Tony Dye

Where Have I Been?

Wow, it's been a long time since I've done any blogging. Several posts abandoned, some drafts in progress, and a big queue of stuff waiting to be posted.. OK, I'll be back! Need to finish up the ChMS series (some things have changed), and may have some other things to announce very shortly.

I'll be at Watermark next week for the national CITRT, along with about 250 others. Woot!

ChMS Selection Process Part 6 - Thinking About ChMS Companies

Now think about the type of company you want to work with. Not the product, but the company and the people. When you choose a ChMS, you are also choosing the company behind it. Very much like choosing a church, or a community, or friends, or even family, "culture matters." There will be good companies and products who will fit the culture of your church, and there will be good companies and product sthat will NOT fit your culture. (and of course, there are also not-so-good companies and products, but that's a different story, maybe)

What works well for another church may not work well for you if your church culture is different from that other church.

You need to be sure to answer these questions for your church, your staff, and your church culture.

1. How important is it to use a well established company?
2. How important is it to have “state of the art” technology?
3. How important is local support and training?
4. Do you want to work with a company that operates like a church, or one that operates like a big business? (are there other options?) Is this an irrelevant question? (There are companies that are great on relationship and poor on product, who thrive! Why? Look at the culture of the churches who use their products)
5. If your church culture is extremely business-relatonship oriented, then you might want to consider getting to know people at ChMS companies (preferabley other than sales). This is a dangerous route -- you want to choose a product for it's features and a company for it's capabilities. What happens if you find a company who doesn't have a great product, but you really like the people? For some churches, this is a more important question that features. Hopefully you know which type of church you are
6. How do you want to contact support? What is your preferred method? Will you consider a company that doesn't match your wants in this area?
7. How likely are you to need support outside of a company’s normal business hours? How likely are you to want support on the weekend?
8. How significant would it be to have to shut down all access to your ChMS to work on a problem? To perform an upgrade? (think back to the thoughts of everyone using the database for “everything.”) This question very much fits with the earlier discussions of "clous" and "hosted."
9. How important is a community of users to you? Are you willing to make the time to share experiences and solutions? Do you want to see others experiences and solutions?

Thanks again to Joel Lingenfelter for challenging some of my original questions. Hopefully I managed to address his concerns in this post.

Next: Part 7 - Looking at Features

Previous: Part 5 - Starting to Look at Technology

Did You Know?

If you have *anything* to do with Church IT, please join the CITRT group on LinkedIn. For all things Church IT related, check out http://CITRT.org/

If you are considering a new Church Management System (ChMS), be sure to include MinistryPlatform by Think Ministry Inc. in your research

 

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ChMS Selection Process Part 5 - Starting to Look at Technology

It’s still too early to be thinking about particular products and companies, but it is time to think about your environment, and especially your technical environment. If you have a big IT staff, that offers different opportunities than if you don’t have (or don’t want) an IT staff. That’s not to say one environment is better than the other – it’s a choice each church makes and that choice will weigh heavily into the ChMS decision.

Think of these questions from two perspectives: 1) what do we have today? and 2) what do we want to have in the future? Here’s maybe a very high level question – how much are you willing to change your staff and environment to fit a new ChMS need? There are plenty of choices without changing the rest of your environment, but there are some products that may be ruled out. Be sure you know your answer before you start looking at products; it will make your life a lot easier!

