Technology and AIPut technologyto work.
Technology is the grease and the glue.
Less friction at every point.
Technology is the grease. Used well, it reduces friction at every point in the work, so processes run more efficiently and the work itself gets done better.
It also comes with costs.
What it saves
- The record entered once, not three times.
- The report that builds itself.
- The signature no one has to chase.
What it costs
- The license, every year.
- The hours it takes to learn.
- The care it needs for as long as it runs.
A tool earns its place when what it saves, counted in staff hours, clearly outweighs what it costs.
Every system needs care and feeding.
Technology requires care and feeding, and cybersecurity is the clearest example.
- Updates installed as they arrive.
- Backups proven by restoring one.
- Access closed the day someone leaves.
- Staff who know a phishing email when they see one.
Phishing shows how far the care has to reach, because it reaches straight into finance: the vendor invoice with new bank details, the direct-deposit change requested by email, the urgent favor from someone posing as the director.
Where a system holds client records, this care is part of protecting what you hold.
Integrated systems, live numbers.
Technology is also the glue in the overall picture. Choosing integrated systems is what makes real-time use of your data possible, when that data lives across many systems.
- Case records
- Accounting
- Payroll
- Donors
On the computer or the phone.
Updated as the work happensWhen the systems don't connect, every report is a project: someone exports, pastes and reconciles, and the numbers are weeks old by the time the board sees them. Connected, the numbers always agree, and every variable is described in full, so everyone reads a figure the same way.
It supports every other area too. The plan's scorecard, the outcome measures, the risk assessment's evidence and the monthly close all run on it.
As simple as possible, but no simpler.
- Too simple is the spreadsheet only one person understands.
- Too complex is the suite with forty modules and four in use.
- Right-sized is the smallest system that does the whole job.
When nothing on the market fits, build it.
Buying is almost always the right first answer. Sometimes the tool a mission needs does not exist yet.
Software for keeping foster parents, built because nothing on the market did that job. See Homeward Circle
Strong skills make an organization nimble.
With strong technology skills, an organization is agile: it can test a hypothesis nimbly, see whether outcomes improve, and keep what works.
Scale
Technology allows for scale, especially in data analysis. A small team with the right tools can put a question to ten years of records in an afternoon. AI extends that to the case notes and open-ended survey answers no one ever had time to read, as long as those records stay inside systems built to keep them private.
Innovation
Technology allows innovation, and innovation should be celebrated and encouraged. The staff member who finds a faster way to run intake should hear about it from the board. So should the one whose test did not work, because that test taught something too.
It is a tool, and like any tool, a good servant but a bad master.
People decide what the work is for, and technology serves that, AI included. When a system starts deciding how the work gets done, or a dashboard starts deciding what counts, it has become the master.
Other practice areas
Strategy and governance
Align the board and the plan
A plan with owners and measures, and a board built to hold it.
Outcomes and evaluation
Prove what changed
One measurement system, organized around what your funders need to see.
Risk, compliance, and privacy
Protect what you hold
The annual risk assessment, chaired and finished. The remediation list, owned.
Finance and accounting
Make the numbers work
Board packets that answer questions. Reporting your board can act on.
The conversation costs nothing.
Thirty minutes. Bring whatever is hardest right now.