Case Studies > Investing Wisely: Determining Organizational Needs

A $50 million Health and Human Services organization decided that their current client intake and operational management tools were not efficient and were not allowing them the reporting capacity they desired.

With three separate divisions and over 40 individual programs, the organization used a variety of intake mechanisms, from recording client data in homegrown spreadsheets, emails and voicemail messages, to completing photocopied paper forms.  Each program used a different intake process.  The organization knew that many clients received services across programs and divisions, but without any centralized intake tools or processes, that was almost impossible to determine.  Funders required increasingly complex reports and the organization struggled to keep up.

The organization’s executive team had decided to invest in an organization-wide Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.  But which system would meet their needs?  With so many programs, processes and staff, who knew what their needs were?

The organization contracted Annkissam to perform an operational needs assessment for each division and program, with the goal of prioritizing their needs and identifying similarities and differences across programs.

After several weeks of highly detailed, side-by-side work with the organization’s staff, Annkissam produced an actionable report for the executive team.  Amongst critical information for choosing an ERP system, the report showed where needs were identical across programs, where they were similar but not exact, and where program needs were unique.  The report prioritized the organization’s needs, so as they reviewed ERP systems they could make trade-offs between functionality that the organization absolutely had to have and what they could live without.

A unanticipated benefit of the process was that it enabled the Division Directors to identify areas where they could collaborate with other divisions to yield grater efficiencies.  Additionally, the executive team shared that without this process, they expect it would have been difficult for the Division Directors to agree on an ERP system that would meet the needs of the entire organization.