Convince Your Boss: How to Identify the Right Tools & Set up Your Team for Success

George Rears from Achurch Consulting, shared how choosing & implementing the best tools can create productive environments and lead your team to success. Find the transcript and time stamps below.

[00:00:06] George Rears: and tell us who you are. Hey everybody, I'm George Rears from A Church Consulting. I've been in the technology space, as I like to say, since last century. But I've been going through the ranks from a developer, to project manager, to a technology leader. Where I've served as the vice president of an IT organization, and I'm now working with A Church Consulting.

Working on. Basically projects trying to help get people to get projects approved and getting projects

[00:00:32] Dave Asheim: implemented. Excellent. And I love it that you say ancient technology. I was just telling somebody, George. My first job as a banker in New York, we did not have computers, did not have a fax machine. And they looked at me like, wow, are you really old?

If any of you can relate to that, please make me feel good and put that in the chat window. My name is Dave. I started engage by cell. Everything we do here has to do with the cell phone. So you'll see in just a couple of minutes the specific technologies, but we're delighted to have George here because he's got a topic that is Something that is hard to get kind of a free advice on all about evaluating and implementing technology.

And a church that group is a real expert. You guys do webinars and speak at a lot of major conferences. So. We're lucky to have George on the panel today. All right, so just a little bit about myself, I'll tell you a bit about EngageMyself, and then I'll fade in the background and we'll turn it over to George who will handle the handle the presentation.

About 19 years in business, we have a wide range of focuses from HR to training. Workforce development, some of the clients who you see on the left hand side, big government agencies, all the way down to little tiny charities. And the kinds of technology we provide will show in the next slide. Oh, that's right.

This is the slide. In fact, this is the slide. I need everybody to take out your phones. And this is part of the technology piece of the demo here, George. Everybody scan that QR code. So if you've never done that, you open up your camera and just hold it up, you'll get a little pop up and it's going to open up text messaging, kind of unique, and it will say demo webinar, hit send, and you will now be on our list and we're going to wipe off the list at the end of the day.

But you'll get a thanks for texting in. We just want to show you how easy it is to implement some technology. You'll get a kick out of this and it will send out a text or two at the very end. If you did not get it, put in the chat window your cell phone number, and Anna will manually add it. We're also going to send to you and allow you to scan a QR code to get this unbelievable great checklist.

Think later in the presentation, George, right at the very end, you'll have a QR code for that. Okay next slide. We're all about mobile. George is going to talk more broadly about technology in general. Organizations. We've got, I think, 2000 clients use us from everything from text message reminders to filling out forms to taking tours of zoos and parks, and we work with goodwill on training and on workforce development.

So anything you can imagine with the phone. That's how we help and two types of technologies. One is text messaging. So from your desktop, you could push out messages to two or three or four people or 20, 000 people. And then we've got a mobile web platform that can be used for everything from tours of museums to training and workforce development.

So that's enough about us. I will back off and turn it over to

[00:04:12] George Rears: George. Excellent. So I'm going to share my screen at this point. And hopefully you are now seeing a bright, bright blue screen. If we were seeing a bright blue screen, we are excellent. So I'm going to move right in today. We're talking about convincing your boss a little bit about a church.

A church is a technology organization of about 25 senior consultants that I've all had leadership positions that helps organizations leverage technology to meet their business needs. We do complex enterprise wide projects primarily in the non profit space. But we do have some profit for profit organizations.

We're privately held, woman owned, obviously I'm not the owner. And once again with about 20 members. So that's a little bit about A Church. What do we do? We do technology assessments, which is where we're going to kind of be going into and then do some implementation project management fractional CIO.

You'll see these in the deck. Enough about a church. Let's talk about what you're here for. And I want to start with this conversation here and I want everybody to think back. And this is relevant. I want you to go back to your way back 88 miles per hour. Set it back to when you were in 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th grade, and your teacher always insisted on you showing your work.

Okay, and I want you to kind of think about why they did that. Did they do it to prove you weren't cheating? To show that you knew your stuff? To help you build, reinforce good habits, or were they just trying to kill time on the exam? Would love to get your feedback. Perhaps even in In the channel is this the survey piece is working, but I want to get your thoughts on that.

