Tips for educating users on importance of RE?

Suzanne Murray 2

Hi all,


We have a new chief of marketing at my org and she is not familiar with RE. My basic question is, have you all had to explain the point of the system before? How do you explain that more than one person has to be using RE for it to be useful in a small shop? I think I am too close to the issue to explain it well - she's also coming from the corporate world, so maybe that's part of it.


RE is not well-loved at our org because it was in bad shape for a long time and it's very complex, but in the past 3-5 years we've made great strides in data quality and training and now most staff can use it as needed for their jobs.


Any advice or experience you have with this kind of education/conversation would be lovely.

Thank you,


Suzanne

JoAnn Strommen

To me, your talking points with her would depend on how she could/would use RE/how is it relevant to her job description. Our communications director (marketing) really has no real use of RE based on his position other than the mailing and donor lists I pull for his use. He does not have a user account in RE. 


How would she use RE with her position? Does she need to be a 'user' or just someone who gets info via someone else?

Suzanne Murray 2

In terms of her role, she does not need to use RE except to get contact details on people, which her admin-level person can provide for her. Her predecessor did not access RE, similar to how yours does not.


This director's concern is more about her direct reports, who are in charge of events, marketing, communications, volunteer efforts, the website, social, and son on. These are all roles where they need to pull mailing and email lists, record and track attendees, record online interactions, and so on.


Since we don't have one dedicated person who's dedicated to our data, everyone works out what must be tracked/recorded/reported on, and for each project, the data/RE side is also their responsibility. They do not necessarily have to do all of it themselves, especially data entry, but they need to make sure these projects happen accurately and on time. Perhaps that's what's not clear?


I think her point of view is that I should be the one doing all the RE work, since I am the administrator. My perspective is that we only use RE to make our jobs easier/better, so my colleagues need to know how to do that. I don't want to be the gatekeeper, I'd rather be the one making sure everyone does have the RE access/tools they need, and the one troubleshooting it if need be.


Does that make sense? I know it got a little long.

Thank you!

Bill Connors

Are supposed to be the only one who does the organization's email?  Are you supposed to be the only one with a computer and you log in and print out everyone's email?  Of course not!  It's 2016 and everyone in constituent relations should be able to look up a record to get folks' information and should put in action and notes when they have interactions with them.  The fundraising database should be opened up every morning when Outlook (or whatever) is started and not closed until the computer is shut down to leave for the night.  In two words?  "It's 2016!"  (Of course I'd tone that down to share with someone else, LOL, but this idea that everyone needs a computer and smart phone for email, calendars, surfing the internet, etc., but they can't access the most important source of information for the whole organization is crazy and we must keep fighting the good fight on this!    Go Suzanne!)

Jen Claudy

Suzanne - I feel your pain.  We hired an Admin who is supposed to spend at least 25% of her time supporting me with data entry work.  She has no database/data entry experience at all and no NPO experience, either.  I talked to my boss about what I'm supposed to train her on, since at this point, it's unlikely she'll be of much help to me with data entry (she really only has about 25 minutes a day, if we're lucky, to work with me and doesn't really have the aptitude for data entry work).  The answer was that I'm supposed to train her on "everything" I do so she can be my backup, but that I'm supposed to do all RE-related work because "that's what we hired you to do".  (Which is why I need to get off of here and back to work on 4 complex reports requested late last Thursday afternoon and 3 additional short, but probably manual lists requested mid-day yesterday, all due by COB today for a meeting this Thursday.  In addition to all of my regular work.  No wonder I rarely get any data scrubbing done.)


Bill - Yes!  Everyone should be able to at least look up data in RE.  RE:NXT is aiding in that a lot, more so every time additional fields are available in that UI.  However, I find it really frustrating that my Hosted RE:7 connection kicks me out after an hour...which means every time I go into a meeting, I have to either do a screen shot of my desktop or close everything to make it all appear in Recently Accessed lists, so I can save time when I get back to my desk and have to sign in again.  I used to be annoyed at the session timeout "screen saver" feature in Locally Installed RE, but at least you just had to sign back in and all was just as you left it.  My computer locks the screen after 15 minutes, so I don't need RE to do that, too.  And this is the main reason I can't get any staff here to sign in at the start of the day and leave it open all day...because it'll close on them and they'll get frustrated (or confused/panicked) having to sign in again.

