. Third sector organisations in the current financial climate simply can't afford costly mistakes, and certainly not costly IT mistakes that can impact throughout their organisations and on service delivery.

The reasons for IT project failure can be many, but a typical scenario is when a vendor installs a bespoke or off-the-shelf IT solution and then moves on, leaving the in-house IT department, often woefully under-resourced or under-skilled, to manage the solution effectively. This is where application support, an often misunderstood IT solution, has the potential to help.

The misunderstanding, sometimes on the part of in-house IT departments, is that one IT developer can't pick up where another left off. It is possible for IT suppliers with suitable capabilities to support a bespoke application developed by another firm. This is also true of an off-the-shelf application. Third sector organisations don't have to reinvent the wheel; they can find an IT supplier to ensure they gain maximum benefit from the applications they already have.

3. Supplier consolidation leads to efficiencies and performance improvements

The third sector, along with the private and public sectors, has looked to IT outsourcing as a means to generate cost savings. Certainly market data confirms that this trend is accelerating and increasing because of, rather than in spite of, the uncertain economic conditions ⁹. More recently, organisations have begun to understand the benefits of supplier consolidation and supplier relationship, contract and performance management.

Consolidating supplier numbers can lead to fewer firms delivering improved performance. IT suppliers are more productive and offer greater value when they are effectively managed by their clients, and when clients allow suppliers to earn their desired profit margins⁹. Charities, whilst being as tough at negotiating supply deals as any other sector, are not known for driving down supplier margins unfairly; fairness could be perceived to be a fundamental positioning element of the third sector.

But this does not mean that the third sector should in any way be disadvantaged through unfavourable terms, simply because it is important to a charity's stakeholders not to be seen to be the 'bad guy'. The solution to this is that supplier consolidation can itself be outsourced, which allows third sector organisations to potentially enjoy both cost savings through driving a hard but fair bargain, and productivity benefits because suppliers are also benefitting from the deal. Supplier consolidation, done right, can be a win-win.

References:

7. Computing. When bespoke software goes wrong. The causes of software failure - and steps towards putting it right: London: Computing, 2011
8. Computing. Square pegs in round holes: is off-the-shelf software sufficient?: London: Computing, 2010
9. Willcocks, L. Outsourcing Business and IT Services: A State of The Art Report By Mary Lacity and Leslie Willcocks. [Presentation] London School of Economics. 11th June 2010.

The impact of the recession has been particularly hard on the UK's third sector of charities, voluntary groups and not-for-profit organisations. According to the Charities Commission¹, in 2010 59% of charities in the UK reported that they are "affected by the economic downturn", and the number of registered charities fell by 1,600². The Charity Commission also reports that mergers within the third sector have increased 150% since 2009², with survey results suggesting a further 24% are considering, or actively seeking, mergers³.

By the summer of 2011, over 2,000 third sector organisations had had their funding reduced, or cut completely, at a time when many reported demand for their services had significantly increased⁴. With low growth forecast throughout 2012⁵, and the UK predicted to enter a period of prolonged low growth lasting until at least 2013, the funding landscape does not look set to improve for some years yet⁶.

Major events planned during 2012, such as the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in early June and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games from July to September pose significant resilience challenges through staff and volunteer absences. The resulting challenge for the third sector is clearly to generate sufficient productivity gains that charities are able to maintain, and preferably increase, service delivery at the same time as making cost savings. IT solutions have a part to play in helping the third sector meet this challenge.

Over the next few weeks this series of blog posts will examine five ways that IT can help.  Firstly we'll look at driving service delivery efficiencies through IT:

1.  Driving service delivery efficiencies through IT

For many third sector organisations, although fundraising tends to dominate media coverage, it is only part of the story. Prudently spending the funds raised on effective service delivery will often dominate the actual operations of a charity, and it is in operations that the introduction of IT solutions can have the double impact of improving productivity and cutting costs.

Each third sector organisation and the services they deliver are unique, and bespoke IT development projects can deliver effective and efficient solutions. For example, the introduction of case management software within national charities responsible for the distribution of grants has enabled these third sector organisations to calculate 'return on investment' (ROI). By measuring the outcomes, such as the success of social businesses funded by grants, grant provision has been more effectively targeted to candidates with a greater chance of success.

