Technology strategy and services focused on streamlining business processes, improving organizational culture, and achieving your mission
Answer the difficult questions with a strategic technology assessment
How can our information management systems best be configured and utilized to optimize labor, increase our knowledge, and further our cause? Can we or should we move fully to the cloud?
Who should support our use of technology? What requires in-house IT staff vs outsourced? How should technology support and expertise be distributed across the organization?
Can we insure that our technology investments are worthwhile? Who should be involved in making those decisions? How do we give staff what they need without breaking the budget?
What can we do to protect ourselves and our constituents’ sensitive information? How do we balance the risks and rewards of cloud computing?
A full IT Assessment looks first at the mission and goals, then core business processes and organizational culture around technology, in order to obtain a full understanding of what the organization does, how it’s done today, and how it could be done more effectively and, optimally, at lower cost. We make specific recommendations in four areas: systems, staffing, governance, and security. A full report will include estimates of the budget and resources required in order to apply each recommendation, and a two to three year roadmap for implementation.
Concerned about the rampant threats of phishing, ransomware, and data breaches?
The modern, connected computing era has a lot to offer, but with all of the benefits we still have computer crime. Techcafeteria can provide security-readiness assessments based on a variety of compliance frameworks, including NIST 800-171, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS and more. If the acronyms aren’t meaningful, what should be is that we can assess the entire security profile for your organization, from the servers to the file cabinets to the language in the contracts and identify areas where security could be improved. This proactive approach can save you from financial and reputational risk down the road. Once the assessment is done, Techcafeteria can help you develop security policies and plans.
Selecting the right software or service should be a scientific process
- A new Constituent and/or Donor Relationship Management system
- New finance and/or people management software
- Selecting an outsourced IT support provider
- Finding a consulting firm for a strategic project
No matter what major purchase you’re considering, communicating clearly about who you are and what you need will help insure that the system or service that you select will be a perfect fit, and not an unstable element.
With 40 years of experience, Techcafeteria can help identify the vendors and system requirements, build the requests for proposals, facilitate the interviews, along the way providing key analysis and context to help you make the right choice.
Technology automates processes. Automating bad processes = bad technology
It can be advantageous to identify and streamline your information management and communication processes before configuring a new tech system to support them. We can work with staff to discover duplicative efforts and unnecessary labor, with an understanding of how most major technology systems can be set up to improve the business workflow. Using swim lane diagrams to visualize the processes, we can document what’s currently done and then develop the optimized future state process maps that you can use to configure a new information system, such as a CRM (Constituent/Donor Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), DMS (knowledge and document management), or AMS (Association Management).
Have strategic technology advice available when you need it
Whether it’s for high-level assistance with a critical system implementation, or a steady role as an IT strategist, Techcafeteria can act as a CIO for organizations that can’t afford to have someone in that position full-time. Fractional CIO work usually starts with a technology assessment and development of a roadmap. Techcafeteria will oversee the plan. This work tends to be seasonal; after the key projects are well in hand, the work dies down and we fall back into a less expensive, advisory role.
For organizations with IT Departments of one or more, Peter can work directly with the IT staff to evaluate their roles and effectiveness, make recommendations on department structure, mentor existing staff and IT leadership, and help integrate IT staff more fully into an organization.
Techcafeteria’s primary consultant is Peter Campbell. Peter’s LinkedIn profile is here. He is easy to contact as pcampbell here at techcafeteria.com.