By: Michelle LeFeve, Courtland Consulting
[Editor’s Note: This article begins a short series of articles that
will focus on the availability of technological resources to help courts perform
efficiently and collect information.
While certain products are highlighted, this is not an endorsement of
one product over another.]
Technology Has Completely Changed the Way We Work
and Communicate
My work at Courtland Consulting allows me to share with many courts, agencies,
organizations, and businesses our knowledge of new tools and technology trends
that can help people do their job and market their programs and services. This Technology Trends article is the first
in a series that I will be writing to share how people and companies are taking
advantage of new tools to collaborate and work on projects, which ultimately
helps save time and money.
In the information age, and with
the movement toward mobile-devices, we are connecting data, people, and
applications together more than ever before.
There are now over 207 million U.S. consumers who are using smartphones
according to a recent Static report. How
many times per day do you check your mobile phone? A study found that the average
smart phone user checks the phone 85 times per day (Source: Nottingham Trent University study). Our
mobile devices have become an inseparable part of our lives.
These facts probably are not
shocking for some of you but it does prove that technology (such as mobile
devices and social media networks) has entirely changed the way we communicate
with one another. With this change comes
the ability to customize and personalize tools to conduct business, which has
made collaborating between teams and groups even simpler and easier than ever
before.
For this first article of the series, I will be focusing on productivity
and survey tools. The tools listed below
offer a license free or “freemium” version, free trial and/or low-cost monthly fee.
Productivity Tools
There are now affordable and
easy-to-use products available that can function as your own customized,
project management office to help organize your projects and tasks at the click
of a button. These tools are called productivity tools and they are
revolutionizing how people and businesses manage projects and teams. Two productivity tools to explore are: Asana and Trello. Both tools allow you to create an account on their website
at no charge and you can immediately start adding projects or tasks.
Asana’s tasks, projects,
conversations, and dashboards provide a very user-friendly and easy way for
teams to track projects from start to finish. The site navigation is displayed
cleanly on the left to add projects and team members. The center of the screen shows your project
task list and helps you easily see responsibilities and next steps for a
project. In Asana, you can set each task to have a due date, team member
assignment, upload files, and add conversation comments – all information is
centralized in one location. You can see
progress at a glance for any project and email reminders can be automatically
sent to team members for past due tasks, which can cut down time on follow up
and status meetings.
For charting progress, Asana
integrates with a freemium tool called Instagantt
that provides visual Gantt reporting. The
free version of Instagantt allows up to three projects at a time and you log
into Instagantt using your Asana login. You can easily reset dates, duration, and task
completion.
The Michigan Family Support
Council’s Program Brochure and Website Committee (Committee) has used Asana to help achieve
its tasks. “For the last two years, we used Asana to manage the creation and
design of the annual fall conference program brochure. There are over 75 project tasks and about 15
Board members and volunteers that require collaboration and tracking to collect
information and conduct final reviews for the conference program brochure. Asana functions as the Committee’s project
assistant with tracking volunteer tasks and it has saved a tremendous amount of
time.”
~ Michigan Family Support Council, Program Brochure & Website Committee
~ Michigan Family Support Council, Program Brochure & Website Committee
Trello’s boards, lists, and cards
enable you to organize and prioritize projects in a more visual and flexible
way. Cards let you keep track of
everything your team needs to do or remember in one place. Team members can
open cards to add details like checklists, due dates, files, and comments.
Trello has a Power-Ups function that
adds different features and integration add-ons to help with project and task
management. These range from screenshot
image attachments, file sharing, calendar to social media, web conferencing,
e-mail marketing, and more. With the
freemium version of Trello, you are allowed to use one PowerUp at a time. One of my favorite Power-Ups is the Gantt
chart feature that works with Elegantt. You can view your project and tasks via the
cards and Gantt chart at the same time and you can make quick adjustments to
tasks, resources and due dates.
Some in the field are already using these resources, such as Maureen
Peterson, FOC Analyst and Operations Coordinator from Kalamazoo County. Anita Smale-Bilek (MiCSES Analyst) said, "I was introduced to Trello at the
Michigan Family Support Council fall conference in 2016, and I started to use it for the Friend of the Court User
Group. We are able to move around potential agenda items, future agenda items,
and message each other back and forth as we talk about topics. I have also
introduced Trello to the Strategic Planning Committee that I chair in Kalamazoo
County. This Committee has used it to brainstorm and share ideas without the
back and forth of e-mail. Co-workers of all different technical skills were able
to quickly learn how to use the tool.”