Case management solutions have also been applied in a different way to voluntary bodies that have field- and office-based caseworkers dealing with clients of the charity, often vulnerable people. The 'hard' benefits have included time savings and productivity gains, and the charities' clients have experienced a more streamlined service, which can be delivered via multiple channels and out of core hours to better suit charity beneficiaries and volunteers.

References:

1.  Charities Commission. Charities and the economic downturn: 4th Economic survey of charities. London: Charities Commission, 2010
2. Ball J. Charity numbers fall leaving 'big society' pledge under threat. The Guardian. [Online] June 5 2011. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/05/charity-numers-fall-big-society [Accessed 7th December 2011]
3. Carol Goldstone Associates. Charity Mergers: Experiences from the Charity Commission. London: Carol Goldstone Associates, 2009
4. BBC News. Charities 'hit by funding cuts'. [Online]. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14366522 [Accessed 7th December 2011]
5. Office for Budget Responsibility. Economic and fiscal outlook: November 2011. London: Office for Budget Responsibility, 2011
6. National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Estimates of Monthly GDP. [Online] London; 2011. Available from: http://www.niesr.ac.uk/pdf/071211_133434.pdf [Accessed: 7th December 2011]

The times they are a-changin'

Microsoft are changing their approach and moving away from developing Silverlight as a platform for web applications for business systems and are instead focusing on Silverlight apps in Windows phones, games, out of browser applications, and high performance media apps.

For example, websites which need live video, adaptive smooth streaming, or DVR functionality would use an embedded Silverlight application as it will give improved custom functionality and performance. Silverlight can also do more advanced things that HTML5 will most likely never be able to do because its purpose is completely different.

HTML5 is the only true cross-platform solution

Microsoft has been quoted saying that HTML5 is "the only true cross-platform solution for everything." which seems to settle the argument and seal HTML5's future as the dominant player in the immediate future.   At MSM Software we are already seeing clients ask about upgrading from Silverlight to HTML5 and questioning the wisdom of using Silverlight as the base for future development as they seek to future-proof their software applications.   

The most noteworthy thing about HTML5 is its use alongside jQuery within ASP.net MVC framework. This approach is fast, flexible and highly dynamic and it is definitely the future of web based application development.

Managing the risk of a Silverlight skills shortage

HTML5 is the new, exciting technology just like Silverlight was a few years back, but unlike Silverlight it already has the advantage of having millions of developers who know HTML inside out. Silverlight will lack such continuity in experience which may result in application support and maintenance issues.

The future availability of Silverlight talent will become increasingly scarce as the use of HTML5 becomes more widespread and Silverlight becomes a niche technology. This challenge is inevitable as developers focus on building their knowledge and experience of HTML5 at the expense of Silverlight.  

As Microsoft Silverlight's status diminishes organisations will face challenges resulting from a skills shortage as experts become more scarce and any planned or, more concerning, unplanned absence such as annual leave or sickness make an organisation vulnerable to a single point of failure.  As a result many organisations will put their revenue, reputation and operational performance at risk with insufficient support of business-critical applications.

Is it time to upgrade to HTML5? - A strategic IT decision

Over time compatibility with new applications will become an issue, particularly if internal expertise has left the business and the downtime or failure of an application, particularly a business-critical application, may lead to lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction. Loss of productivity for internal employees, partners, and even the IT department is likely to increase as they try to troubleshoot problems.  

Organisations need to be aware of such challenges and plan accordingly. By transferring non-core IT activities to a third party they can reduce business risk and free up valuable resource and expertise within their team, and reduce cost by being able to tap into Silverlight skills as and when they need it.

If you have a business-critical application that is core to your businesses strategic success then you may seriously consider a complete rewrite to ensure that you always have a strong pool of talent to recruit from in the future. If you don't then you may find your ability to effectively support and maintain your key software application compromised in the years ahead which may have a negative impact your long-term competitive advantage.

Contributions by James Turner, BSc (Hons), Support Developer, MSM Software

The award recognises success in the development, implementation and running of risk management software for the financial sector. Shortlisted companies demonstrated how their software has been developed to best benefit the financial sector, and evidence of performance should be provided where possible.

The FStech Awards recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK and EMEA financial services sectors. This prestigious event is designed to emphasise the importance of IT as a key driver in business and to acknowledge and reward IT specialists working within the sector.

Competition was particularly fierce this year, with a dramatic jump in the number of entries received for the FStech Awards, making it a record breaking year for entries and more difficult than ever to select the final shortlist.

