We develop your technology roadmap to streamline operations, serve members, and advance strategic initiatives.

At Ellipsis Partners, we guide you step-by-step through developing your technology roadmap, bringing clarity to the complex issues and options you face. We introduce you to emerging trends in effective IT, with a focus on the unique aspects of association management. Using our familiarity with the goals, structure, and challenges of association management and our expertise in current and emerging technology, we work with you to develop a clear technology roadmap.

During the strategy development process, our team works closely with members of each department or strategic area of your organization to identify their unique needs. We combine this context with an objective assessment of IT components such as infrastructure, systems, and IT management practices. And we use our knowledge of technology solutions available in the market as well as association best practices to determine how well the various technology components serve our clients.

Technology Assessment

  • Association management (AMS)
  • Customer relationships (CRM)

  • Web content (CMS)

  • Learning management (LMS)

  • Financial management (FMS)

  • Communications management (email marketing)

  • And so many more…

How can one association keep track of so many moving parts?

In particular, how can associations integrate all these systems and exchange data seamlessly between them?

Ellipsis Partners’ technology assessment investigates your systems, staffing, skills, needs and budgets to create a realistic plan for success. Looking closely at your organization’s structure, Ellipsis Partners takes the system capabilities and needs outlined by staff and members, and identifies gaps in system functionality for the membership database, program management, donor and fundraising management, finance, and other internal tools and systems.

Our evaluation includes organizational data needs, the fit with member and staff needs, and how the system integrates with other systems.

Understanding your staff and members’ pain-points, goals, and vision can transform your approach to technology. Engaging in a process where members and staff feel heard can bring them on board with change management efforts. A technology assessment process can help move the organization forward on many fronts.

Technology Strategic Planning

At Ellipsis Partners, we believe technology has three distinct levels that require different approaches and audiences for planning, decision making, and deployment.

a graphic illustrating the information under Technology Strategic Planning

Technology as Operations

The focus is on making things work. This level includes desktop support, office productivity tools, email, networking and servers, reliability and connectivity. Critically, it also includes security. All of these aspects of technology must work for your organization to run.

Technology as a Service

On this next level, we ask not only if things are working, but are they are working well? Does technology help my staff be effective in their work, or do they have a lot of workarounds and manual processes? Can my members join and renew and register for events easily, or are they printing out PDFs and mailing things in? This level is about reducing pain and increasing efficiency in the core work of your association.

Technology as Member Value

This top level is where innovation comes into play, using technology to drive new products and services that members value. Here, technology is directly used to help members solve key problems that they face in their own work.

By viewing technology through these different layers, we can apply different methods, people, and timelines to planning enhancements, scheduling replacement, and crafting solutions.

Design Thinking

Ellipsis Partners utilizes design thinking to help associations approach complex challenges from a new perspective. The Design Thinking approach to tasks or problems explores understanding your users, challenging traditional assumptions, and finding innovative strategies that are less apparent under initial review in a computational way.

Design Thinking involves five steps:

Empathize

Develop a deep understanding of the challenge.

Define

Clearly articulate the problem you want to solve.

Ideate

Brainstorm potential solutions. Select and develop your solution.

Prototype

Design a prototype to test your solution.

Test

Engage in a continuous short-cycle innovation process to continually improve your design.