Digital transformation can seem like a never ending project but we know it’s necessary if charities want to level up. With multiple bottlenecks and what can seem like one hurdle after another, it’s easy for charities to lose sight of what they are trying to achieve. The good news is, there are some key tactics you can try to keep you on track and ensure your digital transformation is successful.
1: Clear goals:
Digital transformation doesn’t mean digital for the sake of digital. Although it might be tempting to invest in lots of different new tech, if it’s not helping you achieve a certain goal, you might end up wasting money. Often what happens is, in the race for digital transformation, charities end up investing in lots of different technology, that they lose sight of what they are trying to achieve. And with a tight budget, this isn’t the ideal situation. As a result, staff and leadership are often hesitant and sceptical of new technology, because of previous tech failures.
Before buying any new tech, you must first define your goals. A good approach is to start with your yearly goals and break them down into quarterly goals. Any new technology you bring into the organization should be used as a means to help you achieve those goals.
Clear KPIs help you identify whether you are on track towards your goals. Setting quarterly targets and checking them against your KPIs, lets you quickly adapt and make evidence-based decisions if things are going awry.
Your KPIs should be:
- Clearly defined
- Adaptable
- Aligned with overall objectives of the charity
- Quantifiable
- Actionable
2: Metrics and data
Define which metrics you need to look at to ensure your digital transformation is successful. For example, if you are looking to improve user/customer experience through digital transformation, which metrics do you need to look at to see if you are achieving your goals? Without the data and the right metrics, you won’t know if you are on track and whether you need to make a change. Real evidence will help you form strategies and support decision making in the future.
Some things metrics you might want to look at are:
- Donor retention rate
- Donor growth
- Customer satisfaction
- Employee satisfaction
- Conversion rate
With Futr’s Chat-as-a-Service solution, our dashboards and analytics give charities real insight into customer and user engagement. If your goal for example, is to increase reach, you may decide to increase the number of communication channels you use. You’ll need data and metrics to measure whether this is improving your reach. With Futr for example, you’ll be able to increase the number of communication channels while at the same time, gather real time usage data to see its impact. Some of the metrics you might look at are:
- Most popular channels customers are using
- Usage numbers
- Number of returning users on a channel
- Customer/ user feedback
- The types of common questions users are asking
- Unanswered questions- i.e. demand for information for which you currently haven’t provided an answer for
- The most popular time of day users interact
3: Automate where you can
Automating transactional tasks can make things super efficient for charities. Whether it’s for fundraising, customer comms or improving internal processes, automating tasks has a number of benefits. For staff, it means they spend less time on repetitive and tedious tasks. It also ensures that tasks are carried out consistently.
When it comes to customer comms, it ensures that your level of service and way of communication are consistent all the time. Automating tasks can also free up time for staff, which they can use to be more productive in other areas. Some things which you could automate are:
- Fundraising
- Core services delivery
- Customer communications and announcements
- Volunteer support
- Booking appointments
4: Internal champions
For any new tech or digital transformation project, you need your internal champions. What’s really important when rolling out new technology, is clearly outlining the benefit for your staff. Having an internal team who can champion the change and become advocates can help train staff in the rest of the organisation.
The best way to do this is by having a team of advocates from different departments in the charity. They can work closely with their team to motivate them, get them excited about the new tech and become the go-to experts their team can rely on. Your internal champions can help improve adoption of technology and be a great way of gathering feedback from staff.
5: Integrating systems
When we talk about integrations, we’re talking about your systems “talking” to each other to share information. This can help speed up information flows and overall make your charity much more productive.
However, many charities still hold on to their legacy systems. The challenge with this is that information and data is siloed across different systems and departments, which makes accessing information extremely difficult and cumbersome!
At the same time, migrating from all your legacy systems in one go to new ones isn’t always feasible or practical. When you’re looking at new technology, look for solutions that can easily integrate with your existing systems. Most SaaS solutions like Futr, are easy to integrate and don’t require a lot of work to implement, which is one of the reasons it’s so popular among charities. So even if your digital transformation is an ongoing project, overnight you can still reap the benefits of newer SaaS solutions without causing any disruption.
How charities are using intelligent chatbots: Real use cases
Watch our webinar where we explore how charities are using intelligent chatbots to help achieve their key goals. In this webinar share real use cases of how charities are doing this.
