Assessing build vs. buy solution options for managing Philanthropic Strategic Objectives. One Process, One Tool and Better Decisions.

Challenge

The Client, a large philanthropic organization, was struggling to manage its priorities and goals. Teams that needed to coordinate their work were using disparate tools to capture and report data, often using different terms with the same meaning. Additionally, the same data was being entered multiple times into different tools. Staff was frustrated with the inability to measure progress against goals.

Approach

Plaster Group engaged a cross-functional team of FTEs and 3rd party providers at the client to develop an assessment of several build vs. buy solution options. The timeframe for development was short due to critical business process driven deadlines. However the Plaster Group’s Enterprise Software team was able to coordinate and negotiate costs, resources, and establish a solution blueprint that would ensure the Client’s next set of goals would be managed within a single point solution that met the business’ needs.

Solution

The solution leveraged tools and skillsets that the customer already had in-house.

• Web UI allowing data capture and viewing of organizational goals and progress
• Integration of existing domain data to maintain organizational data quality
• Filtering options and excel export features to support data manipulation tasks
• Reporting options to allow monitoring or results over time

Results

A single web-based tool, simple in both design and interface, now allows staff, working across matrixed teams, to collect, record, and report measured progress against shared priorities and goals.

Technologies

• ASP.NET MVC
• Razor
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2