Registration / Welcome
9:00-9:45 / 9:45-10:00

WELCOME BY CHAIR - John Tate, CFDG IT Advisor

Opening Plenary
10:00-11:00

Opening Plenary: Making A Difference With IT

Especially in changing and challenging times, IT has a critical role to play. Get it right and you can generate significant productivity and efficiency gains. Get it wrong and you are putting business viability at risk. Dave will be presenting a series of tips to help you ensure that you get it right.

Dave Aron, Vice President & Research Director, Gartner

Break
11:00-11:30

Tea and coffee break with time to explore the exhibition

Stream A

Stream B

Session 1
11:30-12:15

1A: Médecins Sans Frontières Case Study

James will talk about how outsourcing data and income processing has been central to the fundraising strategy of MSF in both the UK and Ireland. He will also draw on experiences with the British Red Cross, Disasters Emergency Committee, and Comic Relief. James will make the case for outsourcing in providing flexible, scalable systems, which enable fundraising success, working from start-up.

James Kliffen, Director of Fundraising, Médecins Sans Frontières UK

1B: IS Strategy - Barnardo's Case Study

IS strategy is the vision of how IS contributes to the success of the whole business. Most organisations struggle to produce such a strategy yet without it how do you know you are "doing the right things" rather than just "doing things right"? Find out how Barnardo's achieved it, what it looks like, how well it has worked and what we plan to do next.

Bob Darby, Director of Information Services, Barnardo's

Session 2
12:15-13:00

2A: Making the case for change

Building a business case for investing in systems can be a daunting task - especially when resources are tight...and yet the benefits of investing in efficient processes are key to operating successfully in increasingly trading conditions... This session will explore how thinking through what you aim to achieve can make a difference to what you choose to do, how you choose to do it and what eventually gets delivered.

Alexis Chapman, Consultant, Silverkite Consulting

2B: Using a collaborative approach within a consortium to specify and select a shared case management system

In 2008, the Refugee Council, Scottish Refugee Council and Welsh Refugee Council decided that it made sense to collaborate on the design, selection and implementation of a single case management system to support the delivery of their various advice and other support services to refugees. Ian and Richard will talk you through some of the techniques (use of online collaboration tools, an agile/lean approach to procurement) that they used to build end user engagement and to achieve agreement across the three organisations on the requirements for, and the selection of, a single shared system.

Richard Collings, Independent Information Systems Consultant & Ian Williamson, Head of IT, Refugee Council

Lunch
13:00-14:15

Enjoy the hot buffet lunch and explore the exhibition.

Session 3
14:15-15:00

3A: Benchmarking the IT function

The Charity Consortium IT Directors Group (CCitDG) has been benchmarking its members’ IT functions for many years. Over those years, the maturity of our CCitDG benchmarking has developed considerably. In 2008 they embarked on an innovative commercial partnership with the Z/Yen Group, working jointly to progress the benchmarking yet further. The session will describe the scale and scope of information now being collected, explain the novel techniques being used for data collection and resulting information presentation, and discuss ways that the information can be used to the benefit of your charity.

Ian Harris, Z/Yen & Laura Dawson, Head of Information Systems, RSPB

3B: Economies of scale from consolidated projects - British Red Cross Websites' Relaunch

The British Red Cross will present a case study on an ambitious project to almost simultaneously relaunch their two key websites. Consolidating two projects for different parts of the organisation into a series of single supplier contracts has been a major success for their new project office and lead to surprising economies of scale as well as some unexpected challenges for the project managers. The presentation will cover the benefits to the Red Cross from this approach and how the resulting challenges were addressed, as well as sharing the lessons learnt along the way.

Jon Day, Project Manager & Ben Mardle, Project Manager, British Red Cross

Session 4
15:00-15:45

4A: Building an effective team - the relationship between the FD and head of IT

Systems and systems integration are at the heart of the charities fundraising and outputs. In recent years Asthma UK has centralised its marketing data base system, commissioned a bespoke research database using developers in India and much more. An underlying tension is always the analysis of the business and its needs. Greg and Ian will talk about how they have built a constructive relationship and what each expects of the other to ensure that their customer’s needs are met.

Ian Bucknell, Executive Director Operations & Greg Yakub, IT Director, Asthma UK

4B: The challenges that developing a digital strategy presents for charities

An interactive session that will actively invite debate and discussion around the issues that impact an organisation wrestling with what all this new fangled web stuff really means - generally and specifically what opportunities and challenges it presents for IT infrastructure, working practices and departmental structures. Using insights from digital strategy development for organisations as wide ranging from large organisations like the National Trust, organisations with a global reach such as WSPA and smaller organisations like MND.

Jason Potts, Director, Think Consulting Solutions

Break
15:45-16:15

Tea and coffee break with time to explore the exhibition

Closing Plenary
16:15-17:15

Closing Plenary - IT 10 Years On

The tech cycle is currently around 9 months, and for managers it is 2.5 years, whilst people move on in just 5. So the next decade will see significant tech changes with an average of 4 management and 2 people change-outs. This new breed will have entirely different expectations and new demands from today, and companies will have morphed to new, dynamic and more transient entities. To survive and serve their companies, IT Directors will have to change the nature of their operations away from network and desktop support toward data, information and knowledge management, business modelling and decision support. A more tech-savvy workforce will have evolved to the point where they provide their own hardware and software, and decide their own work modes and tools.

Professor Peter Cochrane, Co-Founder, Chairman & Director, Cochrane Associates

Summary of Conference by Chair
17:15-17:30

Reception and Networking
17:30-19:00

Time to relax and network with your peers.