Over 60 percent of customers say using
Asana has reduced the amount of e-mail and status meetings with their team. This is incredible! What would you do if you were able to get
back 14-28 percent of your workday by lessening the amount of administrative
tasks? I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t
want to cut down on e-mail in their inbox or meeting time.
There are many productivity tools
to choose from and you can assess which one is best for the features you need
based on your budget. If you are looking for more robust project management and
enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, which are a higher cost but offer
bigger benefits for larger teams, look into these tools as an alternative: Basecamp, Harvest, Wrike, Mavinlink, ProWorkFlow, WorkFront, and Workbook.
Survey Tools
Online survey tools help you
create and send surveys with ease and offer robust analytics reporting to make
smarter decisions with data. You can
conduct surveys tailored for customer satisfaction, employee engagement, event
planning, market research, and more. I
will be presenting information on the product, SurveyMonkey, because there are already many Michigan agencies and
courts who are using this tool or are interested in using it. In addition, a brief list of alternative survey
tool products is provided at the end of this section.
SurveyMonkey has a user-friendly
interface and the flexibility to create simple to sophisticated surveys. SurveyMonkey is fast and easy to use with
survey templates. All of SurveyMonkey’s survey
templates are mobile compatible and you can create a survey from scratch as
well.
SurveyMonkey has an intuitive
design that includes a summary page to show high-level information such as real-time
results of submissions and quick links to edit the design, set methods for
collecting responses, and view or generate data reports.
The type of question and specific
wording of the question impacts how you get information and the success of the
survey. SurveyMonkey does a great job at providing tips to help you plan your
survey and it contains a variety of question types that you can choose from, such
as multiple choice, dropdown, star rating, rating scale, ranking, demographic
questions, and more.
You can collect responses online via
mobile, web and social media, and perform manual data entry for responses you
may receive offline. With the paid
version of SurveyMonkey, you can buy responses from specific target audiences
if needed, and it also allows you to customize the survey URL link. So instead of a combination of jumbled
numbers and letters, it can be named as something more relevant, like “XYZ2017survey”.
To analyze results, you can view
the data onscreen and/or generate and export a report. SurveyMonkey’s paid
version has a text analysis feature for open-ended questions that searches and
categorizes responses by frequently used words and phrases, which is a great
time-saver for researchers and analysts.
Renae Topolewski, FOC Director in
St. Clair County, has been using SurveyMonkey to meet her office’s needs. “Implementing a new program can be tricky.
SurveyMonkey can guide you on the effectiveness of a program, satisfaction of
the customer, and if improvement is needed. We have used it for our new program
called, 'Especially for Parents – Understanding the Friend of the Court'. We were able to easily create a quick survey
to collect the data we need.”
There are many survey tools to
choose from and you can evaluate and compare features to find the best one to
match your needs. Other survey tools to
consider: Poll Everywhere (limited to 25 responses per question), SurveyPlanet,
Google Forms, SurveyGizmo, and TypeForm.
Taking
Advantage of the Opportunity
The rapid pace of evolving technology
continues to change the way we work and offers new and exciting
opportunities. Companies who develop
these new software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools are fiercely competitive with each
other and they are designing these products extremely easy to use, affordable,
and include all the right features that we need. The tools shared in this article have improved processes, streamlined administration time, and increased team
collaboration. With a little time investment on your part, you can learn on
your own if you can benefit from any of these resources.
I hope you find this article beneficial
with learning and exploring new avenues to help support and manage the
important work you do for your court, counties, and communities. Feel free to send me your thoughts or how you
have used of any of these tools. Look
for the next Technology Trends article series in the next issue of the Pundit.
Meet the Author:
Michelle LeFeve is a creative
type who works as a project manager, writer, communications specialist, speaker
and trainer. She is passionate about helping people learn new skills using
technology to improve efficiency in the workplace. She loves being a mom, good
conversation, and a strong cup a coffee.
Connect with her at: lefevem@courtlandconsulting.com
or Twitter@MichelleLeFeve.
Website links for tools mentioned in this article: www.Asana.com, www.Instagantt.com, www.Trello.com, www.Elegantt.com, www.Basecamp.com, www.Harvest.com, www.getHarvest.com, www.Wrike.com, www.Mavinlink.com, www.ProWorkFlow.com, www.Workfront.com, www.Workbook.net, www.SurveyMonkey.com, www.SurveyPlanet.com, www.Google.com/forms/about, www.SurveyGizmo.com, www.TypeForm.com