The winners will be announced at an awards gala dinner on the 28 March 2012 at the Lancaster London Hotel, Bayswater.  The night will be attended by over four hundred industry professionals.

These are predicated on improvements to the relationship leading to improvements in service, efficiency and therefore ROI from outsourcing.  

Here are our top five ways clients are improving SRM:

1.    Consolidation.

If your department has multiple IT suppliers that have each been brought in to fill a specific role or need, but no-one has overall responsibility or time to manage them properly, how can you identify which ones are performing and which aren't.  Until you know that, how can you decide which suppliers to give more work to and which to cut from your supply chain?  If you understand what other services those good suppliers offer you could avoid costly procurement exercises.

Reducing the number of suppliers brings benefits on two sides:

• The supplier works harder and perhaps prices its offerings better to secure your business
• Your (or our) supplier management function has fewer relationships to manage and can achieve greater consistency of monitoring and service improvement

2. and 3.  Communication and Active relationship management.

If each of your Vendor Managers has too many projects on to adequately monitor all suppliers, you lose out and the supplier can't feed back to you in a timely fashion on potential service improvements or cost savings.

Frustrations can occur on both sides if a supplier is not integrated into your organisation so that they understand your business and goals.  We know from experience that communication is key to ensuring a successful client and supplier relationship and enables you to build mutually beneficial partnerships.  

Communication can only come from regular, systematic, governance of the contract and services, through regular service review meetings, reporting and a feedback cycle to your service improvement programme.  This active relationship management differs markedly from where many organisations have concentrated in the past.  Stop firefighting suppliers who cause problems to your business and ignoring the good ones - start actively working with the good ones to learn from them if nothing else.

4. Process.

SRM can too easily become a personal matter, with two equally good Vendor Managers having different opinions of one supplier.  Drive out the inefficiency and subjectivness of personal opinion by systematising your SRM activities, allowing your team to run the process but imposing objective discipline on them.  This avoids dependence on one person in your or the supplier team, and can make good relationships last longer, and root out the bad ones.

If you devise a process for SRM at the outset of the relationship, perhaps pre-contract, you'll monitor the transfer of risk or pricing actively rather than waiting until events force you to.  Those objectives in the original business case for outsourcing should become living breathing parts of the suppliers' day to day activities.

5.    Making contracts truly win-win.

Research by the London School of Economics (See slide 35) shows that clients are most satisfied when their outsourced supplier is earning its target margins.  Make sure you measure it, for the supplier's benefit, not to minimise their margin. 

Never considered outsourcing supplier relationship management?

MSM Software provides outsourced SRM by applying ITIL principles to guaranteed SLAs.  We take sole responsibility or take the pressure off your team by adopting some of the routine and repetitive day to day elements of supplier management, freeing up your teams to focus on higher level strategic management of suppliers.  Hybrid working suits many overworked clients needing to demonstrate rapid outcomes.

1.    Improving social networking capability

A lot has changed in the World since 2007 and one of the biggest is the online explosion of social networking websites.

SharePoint 2010 has dramatically improved its capability in this arena with the addition of personal blogs, tagging and activity feeds within its social networking sites - MySites. MySites allow integration with Microsoft's BCS (Business Connectivity Services), which allows IT to link employees' MySites profiles to non-SharePoint data, such as information from a human resources system.

Wiki and blog integration in MOSS 2007 wasn't great and was widely panned by experts for not being very user friendly. Usability has been a key focus for SharePoint 2010 and it has been dramatically improved.  

Similarly, community interaction within SharePoint 2007 was pretty poor and has been given a helping hand with user interfaces similar to Facebook profile pages. SharePoint 2010 has also added keyword tagging so that content can be found quicker.

SharePoint 2010 is even following in Twitters footsteps by adding micro blogging and activity feeds into the service.

2.     Improved search and content management

The search function in SharePoint 2010 is far more superior to previous versions because of improved scalability, query functionality and index redundancy.
As for managing business content, Microsoft has removed limitations in MOSS 2007's Enterprise Content Management (ECM) feature so document libraries can grow to 200 million items.

3.    Working offline  

SharePoint 2010 makes up some ground on the likes of Lotus Notes with SharePoint Workspace.  Workspace makes SharePoint libraries, lists and forms accessible offline. This is a huge step forward and helps to improve the productivity and efficiency of the users.

