CASE STUDY.01
Business Challenge
The nation's largest professional employee organization and its affiliates launched a process to determine the best way to modernize and streamline their political and legislative tracking system. It was prompted by the fact that the organization and its affiliates invest considerable resources conducting legislative and political activities on behalf of the 2.7 million members they serve, yet had no central source of reliable data on those political and legislative activities.
The previous systems used in the organization and its affiliates were complex, inefficient and incapable of tracking a legislative, political and grassroots activity electronically from inception to completion or easily accessing information to analyze and understand plans and events. Those applications were inadequate and inefficient in data entry and retrieval. This led to the creation of shadow databases kept in Miscrosoft© Access, Excel and even Word table format. Because of this, data accumulated during the previous campaigns was practically unavailable and unused for the new campaigns and initiatives.
Technology Solution
A Legislative and Political Action Tracking System is recommended for immediate implementation. The Tracking System is the technology infrastructure, information integration, and process enhancements that will enable "cradle-to-grave" tracking of plans, information sharing across programs, and snapshots of specific activities.
Over a 4 month engagement virtuace, inc. developed Legislative and Political Action Tracking Systems - a custom built web-based application that extends the existing infrastructure to deliver an environment that enables the consolidation and integration of critical data regarding legislative and political action plans and events. In this environment, plans, events and activities are tracked electronically enabling managers and their staff to "pull" information for better planning and decision-making, as well as "push" information required for reporting.
Results
The old approach was causing expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive data entry and re-entry, repetitive data reconciliation, and manual data integration, all of which led to an increased number of opportunities for error. Resources devoted to the efforts were redirected toward organizing activities of building high-performing state level grassroots capacity, enabling the organization to measure its level of performance and give sufficient information for future planning.
"Resources devoted to the efforts were redirected toward organizing activities of building high-performing state level grassroots capacity, enabling the organization to measure its level of performance and give sufficient information for future planning."