Suzanne Murray 2

Hi Bill and Jennifer,


Yep great points! I made my presentation last Friday, and I think it was fairly clear. I am not sure where things stand now for this director, but I did ask my colleague who reports to her to explain how she uses RE every day, and I got good feedback from my own boss (director of dev) on it. I would recommend that for sure as a tactic for this type of education. Having someone who's just a "regular user" advocate for RE has seemed to help more than just my explanations of it.


Re: the 25% data entry support... how frustrating. For some comic relief, if you do not already know this blog, you should check it out immediately. This post in particular: did you finish that elaborate report yet. A few others... oh sure let me wave my magic wand, or this one about making sound effects. (I'm not affiliated with the blog, just a fan.)


What we have done is actually outsourced our two biggest data entry projects, which are each annual events (so 2 per year), to our consulting partners who helped us clean up and get trained in the first place. Of course, that also has a cost to it, but the accuracy is so worth it to me. My blood pressure still soars as soon as I find a duplicate record, added 6/1/2012 by a temp account! This was before my time, when a temp was hired to do some 2,000 records of event attendees, and apparently no one checked that the temp was searching for nicknames, aliases, maiden names, or misspellings before adding new records. 


I hear you on the overdue reports too. The other things I had to prep for a different large meeting on Friday included some very specific revenue reports about a certain region. Based on our previous definitions of this region as 5 specific states, I ran all the numbers. Well then it turns out, what's needed are those same figures, but for only three of those five states, so that was what I did yesterday.


And regarding everyone being able to log in and/or stay logged in... two of my users are on Macs and only one is accustomed to troubleshooting his own machine. So another executive can never log in because of Safari issues, or Citrix issues, or he's forgotten his password, or something, and even when he does log in, the text is very small on his large monitor and he can't read it well. --__--

Still, we've really made a ton of progress from a few years ago.

 

Jen Claudy

Suzanne, thanks for the links...laughter is great medicine, especially when it means you're not alone!


I was informed that if I couldn't have everything done by COB today (and there were changes to one of the reports I'd been working on, from a meeting my boss had at 9:15 Tue morning that she told me about just before 2 in the afternoon!), that Wed morning would be fine.  But I'm not supposed to be working evenings or weekends.  Haven't quite figured out how that's supposed to work.  But very similar to the elaborate report post that you linked to.


Sounds like you have a good handle on everything.  Even if there aren't enough hours in the day to get it all done. 

Suzanne Murray 2

Hi all,


I just wanted to give another update and thank you all again for your support. After a month, I can say for sure that my colleagues are making sincere and substantive efforts to use RE -  very rewarding for me of course. I have found that scheduling one-on-one follow-ups, about 30 minutes each, every few weeks with certain users has helped hold people accountable and also provides a time for questions/review.

Also, for anyone who has a mix of Windows and Mac users and is hosted by BB, I recommend chatting with support reps if you're having trouble. They have been very helpful, including with browser/Citrix troubleshooting.


Thank you,

Suzanne

Nicole S

Yes, it is 2016 and I agree completely. But the reality is that so many see all RE entry as the "database person's" job. I can't tell you how many time I have had to explain that the development assistant (or whoever) cannot be expected to make relevant actions from handwritten shorthand notes for meetings or calls she was not involved with after someone else is angry that the actions don't convey the proper tone of the meeting. This person will usually refuse to see the value of actions to support the argument that she should enter data. It is a relationship database and everyone with donor relationships should be adding information or able to look up basic information. I have seen over and over that all of the knowledge and know how lives with the "database person" because others have such a hands off approach and refuse to even log in. Then that person leaves and no one knows what to do. I am of a certain age, and I am downright exhausted of hearing people 20 years older than me giggle as they say "oh I'm no good with computers." Because it's 2016. You wouldn't let a 24-year-old come in and just never learn to use the voicemail or fax machine because he's only used tough screen tablet and just can't learn landlines. So we have to stop letting anyone, regardless of age or aptitude, just not learn the skills to do their jobs. This kind of management breeds contempt. There is no cross training. And if you go on vacation it's more stressful and ever because nothing gets done while you're gone. Sorry, about the rant but this is a huge issue for me.

Anyway, one thing that works is to make the information useful to others. Set up dashboards or shortcuts to reports. So they can see the info they need with a click. Talk through the process. If people can see how easy it is, sometimes they start to like it.