So give that a give that a quick thought through machine. They're good answers. In the past, we thought it was D, but it was probably a or C. So C. A and B. Well, I'm glad with what I'm hearing. And let me tell you why I'm glad with what I'm hearing or seeing. The answer is it, it really is A, B, and C.

Okay? And really showing your work is what this all is gonna come down to. And I'm gonna expand upon this, but if you want to really effectively prove your, your case to your boss and, and to get things approved, it's all about showing your work. And I'm gonna talk about the work because showing your work is easy if you have the work done, and showing your work allows you to effectively make your case to your boss because.

It builds that credibility that the work has been done. Okay. So you've done the work. They didn't have to. And then on top of that, because you, you are the one doing this, you can frame the problem and you can frame the solution. So you're in total control now that you're going to get questions or anything, but you basically are in controlling that presentation.

They can follow along and you can lead them down that path you want. So, What I'm talking about today is what we're going to do is we're going to set this up as to building that business case so that you can effectively show them they may not have known there was a problem. They may not have realized how big that problem was, or even who was affected and they didn't know the solution.

So we're going to talk today about that showing of the work. So we also promised some other things today. I'm not going to dwell on this slide, but we talked about Getting your act together and creating that business case. That's the core of what we'd like to talk about today. But then we're going to talk a little bit about the implementation and this is not an implementation there.

There's a way too much to cover in our 20 minutes that we have to talk about that, but we will cover some questions about buying solutions because it's so tied to this topic of when you look at solutions. And then a little tiny bit on adoption and then because your business case is a part of your measurements, we're going to go back and visit that.

So it's a little bit about what we'd like to cover today. So little introduction there. So let's talk about getting your act together. So, at the very beginning of what we're trying to do is we need to identify what our needs are. Okay, what are the pain points out there that we're trying to fix? For instance, a pain point isn't that we need a new expense management system.

No, the pain point is that we don't get our expense reports in for two months and it takes too long and people complain about it. That's the pain point. And we need to identify and quantify those pain points. So we need to document what we have and understand what we already have as far as systems. Well, our system today might be a spreadsheet.

Maybe it is a system. But we need to understand what do we have in our organization and one of the most effective way to do that is via survey. If you're a large organization, you can't talk to everybody. You can do surveys. You can also look at checklists and business processes to see what's out there that what are people using.

But but these tools are helpful in identifying your I. T. Needs. Okay, they could help get deeper into your system. You'll see on the right 30 percent of people report some type of an issue with a process. It's probably significant enough to investigate or to use as a justification. But this is only the beginning.

Once you have these and you've started to uncover some of these needs, you then have to have the conversations with the staff. You need to have one to one or one to department style conversations. I call them interviews. And not only to identify the problems or start thinking about solutions. But to identify the allies and champions and teammates you're going to have to get this thing going together.

I'm going to talk a lot about what allies need and what their value is. But if you're looking to solve a problem, you want to go in with multiple people, preferably cross department if it's enterprise wide. And if not, if it is just department wide, you want to show that the department is united that this is a problem and there's a need.

You want to go and dig deeper. Then just this is a problem and you want to figure out the why is it a problem so you can judge the business impact when we start talking about putting together a business case and you want to know how is it a problem and what is causing that problem. So what is causing the problem.

Ultimately, it's going to tie in to that resolution. So that's a little bit about identifying the needs. One thing I want to caution everybody on and this is something we have found in our spaces. Avoid the new is best trap. And that is that the best thing in the world is to bring in a new system because new systems, especially on the enterprise style enterprise side.

Can be very painful to put in. It's a distraction to people as they put new systems in. It requires changing their work. There's resistance to it. So, perhaps the current system or current technology you have is underutilized or not put in correctly. Don't throw it out just because it doesn't necessarily solve your problem.

Do that work and identify the gaps. I'm going to circle later. I'm going to put a plug in, not now, but later. For some of the work that we're doing with a webinar that talks about our services that we do to help you maximize your current technology. So you don't always just throw it out for the next technology.

We'll, we'll, we'll talk about that. I want to go back to those cases where we've identified that there is a real need. And that's where we're going to create this business case. So we want to identify these, these inefficiencies out here. And the reason why you want to do this is you want to start building that business case for your, your team.

Let's say you've got a problem. You've got net 30 bills and you're not able to process the bills for 40 days. And you're always paying that 5 percent premium because you're late. This is just an example. There is a very clear quantifiable. Idea of of a qualifiable problem that you can share that executives will understand.