4.    Better connection to line-of-business data

Previous versions of SharePoint have had difficulties when trying the access enterprise software systems.  Microsoft has made significant improvements to integrate more business data in SharePoint 2010 by using its BCS (Business Connectivity Services) suite.

A recent Forrester report cited that the BCS helps make SharePoint 2010 the "connective tissue that bridges line-of-business systems and knowledge worker systems". The previous iteration of BCS, called BDC (Business Data Catalog), could bring only line-of-business data into SharePoint. BCS will provide both read and write access between business applications and SharePoint 2010.

5.    Developing SharePoint Apps  

Improvements to the design tool SharePoint Designer means that developer will need to deal less with coding. Tighter integration between Visual Studio and SharePoint, and built-in support for Silverlight is a great improvement on its predecessor MOSS 2007.

Click here to find out how MSM Software can help you get a return on your SharePoint investment.

Do I need consent to use all cookies?

The only exception is if what you are doing is 'strictly necessary' for a service requested by the user. For example, you would not need to get consent for a cookie which is used to ensure that when a user of your site has chosen the goods they wish to buy and clicks the 'add to basket' or 'proceed to checkout' button, your site 'remembers' what they chose on a previous page.

The exception would not apply, for example, just because you have decided that your website is more attractive if you remember users' preferences or if you decide to use a cookie to collect statistical information about the use of your website.

What do I need to do now?

You should consider how you currently explain your policies on your use of cookies to users and make that information more prominent, particularly in the period immediately following implementation of the new Regulations. You must also think about giving people more details about what you do - perhaps a list of cookies used with a description of how they work - so that users can make an informed choice about what they will allow.

Practical Implementation - Our advice on the steps you should take

The UK Government has made it clear that enforcement action will not be taken until appropriate technical solutions are available.  The ICO plans to issue separate guidance on how it intends to enforce the new regulations and has indicated that in the meantime it expects institutions to be able to set out how they plan to achieve compliance.  We recommend a structured approach following the three steps below will help demonstrate that you are taking steps to change current practice to bring about compliance with the new laws.

1.    Audit your use of cookies

You should make a comprehensive audit of your website and check what data files are placed on user terminals and why. You should analyse which cookies are strictly necessary and might not need consent. This is a good opportunity to 'clean up' your web pages and stop using any cookies that are unnecessary or which have been superseded as your site has evolved.
 
2. Assess how intrusive your use of cookies is

It is useful to think of this in terms of a sliding scale, with privacy neutral cookies at one end of the scale and more intrusive uses of the technology at the other. You can then focus your efforts on achieving compliance appropriately providing more information and offering more detailed choices at the intrusive end of the scale.

3. Decide what solution to obtain consent will be best in your circumstances.

We advise that the more directly the use of a cookie relates to the user's personal information, the more carefully you need to think about how you get consent. Providing information to users on the use of cookies is important, as is the ability to demonstrate you are reviewing the use of cookies and are developing a plan for compliance.

Browser Settings and Consent to Cookies

One of the suggestions in the new Directive is that the user's browser settings are a possible means to get user consent. It is the Information Commissioner's view that at present, most browser settings are not sophisticated enough to allow you to assume that the user has given their consent to allow your website to set a cookie. The government is currently working with the major browser manufacturers to establish which browser level solutions will be available and when. Once appropriate technical solutions have been developed the Information Commissioner is likely to produce further guidance.

We'll endeavour to keep you up-to-date with the latest news and developments in the coming months to ensure that you fully comply with the changes in legislation.

Legislation Reference

The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 (PECR) came into force on the 26 May 2011 and the main aim of the legislation is to address issues of consent and privacy.

Further Information

Open letter on the UK implementation of Article 5(3) of the e-Privacy Directive on cookies
What do I need to do about the new rules on cookies? - ICO

The Awards are a platform for the IT profession to celebrate best practice, innovation and excellence in the UK.

Winner of IT Employer of the Year 

Congratulations to ZSL, Medallist for Environmental Project of the Year

The iBats system, developed for ZSL with MSM Software was highly commended by the judges as one of the top three Environmental projects of 2011. The award is presented to outstanding projects that employ technology to bring benefits to the environment. Read more about iBats.

We were finalists in several categories; one of our Technical Consultants, Mike Medland was up for Systems Professional of the Year, we were a finalist for Community Project of the Year for our work with the Prince's Trust and our client, ZSL was a finalist in the Environmental Project of the Year category for iBats.