1. Do you have an IT staff than can support a product, or do you need (or want) to select a product that doesn’t require any internal IT staff?
2. Do you have a bias for “cloud” vs. locally hosted? Can you quantify that bias? Maybe more importantly can you explain the reason for any bias you have? Be sure you look honestly at the situations.
3. Do you want both on-site and off-site access for staff? (Who wouldn't?!)
4. Do you want lay-leaders to have access to the ChMS, or at least some features of it? Can you fully describe what you want them to be able to access? Is it view only, or should they be able to update the data?
5. Do you want the contregation to have access to the ChMS? What features? What specficially do you want the congregation to do with that access?
6. How do you want the ChMS to integrate with your website? (somewhat related to #5). How important is it to "skin" the ChMS to look like your website, and to be able to reskin it when your site changes?
7. Can you describe in detail the kinds of reports you want to receive from the system? How dynamic are your reporting needs? Do you have someone on staff who understands the concept of report writing, and the tools to "build" reports? (An unfortunate reality -- there aren't any reporting tools that can read your mind and produce what you think you want)
8. Do you anticipate wanting to extend the product with custom programming, and do you have the staff to do it? If you don’t’ have the staff, are you prepared to invest in those extensions through outside vendors? (Even without looking at products, you probably already have a great idea of how much you want to go outside the box)
9. How much integration do you expect between the ChMS and your email system? Your address book system? Your staff calendars? (think “Exchange/Outlook integration,” but applies just as much to any other email-contact-calendaring system). What is the business purpose behind that integration? Is it really necessary or do you just think it is? If you haven't already thought through the Single Source of Truth concept, this would be a good time to consider it
10. Can you quantify the balance point between “ease of use” and “powerful?” For example, if you can get 100% of your staff to use the product for maintaining basic contact info, are you willing to give up complex reports? Of course, we all want the product that is both easy and powerful. That doesn’t exist yet, so can you pick your point on the continuum between those two typically-opposite endpoints? Counter-argument: Easy and powerful aren't so much polar opposites as in the past. There has been a lot of progress toward providing both together. Still, think through the types of tasks you want ALL your staff to do regularly - what if some of those tasks aren't easy? Also keep in mind that some things are difficult, and that's just the way it is. (Gee, Rocket Science is hard!)
11. What’s the IT adoption quotient of your congregation?  Many ChMS solutions now rely on user defined  interaction (i.e. logging on to update address changes, prayer requests, small group self management, etc).  How is the congregation going to be engaged to encourage the greatest effectiveness with your ChMS solution.  Does the congregation want this, is there perceived benefit for them?  You have to determine what they will want by making it worthwhile. If you provide a good reason for them to login, they will. Many churches have failed to provide truly compelling content that motivates people to login
12. Mobile integration.  To what degree do your staff & congregation embrace mobile technology?  Do they want ChMS functionality on smart phones? (does anybody ever say 'no, I don't want that?')
13. Social media integration.  Does seamless integration with Facebook, Twitter, etc. mean anything to your staff & congregation.  No one wants another tool to update, but integration with their current media is sometime desired. Do you desire to build a church social network, or to integrate with existing social networking platforms such as facebook, or both?

Steve Caton (disclamer, works for CCB, but that's not the point of this post) had some similar Questions to Ask about a ChMS recently. Worth a read.

Thanks again to Joel Lingenfelter who contributed heavily to this post. (to put this nicely, and not overly embarrass myself, Joel was very good at completing some of my insufficient thoughts). Jerry Fultz also contributed some key segments.

Next: Part 6 - Thinking about ChMS Companies

Previous: Part 4 - Some non-Technical Questions

ChMS Selection Process Part 4 - Some non-Technical Questions

Sticking with the concept of not getting into particular products and technologies too quickly, here are some non-technology questions to start wtih. Again, avoid giving much thought to any particular companies or products.

1. Are you currently using a ChMS plus something else? How well is that working? Example: ChMS product AND Service U, or ChMS product AND Church Teams, or ChMS product AND The City (even though The City could be the ChMS product used with something else). Or, very common, ChMS product, perhaps other things as well, AND a whole bunch of spreadsheets, or Word processing documents, or other “databases” that aren’t necessarily very well connected with the implied main database
   • Learn and understand what these other products do. You will either need to replace them with the new database, or integrate them with the database if they provide functionality that your chosen solution does adequately address. Planning Center Online is a good example here. Many worship departments live and die by planning center. If the database cannot replace it (I don’t know of any that can) you need to start asking questions about integration. Planning Center has a published API for integration with church databases, by the way
2. How many of your departments have some other system (distinct user login) that they primarily use? (list department and system name) – define system. People will not think of Excel or Word tables as a system, but they will use them to manage data that should be in a ChMS
3. How many of the departments using the ChMS as their primary system use a secondary system (list department and system name) – See above
4. IF you are currently using multiple components, and want to change that, what staff process or commitment will enforce that change? If you (the team) are not willing to enforce, what is the likely outcome? Eliminating data silos is one of the most important advantages of a modern ChMS
5. How committed is the staff leadership to fully embracing a new decision? Can that be quantified and fully articulated?
6. How committed is the staff in general? What processes will be used to encourage and equip the staff to utilize only the selected product(s)?
7. Should there be a mandate on staff use of the selected solution? Are there consequences of failing to comply? (and if there is not a mandate, which is certainly a choice, what are the consequences of that decision, both on the data and on the staff?)
   • Like Cortez, we should “burn our ships” (a historically disputed event, but go with me here) regarding old systems. Obviously we cannot kill off office, but we can limit and ultimately shut down access to any current system with a login. Making old systems read only upon conversion is the most effective way to get there from here
8. If any staff member needs a phone number, address, email, picture, or anything other information about someone in the congregation, do you expect them to go to the ChMS, or might they go elsewhere? If “elsewhere” is the answer, what does that mean to you? – “Might” is too vague. “Will” is really what we are after. If the ChMS is inaccurate, but their private outlook DB isn’t, then you can bet they will use Outlook. A successful ChMS transition should eliminate this very quickly, by eliminating other silos and making the ChMS the most accurate source of data. Once this happens people won’t need convincing
9. Who are the key players or departments who will make the final selection?
10. How important is task management or business process, or workflow, in your solution? (if you don’t have such a solution now, should you?) – This is very difficult for people to grasp on the front end of a transition, and sounds sales oriented by a solution that offers it…
11. How many of your departments would say your ChMS is their primary system for communication and ministry management (list them)
12. Are you, as a staff, willing to adapt to best-practices of the ChMS you choose, or are you determined to forge your own path? (Those two aren't necessarily oppisites)
13. Have you have a major church-wide initiative where the ChMS facilitated well? One where the ChMS was an impediment? Can you articulate the issues? – Were the failings the fault of the ChMS or the staff, or some other cause?

