How federations can build an effective technology strategy

Providing support is a priority for both federations and their affiliates.

For many federations, the goals are the same: They want to have operations and technology standards in place that can help their affiliates see better outcomes. And they want transparency into impact at a local level and in a way that doesn’t feel too controlling to the affiliated entity.

The question is how to best balance these goals.

Current technology products and platforms that have been leveraged for more than a decade across federations are becoming increasingly obsolete and outdated due to shifts in the business processes of affiliates. And both national federated offices and affiliates have critical decisions to make on how to manage any technology transition. 

Whether you’re enforcing standards as part of your by-laws and operating agreements or giving affiliates full control, choosing the right operating strategy can have a lasting impact on how well your organization is able to achieve its mission across the federation.

To choose the right strategy, start by understanding your options and answering key questions.

Three strategy options

There are three main strategies the national operating body of a federation can choose from when implementing changes:

• Centrally managed strategy: With a centrally managed strategy, the national federation develops standards for operations and technology and enforces those standards on all affiliates. While this strategy helps make it easier to unify data in an organization, it can cause pushback from affiliates who may feel they weren’t duly consulted on the strategy or prefer more control over their operations, and the risk of barrier-to-entry for potential future members can be problematic. This strategy also requires heavy resources from national to build, maintain and support affiliates.
• Consolidated strategy: A consolidated strategy gives more control to affiliates. With this strategy, a federation would establish recommended standards for operations or technology at the national level but leave affiliates with options for how they want to maintain those standards with their own tech stacks. While it can be a better option for federations with greater diversity in the scale of their affiliates, it creates less standardization than a centrally managed approach and, therefore, less confidence in rapid understanding of impact across the federated enterprise.
• Independent strategy: In an independent strategy, the national level of a federation doesn’t establish or implement any set standards or systems. Instead, individual affiliates can operate with more autonomy and look to successful counterparts to identify best practices. This strategy provides the least support and unity, but it may be the better option for federations that lack a central authority to report outcome metrics to.

Key questions for national federation offices

Identifying the right strategy for your federation requires a close look at your potential ROI. Here are the questions your federation will need to answer to better understand the impact of the different strategies:

1. How are you providing support?

Implementing standards or technology across your organization requires a support system capable of managing the questions and needs of affiliates. Your organization will also need to consider how you plan on training affiliates to use new systems or adopt new standards.

If you choose to develop your own products to sell or grant to affiliates, you’ll face the additional burden of needing product development staff and a team to manage ongoing upgrades and enhancements.

2. Who is taking ownership of data?

As a crucial part of reporting, performance analysis and technology strategy, data governance is an essential consideration for your operating strategy. Establishing an environment at the national level means that your organization will need to determine whether you’ll have access to the environments of your individual affiliates.

If you plan to give affiliates more control over data, you’ll still need to consider standards for data governance, reporting, updates and data feeds. And if you have entities operating in certain countries, there could be considerations around legal access to affiliate data.

You’ll also need to define standards for metadata. Identifying what metadata you expect affiliates to collect can give you easier access to the data you need to analyze outcomes at the national level and for individual affiliates. And being prescriptive in metadata is likely to yield better quality results than simply asking for more data.

3. Are you providing individualized support?

Some affiliates may want full management and support, while others may feel that they’re more successful independently — especially for initiatives like technology implementation. At the national level, you’ll need to consider how you’ll structure support accordingly, whether that means enforcing standards across your organization or having different offerings depending on affiliate size and need.

4. What’s your implementation plan?

An implementation timeline with realistic and flexible deadlines is vital to ensuring your implementation goes smoothly. Setting out a realistic timeline helps your organization establish what needs to be done and when, critical dependencies and considerations for budgeting and resources.

It’s also important to decide how you want to implement.

With some initiatives, it’s easier to enforce implementation simultaneously across your affiliates. However, you can also undergo a slower implementation, allowing some affiliates to adopt new systems or standards first while letting others take a wait-and-see approach.

Implementing in stages helps other affiliates better understand the potential benefits and gives your federation a chance to test out adoption on a smaller scale before rolling out a wider implementation. In this case, you should solicit for affiliates you would consider early adapters while confirming what you expect from affiliates that get to go first. Namely, that they’re onboard to work with you during the pilot phase, provide feedback and be responsive during the process.

5. Are you collecting feedback?

Affiliates can provide valuable stakeholder feedback for your strategy implementation. Involving them early in the process helps create a more effective strategy and helps you provide clear justification for the changes.

Feedback can also be just as critical post-implementation. A straightforward request process will help you provide better adoption support for affiliates, and give you access to data about the efficacy of your implementation.

Ultimately, the likelihood of success in adoption across the federation is proportionate to the reputation and sponsorship of well-respected entities who sign on early.

Key questions for affiliates

Depending on the strategy, affiliates will also have key concerns that need to be addressed, including:

1. How will the changes impact decision-making?

In any federation, there may be some affiliates that see themselves as a separate organization. They may be part of a network, but they also remain fiercely independent with their own leadership style, governance and procedures. For these more autonomous organizations, it’s important to understand and plan for how a strategy will impact their ability to manage decision-making and their control over their day-to-day operations.

2. What are the benefits?

The main concern for affiliates will be how changes will benefit their organization.

Affiliates will want to ensure that these new standards or systems are mapped to their specific operating processes and that they address their needs. Affiliates will also want to know whether they’ll get ongoing support to help them save on resources and costs.

At the national level, deploying systems with baked-in flexibility in operational approach through the configuration of system functions can make affiliates more comfortable. It helps them see that they’re getting a best practice while still giving them the ability to fine-tune that best practice to their own operational scenario.

3. Are you receiving the right support?

Comparing your needs to the national-level plan can help you better understand how a new strategy implementation will impact your organization.

Affiliates that are more independent will want to ensure they’re not paying for unnecessary support, while smaller affiliates will want to ensure they’ll have access to the resources they need for a successful implementation.

You’ll also need to consider whether your organization has any unique implementation needs compared to other affiliates (e.g., budget, resources or training).

4. What’s your implementation timeline?

In addition to having a plan at the national level, affiliates will need their own implementation plans. 

Before you implement, lay out a timeline that includes the milestones and the resources you will need at each step, including a budget. A detailed plan will help you understand whether implementing a new operating strategy or technology is feasible for your organization and what support you’ll require from the national level.

Your next steps

For both federations and their affiliates, implementing the right technology and operating strategy requires careful planning. Before you move to implementation, gather feedback from stakeholders about what changes they would like to see and evaluate your strategy against other federation models.

Never underestimate the value of a formal approach to change management, both at the national and affiliate levels. Making sure you’re thoughtful in building and telling the change story, identifying the value-add for your affiliates and creating change ambassadors across the network can’t be started too early.

By taking the time to understand the impacts of new strategies and technology, you can help ensure that affiliates have the solutions and support they need to improve their outcomes.

How Wipfli can help

If you’re ready to start defining your strategy, Wipfli is ready to help. Our team brings a wide range of experience in helping both federations and affiliates navigate all stages of strategy development and implementation. Contact Andrew Potasek to discuss how you can create an effective plan for your organization.