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Collectively we recognised that we needed a better way to manage information on  the organisations we work with and of recording the type of work we did with them. We wanted a system that allowed for flexible working (as befits a rural, dispersed county) so it had to be internet. We wanted something which would let us continue to look at our organisations and work on a district level; a system which would allow us to work in closer partnership across the 8 CVS Devon-wide and would allow us to respond to the increasing frequent requirements of our health and local authority funders to report and analyse our sector across the county or multiple districts. We also wanted one which would allow us to impose restrictions on how it could be used and by whom.

 

We wanted to see the type of interventions we were having, to be able to identify areas – thematic and geographical – where interventions were low and to see if we could target our training and other skills building opportunities more effectively.

 

We also wanted to improve the way we communicated with our organisations – who in some instances would receive something eight times if they happened to work across the county. So reducing duplication of information was also on our wishlist.

 

We selected VC-Connect as it appeared to us to be the most in tune with what we were trying to achieve – we liked the level of flexibility it had – and the fact that, as it had been developed by a CVS, it appeared to have anticipated most of the questions we were asking ourselves. It met our other criteria too!

 

Talking with the sales and technical team they were helpful and clearly used the system on a daily basis. They were also not precious about accepting that sometimes the system wasn’t perfect and were always willing to suggest workarounds to some of our more esoteric challenges.

 

Our project is about taking information from eight separate CVS and merging them into one, county wide information database and then using it to provide intelligence on both the sector in Devon and our work.

 

We undertook a major customisation of the system – something which was remarkably easy to do – and then set about merging information from 3 districts prior to Christmas 2010. Up until this point we had not realised just how differently we all worked and recorded information even though we would have said we all did the same thing.

 

As well as setting the system parameters we found that we had to give consideration to how we categorised our organisations and our work. Implementing VC-Connect was the catalyst for this and as a result we now have greater consistency of information, work recording and monitoring all of which contribute to a greater clarity of purpose.

 

The first phase of our project is now complete and we are mid way through the 2^nd phase whereby another 2 districts in Devon have come onto the system. As always in these things we have managed to uncover another set of issues we need to address but once again the team at VC-Connect have been very helpful and we have learned some more lessons before embarking on Phase 3 at the end of this year.

 

What VC-Connect has given us is:

·         a method by which we are now able to communicate more effectively with our voluntary and community sector organisations

·         a mechanism by which we can respond to our funders on multiple levels

·         improved recording of our interventions with groups giving us a picture of where our work is needed

·         We can look at our work as individual CVS and collectively across the county.

 

We know that we have to change to keep ourselves sustainable and VC-Connect is a tool which we believe will support us through this.