I'm paying 5 percent more of my invoices because they're not being done on time. I can now justify my new automated invoice processing system or my, my bill pay solution. It's right there. That is going to serve as, the backbone of something you want to have. So I'm going to start developing the solid return on investment business case.

I'm going to show how that improves efficiency. I can turn this case invoices around from 40 days to 20 days and get them out the door. I can show how much money I can save doing that. In some cases, it's not necessarily a save, it's additional revenue. Let's say you're putting in a new shopping cart on your website that allows people to do buy complementary products, and you estimate that for every complementary product, 10 percent of the people will buy it.

Well, there is a 10 percent of whatever you're selling already that can be used as part of your business case. Some of the things are very hard to quantify that you can't quantify in savings and dollars. So you have to focus on other benefits for those people dealing like with websites, you'll see somebody say, Oh, my gosh, on my website.

It doesn't necessarily it's it's hard to use and I'm losing people or, you know, Those type of things that customer experience isn't what it wanted to be. Or if I had a marketing email system that allowed me to build a true campaign, I could include my customer pool or my prospect pool. And if I grow my prospect pool by 20 percent and my conversion rate is 5%, that's, you know, 10 percent up 1 percent more growth.

Now that probably is the best number, but. I'm making this up as I go, so be patient with me. So, but these are all different ways that you can find value. It's not just your savings. It's not just your anticipated revenue. But there are some alternative values out there that you've can kind of extrapolate into money value.

Then you want to be realistic with your expectations. Don't do something crazy. If you promise 20 percent savings, but only C14, that's okay, but be up in front and honest. You want the executive team. Once again, you're going to be showing your work. You want to build that credibility.

So let's talk about this. Ultimately, the business case is showing your work. Okay, it's all about showing your work. So with that in mind, the very first thing you need to do is that problem statement. Now for a, for a smaller project, let's say an electronic signature tool like, like Adobe Sign or DocuSign that you're putting in.

Maybe it's one sentence or a PowerPoint where you state your problem. But if it's, let's say a full ERP system, full CRM system, You know, you're going to have a much more detailed problem statement, so keep that in mind that you want to be able to back your problem statement up with collections of information in the surveys, either, you know, a number of people who use the process that are dissatisfied with it, maybe some anecdotal quotes about how it's difficult to use or how it costs people time.

State your problem clear and loud. Identify those allies. I talked about those allies before, but you want to show who's going to benefit the state, the solution. I talked earlier about a solution with an automated billing process. Yeah, that does, that does benefit finance, but me as an end user who has to approve it.

It comes to my email, I can sign off on it and I can move it along, as opposed to me having to take a look at it, print it, sign it, scan it, then email it. Now, I like this automated email, so it can identify people that can be your allies beyond the obvious in your team, especially. Especially if some of those allies are at the manager or executive level.

That's really going to come in key there. So think about those allies and also think about them for your possibilities for your implementation team. Because if they're on your implementation team, they're going to eventually be the owners and the champions of those systems. And they're going to help lead the user adoption.

You want to identify potential solutions, not the final solution at this point, you're talking about a business case, you're trying to get that license to hunt, as I call it, you're trying to get the executive team to stand behind you. But you don't want to paint yourself as somebody who knows it all. So you want to basically come up with some potential solutions, primarily to lead into number four, which is to help you build a budget.

You're going to share your ROI those items I talked about in the last slide, your value propositions, your, your, Potential savings or potential additional revenue and a budget for what this costs what this might cost create a real budget You know, not just simply up estimates. And what I mean by that is, you know, try and be realistic here you know, you can if you can get quotes wonderful you're not looking for the final dollar number But make sure they're real I wouldn't go with a plus 50 minus plus 50 percent or minus 50 percent and try and get better Look for parallel cases on your business case that you can share with your executive team.

Just so you know that recently this organization did a similar project and they were able to obtain their goals. They were able to obtain their project payback in two years. Whatever that is, but look for successful peers that have done this type of project. In your industry is preferable, out of the industry, that's fine, but make sure you draw parallels.

It might be out of your industry, but it might be the same. Functional organizations that are in your group that helped out. So those are some of the other things you want to do and you want to stay focused. So if in the course of doing all this work, you found something that would really be awesome, but it really doesn't address your business case, leave that out.