Thanks to Kevin McCord for the majority of these questons and Joel Lingenfelter for some great clarifications.

Next: Part 5 - Starting to Look at Technology

Previous: Part 3 - Developing a Selection Process

ChMS Selection Process Part 2 - Focus on Staff

How did you do with the vision/mission task? Seriously, start there. If you haven't done that part, please don't read ahead! And if you have done that part, would you be willing to share what you came up with?

Now work on determining what the staff needs and wants, and set the criteria for usage mandates (or not) from the church executive team. Can the staff needs be met with a single product? Not from the technical “feature list” point of view, but from the practical usage point of view. Can the staff (and will the staff) use the product? If that answer is ‘no,’ then determine how to handle that before spending money on a new product. Realize that ‘no’ may actually be an acceptable answer, it just needs to be dealt with and the ramifications managed.

The congregation’s viewpoint is critical as well.  Even if the staff & management stakeholders have buy-in, the ability/desire of the congregation to adopt ChMS will ultimately prove its effectiveness.  Exercise:  every place you see the word “staff” mentioned in the above paragraph, replace & insert the word “congregation.”

Nick Nicholaou published a one page article in 2010 called “Getting The Most Out Of Your Church Management Software.” (becuase of the way PDF is published, it will take you a couple of clicks to get to the article) This article is very high level,  but it identifies well the pain points many churches experience that lead to dissatisfaction. It identifies:

1. Several high level reasons why churches are dissatisfied with their ChMS decision
2. What ChMS providers need to do to serve churches better 
3. What churches need to do to improve adoption.

Churches need to know upfront that there can be pretty rampant dissatisfaction with ChMS.  An article like this one from Nick can help to set the tone with an individual church that the ChMS decision has far reaching implications.  It helps to underscore the complexity and scope of bringing a ChMS onboard.

Steve Caton and Ben Stroup (with input from others) put together an eBook , “Getting Disciple Making Right: 7 Ways Technology Helps Churches Win At Making Disciples.”  Full disclosure, Steve works for one of the major ChMS Vendors, Church Community Builder. You'll see that mentioned on the cover and in the credits, but this book is not a CCB sales pitch. This books is helpful in making the basic case for ChMS technology in churches – especially in churches where tech is regarded with disdain.  It makes the case for data, measurement and process as the cornerstones for an effective and accountable disciple making effort in the local church.

For additional reading, that does include going deeper into technology and feature questions, Joel Lingenfelter documented the full process his team went through in their selection. I would suggest reading his material after the vision/mission and your particular staff's and congregation's needs.

To be continued ...

Thanks to Jerry Fultz, Joel Lingenfelter, and Nick Nicholaou who provided most of the material for this post.

Next: Part 3 - Develop a Selection Process

Previous: Part 1 - Where to Start

ChMS Selection Process Part 1 - Where to Start?

Reminder: I am NOT a ChMS Expert. Thankfully, quite a few others have contributed to this process, and thanks in advance for others who I hope will step forward to further improve it. I know the following people contributed, directly or indirectly, and I’m sure I left some names out. (Please claim your contribution!)

• Steve Caton
• Jerry Fultz
• Clif Guy
• Steve Hewitt
• Chris Huff
• Joel Lingenfelter
• Kevin McCord
• Nick Nicholaou

Ahead, I’ll be pulling bits and pieces out of the contributions and suggesting a starting point to a process for anyone wanting to select their next (or even first) ChMS. As I’ve already mentioned to a few people, it’s rather scary that there doesn’t seem to exist such a documented process anywhere else; that seems so unlikely, but the search turned up nothing. So, here goes.

