Technology Assessment and Investment Planning
www.fairlabor.org
Fair Labor Association (FLA) needed a strategic plan to guide its technology
investments. FLA chose Beaconfire because of our broad experience with nonprofit
organizations in conducting technology assessments, identifying strategic opportunities,
evaluating current processes, and recommending technology-based initiatives
to improve nonprofit operations.
The Challenge
The FLA is an independent monitoring organization that holds
its participating manufacturing companies accountable for the conditions under
which their products are produced. To advance fair, decent, and humane working
conditions by enforcing an industry-wide Workplace Code of Conduct, which is
based on the core labor standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO).
As a fairly new organization, FLA’s rapid growth has exceeded its ability
to keep up technologically.
The needs of the organization are also unique due to its global presence, complexbusiness structure, and diverse audiences. Like many growing organizations, FLA had a limited budget for technology investments. It was essential for Beaconfire to create the right portfolio of technology projects so that the FLA could address its challenges in the most sensible order using practical and cost-effective technology approaches.
The Solution
The goal was to create a prioritized inventory of technology needs (and the
corresponding projects) for the FLA. The effort was designed to identify the
connections and dependencies among business problems faced by the organization
for which technology could provide a solution. The FLA’s challenges ranged
from evaluating opportunities for staff training and implementing a tool to
track staff time to increasing efficiencies in maintaining its Web site and
identifying technology options to streamline the FLA monitoring process. To
create a comprehensive Technology Plan, the project followed the following high-level
steps:
1. Create a list of the prioritized technology issues across the organization.
2. Evaluate the list of issues and bundle like needs together into projects.
3. Develop budgets, timetables, and sequencing for projects.
Beaconfire
began the project by conducting interviews and workshops with staff and key
stakeholders to understand the technology opportunities and “pain points”
of the organization. The focus of these dialogues was to gather information
about what the organization was experiencing and what stakeholders believed
it needed, and to share industry best practices and examples of how other organizations
were using technology to further their missions.
Based on these discussions, Beaconfire inventoried and assessed the organization’s existing technology systems in light of future needs. Beaconfire produced a preliminary needs report that communicated the most important areas needing focus in terms of building capacity and/or changing practices. We worked with the FLA to prioritize this comprehensive list of opportunities and establish technology initiatives, which were then categorized as “quick hits” (easy remedies for urgent problems that should begin even before the Plan was completed) or high, medium, or low priority projects that would need budget or executive approval to begin.
The resulting recommendations document – the Strategic Technology Plan – became the organization’s blueprint for transforming its technology capacity. FLA implemented several quick hits during the course of the project and has hired Beaconfire to help implement the first phase of projects, which includes evaluation of a Corporate Responsibility Software product and creation of an email communications system.