That, that, that, the exec, you've led the executive team down this really great path as to why you need this. Don't mention that this solution also will change the world and solve world peace. Because you've, you haven't talked about that world peace here. You've talked about how you need a new system or a new technology that will solve this problem.

Stay focused. Please stay focused.

Now, That is the business case we can be. I'd like to talk a little bit more. We're gonna have time for questions. I don't see any questions yet. So let's talk a little bit more about how the rest of the project ties back there. And then we're gonna go back to some questions. Now that you've got this approval, you start going through vendors.

What I'd like to do is talk about some of the questions and answers you can do. And what I recommend for any of the vendors. You want to share with them your problem. You want to share with them documentation, whether it's an RFP, RFI, or requirements, or some type of info sheet that explains your issue.

Because what I want to do is, I want to judge the vendors by how much they've read about That I've shared with them because I want to see if they care. I want to see if they know, I want to see if they're a good fit for what I've got for them. I don't want to get the generic sales pitch. I want to see what they've done.

I want to ensure that whatever questions I ask are relevant to my problems and their answers are relevant to me. I don't want to stay on their product. I want to learn about the vendor or whoever's supplying the solution because I'm building a relationship here and. All vendors are provide awesome service when things are working.

I want to find out how good that vendor is going to be to work with when things aren't. So I want to start building that relationship. I want to ask them about their service. I want to ask them about support. I want to ask them about when something bad happened. How did you fix it? What was your methodology?

Do we align? You know, did you have your staff work 24 7 to fix it? Did you instead, you know, we're going to do the long term fix, but in the meantime what we're going to do is we're going to compensate you. I want to know what their methodology is, how they operate. These can be refined in reference checks and There really will never be bad reference checks.

If there are, that's a danger sign. But what you can do is you can ask in the reference checks how vendors made mistakes and how do they fix it. Because everybody makes mistakes. It's the way you recover from it that really makes you and tells your story as to whether you're a partner I want to work with.

I told you I'm not going to go into adoption, but one of the keys to the successful adoption Is to take a look at the people. Most implementations start with a builder's framework on technology. It's all about the technology. Oh, and we'll put the processes on top of the technology. We'll automate it to minimize the people, which, which sounds great.

The reality is. A successful project, the people are the biggest part of it, and the people need to be involved. They need to be engaged. And this is where those allies I talked about for you want them involved as soon as possible from the very beginning to the end, and we'll talk a bit more about that.

And those people, they define the processes and then the process should define the technology. So I want to make clear any project. Whether it's technology, focus on the people. At the end of the day, the people are what's going to make that project successful. You know, the technology will follow the people.

And if we're working with the right people, we'll pick that right technology and we'll implement it correctly. This chart, and I'm not going to go into it, but ultimately what this talks about is the role that people play on a project. I'm not talking about the project manager, but I'm talking about the team behind it.

And. Ultimately, these are all the roles that people can have on the project, but you want them to lead to ownership and advocacy, because ultimately, if you're putting in any technology, you want at the end for these people to feel ownership and advocacy for whatever the project is. So, I'm going to leave this slide here so you can read through it on your own, but I do know that we are a bit time constrained.

Now, we talked about metrics. And metrics can often be thrown on a project. And, and the reason why is a lot of people get lost in what I call project and implementation metrics. So at the very end of the day, the executive team asks, how did it go? And you say, well, we've got three open issues. We hit our go live date, and there's a few outstanding tasks that are done.

And they want to get their Backslap. Good job. You delivered the project in time. And yes, you did. And those are good things that your project's just about done. And you've got some issues and that's a wonderful thing. But those are the project metrics. The executive team wants to go back and talk about your success metrics.

Your success metrics tie back to your initial business goals. And we talked before about what can we enumerate or what can we quantify. Our business goals. That's what we need to talk about. Well, how much time did we save? How much did we how much revenue can we start to realize? How much efficiency has been gained?

You want to look at that. Now, to be honest with you, you're probably not going to hit a lot of those in the first month, two months, three months, but hopefully you're starting to trend. And that's when you want to start going out there. There's also going to be what I'll call some positive surprises and maybe some negative ones.