Some background
When choosing a ChMS, churches want to choose wisely, but how? Are there any objective criteria? What does it cost to have an independent consultant help in the process? Are there any qualified independent consultants? Is it possible to be truly objective in this process? Doesn’t everyone have biases? This series of posts is an attempt to offer some objective criteria that can be used by anyone to take a step in the right direction. It doesn’t preclude hiring a consultant; it simply sets the stage and hopefully helps avoid some [negative] surprises.

It's very easy to be overwhelmed by the nearly 200 named products in the marketplace (and I know there are a few more not even on the list!).

Far too many church, in my opinion, make their ChMS decision on either price, or a features list (probably influenced by a good demo). Few do significant reference checks.  Rarely does a church first determine what they are looking for. Can we reverse this process? Can we help a church know the questions to ask to help lead to a more satisfactory solution? Well, that's what I'm trying for here, and again, I'm very thankful for the input of many others.

Let me suggest that the starting point is NOT to look at the products available! Start by looking at the church.

Part 1: Jerry Fultz wisely suggested that the starting point should be at the highest level. Start with the church’s vision and mission.

The words Vision and Mission get tossed around a lot, and have different meanings to different people. Here are my quick descriptions with a couple more tossed in for good measure:

Purpose: Why Do We Exist?
Vision: What Are We Trying To Accomplish?
Mission: How Do We Plan To Accomplish Our Vision?
Core Values: What Is Most Important To Us?

If your church doesn't have a clear and concise vision and mission, then maybe selecting a ChMS shouldn't be a top priority yet. Maybe there's an argument that a good ChMS would help define vision and mission, but I think that's a long-shot.

So here's the hard question: how does a [new] ChMS product help the church accomplish it's vision? That's worth some deep thought, and I don't have any any suggestions on how to make it easy. I will simply suggest that you not go any further in your search until you can come up with a brief (1 or 2 paragraph max, 1 or 2 sentence better) statement of HOW a ChMS solution helps accomplish the church Vision.

Now I'm going to do something awful - I'm going to end this post right here without providing any answers!

Next: Part 2 - Focus on Staff

Do You Know a ChMS EXPERT?

Do you know anyone who is truly an EXPERT with Church Management Systems (ChMS)?

What would it take to qualify as an expert in ChMS? Knowing how to use a lot of different systems efficiently? Knowing how to pick the best system for each situation? How about even knowing what the choices are?

Sometimes I get calls because people want to get my "expert" opinion on ChMS. What!? OK, I can name a half dozen ChMS products, and I know some people at a lot of the companies, and I *care* a lot about ChMS, but does that make me an expert?

I'd like to know a real expert who I could suggest people talk with. I'm still looking. If you know one, please introduce me.

It Would Be So Nice If Something Would Make Sense For a Change

My wife gave me this mug recently. She said something about how it reminded her of me. (That was a complement, right?)

It makes me think of software user interfaces, especially some ChMS products. Oh, did I say that out loud?

Choosing a ChMS – Fully Functional, or Easy?

When choosing a new ChMS, people often say they need more capability; that their current product just won’t do X, Y, and Z. However, if you look really hard, many of the existing products have feature sets far beyond what most people are using. If the feature exists, but it’s not practical to use it, then I would like to claim that the feature really doesn’t exist. Per an old Apple commercial (that apparently only I remember), slightly adapted, “the most powerful system is the one that actually gets used.” If a feature isn’t used, it might as well not exist.  If a feature is too difficult to use, well, that’s the same thing.

If the user who is supposed to perform a task can’t figure out how to do it, then no matter what the spec sheet says, the product doesn’t have that feature (at least for that user). Too harsh? Please disagree. If your users can’t (or even won’t – does it matter?) go through the steps, perhaps painful, to perform a task, then the software has failed to perform the task. Call it user error if you want, but the bottom line is that the task didn’t get done. If software requires exhaustive training, but the training is forgotten, then nothing was accomplished.

When evaluating, instead of saying “does the product enable doing X,” say “Is Bob [or Jane or whomever] readily capable of performing the steps to accomplish X with this product?” If the answer to the second question is ‘no,’ then for all practical purposes, it’s ‘no’ to the first question as well! Using that simple criteria, many product checklists would be reduced to a bunch of empty boxes!

So, who has intuitive, friendly, even “easy” software? Obviously, this isn't just about ChMS.