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Association Insights | Expert Briefing

Example:
University Y needed to improve its process to identify
and deliver ground breaking research. Their strategic
objective was to improve their rankings so the problem
was defined by their strategic objective. They had to:
-F
 acilitate flexible collaboration across and
independent of disciplines;
- Facilitate discovery of research activity and outputs;
-A
 ddress inefficiencies in gathering information about
research themes;
-E
 valuate researcher attitudes to research theme
knowledge engineering and exploitation.

2 Process
In a professional or membership association, workflow
technology can coordinate dependent relationships/
activities and orchestrate individual steps in a business
process. Modelling and documenting what you want to
achieve is important at the early stage. Business rules guide
the logic of the model and the organisation’s strategy
determines the business rules.

Before you make any decision about product, you should:
-M
 ap - in detail - your existing processes around the
opportunity or challenge for which you need a solution identifying every action and decision point and the people
who trigger and make those decisions
-L
 ook again at the process from the members’ perspectivemap their experience of the activity
-C
 ost the current process in as much detail as makes sense
for your organisation
-A
 sk other organisations, like you and not like you, how
they do it- that’s where the Associations Network can
really add value to your thinking
-P
 lan, what happens when, and what will be impacted by
the project or changes. Flag all key dates and processes in
order to build the project plan around it
-B
 e realistic in estimating work involved - people need
holidays - testing is there because there will be issues, so
allow time to test and learn, test and learn
Make sure that whoever owns the plan understands the
purpose and content, and not just the process.

3 Product

During this modelling process there are two key tips for
success:

Choosing the right product means you need to understand
what your organisation needs and wants.

- Challenge existing ways of working, and

Your organisation runs rather like a huge piece of
machinery, often with lots of complex processes. They
aren’t always very visible. Many of them run in the
background. The smooth operation of each is crucial to
the smooth operation of the whole. They are all there to
support the purpose of the “organisational machine”.

- Keep asking why?
Many professional and membership associations are very
good at convincing themselves that they are unique, that
‘things have to be done this way’, when in fact they need
to re-engineer out of date processes, behaviours and
assumptions.
Once the vision is clear, a defined project methodology
is required, either an in house version or an externally
developed one that your business already uses- familiarity
will help internal confidence and broaden understanding
within the organisation

Example:

Few people if any will understand the detail of the entire
operation; hopefully some key people will each understand
the intricacies of t he parts for which they are responsible.
They are all “stakeholders” in the operation of the whole
thing. Whilst it may be praiseworthy for a particular set of
parts and processes to work really well, the whole thing
is only sustainable, to deliver its purpose effectively and
commercially, if on balance the whole thing works well
together.

In the early days of the publishing revolution when
publishers discussed their spanking new digital
workflows, it was heresy to ask how these investments
added to sales and many soon found that costs
were down at the expense of growth. They had reengineered the workflow, but not the product and
consequently many small academic publishers got
eaten up by larger more commercial operations. They
were so focussed on the workflow that they didn’t think
about their strategic objective.
The project management must be ‘fit for purpose’ and
suited to the size and sophistication of the organisation
and the project team. Reporting has to ensure ensure
trackability and accountability, but should otherwise be
kept to a minimum. If a report is not used by the people
for whom it is intended, it is useless. Project software can
produce beautifully detailed, gloriously coloured ‘artefacts’
which make everybody look good - but if you can’t see
immediately what matters then change, reduce or simplify.

30 | © Associations Network 2015

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