All of a sudden you realize not only did we save money, But morale has gone up because I don't have to take my expense report and paste it to a piece of paper and then put it on a scanner. Yeah, no, those days are gone that I don't have to take my receipts and do that. So my morale goes up and I don't mind the end of the month when they ask for my expense reports and I just take out my phone.

So. These are the type of things that you look for those positive surprises that weren't even part of it. Now there will be some negatives as well, but those can often just be documented and put away. So those are some of the metrics that we have there. I have covered a lot in a very short amount of time.

Hopefully we have some questions. So let me talk to you a little bit about that little checklist you saw on the right. And that is a checklist we have. At a church that we use to do software evaluation and everything on there is relevant to any software purchase, except for 1 section that we have.

It's tailor made to something called an association management system, which is in the 2nd paragraph of that. But the 3 quarters, 6, 7, that document can be applied to any type of software evaluation. Click on that first one on the left and that will really help you out. You know, it's free. That'll take you to a link.

The next one is what's called a success webinar, where we talk about our association management success program, which is targeted to our nonprofit organizations, where we talk about how we invest in your current systems. So you don't even have to go about looking for a new one. So that's a little bit, Dave, about how.

I operate and how I try and make the best business case and doing my best to convince my boss that the project is worthwhile.

So Dave, I'm going to throw it back to you for a second.

[00:26:06] Dave Asheim: All right. That was great. I took I took a million notes. We're sending the

[00:26:11] George Rears: presentation tomorrow, Dave. So you did not have to take notes.

[00:26:14] Dave Asheim: I had a million questions that came up. Folks, this is a perfect time to ask George any question you can imagine about how do we evaluate or research technology.

So in the chat window, that's the place to ask away. I'll start with a few George and then we'll interrupt when we get some get some questions. Have you seen in your history that there's a bit of a bias by management that they're a little afraid of. Getting involved in technology decisions because of the privacy, the security, all the things that they don't know versus a furniture or hard goods, et cetera.

I see that all the time. I talked to a senior person. It's almost like they're a little nervous about technology. Have you seen the same thing?

[00:27:09] George Rears: So, so it's real. And in many cases, and I think you even said in your question, it's not the technology they're worried about. But it's about the outcomes. If the technology is not done right, different things, there's all sorts of different risks at play.

And some of that is security, but some of that is as big as a simple thing is they do not like failed projects. And technology failed projects results in a whole bunch of issues. One, lost money. Two, poor morale, and three, in some cases, just really bad publicity for those huge projects. And that's why I think it is so important.

My whole show your work scene is that builds confidence in what you're trying to do and what you're trying to say. And then going through a process and define process that's auditable that people can say they've done their homework. And when you evaluate vendors, you do your homework. So if you're dealing with something where security is very much.

Very much consideration. You're making sure that you're picking the right partner. And likewise, you know, if you're, if you've got your people involved and engaged. It may, you've lessened your chances of failure because these people are committed to this project to make it work because they see the benefits.

There's nothing worse than being on a project where people are just going through the motions. You want them excited and involved.

[00:28:37] Dave Asheim: What about back to the boss part? One of our attendees, they, they, they go to a trade show, they come to a webinar, they hear something interesting. It doesn't seem like it's a major 100, 000 deal.

I have found that they are not involving their boss and the I. T. department until sometimes months later, and now they're all excited and they're like ready to go. And one of those two gals or guys are saying, hold on. Yeah.

[00:29:13] George Rears: Yeah, no, that's a great point. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna say I'm a big fan of transparency.

I want everybody to know and. What I'm working on and what I'm doing. And I think with something like this, I. T. can be your worst enemy, and it could be your best friend. My approach to dealing from I. T. and I come from an I. T. background, always go to I. T. with a problem, not with a solution. So if you just saw this great technology in a trade show, don't say you've got to see this great thing from what's a co say, Hey, look, when I was at this Conference, I realized that we're having this issue with something.

What do you think? What do you think about this product? From what code might it be? Something we can use? Mm-hmm . IT people, I used to think it, people went in the business of it because they like technology. The reality is, and and, and challenge me on this, anybody they call it, whenever I talk to IT people, they're in that physics and they want to help people.

And they really, the, the, your it team are a bunch of people who want to help people now, sure people, some of us like myself might be socially challenged, but, but we do want to help people. And then that's where I just say, use that to your advantage and talk to them and bring them involved as early as possible.

[00:30:38] Dave Asheim: I think you're right. But I think the perception is it is where people say no, because they haven't been given any of the facts or the, or the problem. And I T is always understaffed and anything that comes to them has a bit of a risk. So I think you're right. They actually are there to to simplify and use technology effectively, but they love projects.

They love projects. Projects are fun. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And and as you folks are hearing this conversation, please ask your questions. Many of the services we work on, George, have to do with like mobile websites and text messaging all the time I get asked, well, what's the ROI on implementing a text messaging service versus the way we're doing it now?

It's not that easy for them to write it up, you know, create a little spreadsheet on that. And so they go to the boss and the boss saying, Oh, it's going to cost a couple thousand bucks. What's the ROI on this thing? So what's your advice on that?

[00:31:49] George Rears: So the idea, some of the numbers are easy, some of them are hard, and the easy ones we won't spend much time on, but if you can actually do some type of a a metric with conversion of customers or conversion of or building your, your, your database, that, that's, that's fine, but what you need to do In my experience is especially with things on the cell phone technology and the website I need to go to my marketing and I need to go to my departments that that Will use this information and I asked them to help me quantify it

[00:32:24] Dave Asheim: Yeah,

[00:32:24] George Rears: yeah, if i'm going to be growing your contact list by 10 What is that going to do if i'm going to be able to communicate a better customer experience?

Because i'm now going to be able to interact with them Real time during a purchasing process or real time during a trade show. What does that do? And I asked for help because one they'll be able to give a number that's relevant to the executive and an executive speak and two It builds other allies and other people to help support me in the process So I really like to bring other people.

I like I like going into an executive approval situation with A team a bunch of

[00:33:05] Dave Asheim: people that will help us We've got an interesting. Oh Question here. If you can all see it in the chat window, Stephen Edwards just asked a loaded question, George, but a pretty insightful one. Maybe summarize it for those that watch the video later on.

[00:33:27] George Rears: So the question is. Do you come across individuals who are hesitant to get on a new project or to support a new project out of fear they might lose their jobs to AI and automation, rather than considering how the project advances for them? The answer to that is absolutely, heck yes. You do run into these people.

And I always tell my story, which is my story is I always jumped on new projects to serve and told them everything. I did my old job, trained other people to do my job because that made me available to work on other things. You know, if you, if you're counting on somebody keeping you employed by doing your job and being the only one who knows how to do it.

You're going to be doing that job forever or until you're replaced. So I really try and coach and mentor people about the advantages to being on this project and in many organizations. People who work on a project are kind of, I don't want to, I don't know how to say this in a way, but are kind of perceived to be the cool kids.

I don't know the people who are moving things forward. And to me, I always think of it as if I'm selected to be on a project. That's a good thing. And I try and remind people, Hey, look, your management team felt good enough to have you involved. They felt that strong enough that you want to be involved, you'll get on the train and help us find the destination as opposed to, you know, it's like they get on the bus or get run over.

It's like, if you get on that bus, you're not just on the bus, you're helping to drive and set the course that that bus is going to go, you know, use, use this technology to help guide you use this technology to help guide you. Move your career forward. So I, I really like to take it down. I like to challenge that view.

I like to say, look, you've got valid fears, but here's the way that you're going to beat over these years. Here's the way you're going to beat AI. You're going to be part of the team implementing them.

[00:35:33] Dave Asheim: Yeah. It's scary. It is

[00:35:35] George Rears: very scary. It's very real. It's very,

[00:35:38] Dave Asheim: very real. Yeah. A church is an expert in evaluating and implementing and background checks and all those kinds of things.

Many of the technologies that can solve a problem for the folks that are on the webinar today are not easily found by a Google search. If you Googled Text messaging solutions for workforce development for museums. We wouldn't come up in the first 2020 pages. Now, if you went to maybe another museum, you might find that.

But how do you counsel people in trying to find that needle in the haystack? Because that's really hard.

[00:36:20] George Rears: And, and this is where I get to put a plug in for my industry, because I work in the association industry, work with a lot of different nonprofits in the association industry. And that is a great resource for you, because if you have, if your organization is in a trade association, or even let's say you're networked in with other people in other organizations in your industry.

That is the place to figure out what they're doing. If your industry has an annual conference, or they've got a user committee, there's something like that to get involved. You can often ask these questions of what are you using for this, or you can see a story about it. Back in the day, there used to be magazines in your industry that would come out, and you would hear that somebody did this type of a project and would inspire you.

Today, you now will see that on the web, or you'll get a newsletter mailed to you, which talks about what other people in the industry are doing. And it's so accessible now because now you can read their name in this newsletter, you can look them up in LinkedIn, and you know, people love to talk about the projects they've worked on.

So to me, that that is the best resource to find potential solutions or potential vendors, because they're in the same industry as you. And let's say you're in an industry that's not that big. Well, then you look at your profession. So, okay, so I'm in in this case, I'm in a consultant industry, but my profession is technology implementation.

So then I go, okay, I can't find that. So I'm a member of the society for information management, which a bunch of information practitioners. So they might be in different industries, but they might still be in my industry. If I'm in the finance industry, you've got the AFP, the finance professionals talk and network that the networking is valuable.

Networking is so much more than just going to a cocktail party and talking to people up. You'll think that's networking. No, networking is just reaching out to your contacts and asking questions. And it's a great way. And I've always been told. When you do somebody a favor, they don't know you when you know them another one.

So it's kind of like, you know, ask the questions then ask another

[00:38:26] Dave Asheim: question. I'd be interested if any of you folks on the webinar today have used LinkedIn. To join groups to try to solve some of these problems. Do you find LinkedIn is helpful or if there's some other kind of source where you can actually have a chat, you know, a user, a user group chat,

George, did you hear that? George, did you hear that question?

I did not hear a question. I apologize. I will, I will write it in the chat window here.

[00:39:09] George Rears: I see that Gwendolyn mentioned that she has not used her LinkedIn. She signed it up, but she hasn't used it.

[00:39:16] Dave Asheim: All right, George, I put it in the chat window. Can the rest of you hear me? Let me know in the chat if you're able to hear me.

Okay. Dave, I can hear you. Okay. Great. Okay. Thanks, Gabby. So the question is all about LinkedIn, George. Yes. Is LinkedIn

[00:39:38] George Rears: a great source? Yes. Oh, I LinkedIn is a great source. It's you find people in your industry. You find people that you've worked with. I mean, I'm, I'm on the far side, I guess, of the work from here, if you will.

So I've got a great group of people I've worked with, and I've stayed in touch with it and built a network. But you know, even even. Having that group that you can talk to and reach out to that, that in many ways is replacing one of the biggest competitors of associations themselves is LinkedIn, because it's such a great way to reach out and find people.

[00:40:16] Dave Asheim: Right, right. What's the best way for people to think about using a church? What size of technology, what, what, when should they come to to you and we'll show your email in a second.

[00:40:29] George Rears: Yeah. So a church we, we do, we've, we really. I'd say we serve many ways as being your IT leadership type organization.

So we were, we serve really well with organizations that don't have a full IT organization in place. So, you know, organizations, 300 people and smaller, you know, they'll come to us to help us. Provide what we'll call fractional CIO services to do a lot of what I was talking about earlier to help you go through and do these assessments and do the surveys of your staff and do these interviews to help build the business cases.

So that that's where we can come through. You know, larger organizations tend to have the resources to be able to do that themselves. And we totally respect that. But we can also assist with them if they just don't have the bandwidth to do everything they need. So we can really come in and help out.

With those type of projects.

[00:41:22] Dave Asheim: Excellent. Anna, maybe you could show the phone numbers and emails of both George and myself. And we will also send everybody a text message. And if you want to meet with me or meet with George, all you got to do is reply to that text. That Anna is going to send out to you folks and we'll get we'll get that connection made.

Any final questions Gwendolyn, Lorna or anybody? This has been so interesting, George. It's so darn hard to figure out how to evaluate and implement and your comments about getting people involved quickly and making a business case for it, spreading that net wide so that you're getting all kinds of different departments.

It's just all so important. We'll stick around if anybody has a few more questions. Otherwise, thank you George and your team for putting this all together. Thank you. I really

[00:42:17] George Rears: appreciate

[00:42:17] Dave Asheim: it. Really happy to do so. Yeah, that's great. We'll stay here in case there's a question and we'll end it.

I think we're all all set. All right. Thanks, everybody. And thank you, George and Hannah. And feel free to reach out to us. Bye.

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