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Technology Assessment Helps Golden Key Map A Global Future
Golden Key International Honour Society

For many non profits, one the biggest challenges in taking the first step towards improving operations and client service through technology is knowing where you are. One nonprofit facing this challenge found that getting an independent assessment of its technology, along with objective recommendations, has helped put it on track to realize its vision for serving a global membership.

Golden Key International Honour Society is an academic organization that recognizes and encourages scholastic achievement and excellence among college and university students from all academic disciplines. The organization has operations and members in the U.S., Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Malaysia and United Arab Emirates.

As a small nonprofit, enabling a global presence presents a unique technology challenge for Golden Key. The organization is able to use a contract IT service provider to support its technology in the US and Canada. It also uses a Web-based membership application that allows staff and clients in these regions to remotely access the system. In spite of these advantages, the organization’s network, membership system and accounting system are not sufficiently integrated to enable access for staff and clients in every region; so much of the membership processing and financial reporting continues to be done manually.

As Golden Key completed its five-year strategic plan, one of the organization’s key initiatives was to create a more seamless technology platform that would support its global operations.

“Our vision is to have a global membership system that allows anyone to join Golden Key from anywhere we have a presence. We also want to have the system integrated to our accounting systems to streamline membership payments in every region,” said Cedric Edmonson, Chief Financial Officer of Golden Key. “Before we could begin to map out our technology requirements, we needed to know the statue of our current technology infrastructure was and how prepared we were for future growth.”

Golden Key engaged TechBridge to conduct a comprehensive review of the organization’s IT infrastructure. TechBridge developed a comprehensive technology audit to address the following key issues:

How Golden Key’s technology infrastructure ranked against an objective set of industry benchmarks

The system’s flexibility, adaptability and constraints in supporting future growth

Risks and vulnerabilities, in particular the system’s ability to withstand “external” events, such as virus attacks or intrusion.

The overall cost effectiveness of Golden Key’s technology as measured by its performance in streamlining operational processes and improving productivity

Investments that would be needed to achieve Golden Key’s goals for a global system.

TechBridge conducted the audit over a period of three months, reviewing system architectures, hardware and software configurations, upgrade schedules, security and backup processes and staff use patterns. Throughout the project, TechBridge took extra measures to minimize the impact the study might have on Golden Key resources and staff.

“Audits can be disruptive, but they are invaluable in helping an organization assess risk and providing guidance so that resources can be allocated to solve problems and enable growth,” said Michael Nachman, chief operating officer, TechBridge. “We approached the audit in way that incorporated the fact finding process into Golden Key’s daily workflow, so we were able to get the information we needed without getting in the way.”

“TechBridge made the audit painless for us and most importantly, they talked to us in a way that we could understand,” said Edmonson. “They really earned our trust; so much so that we have brought them on board to help with future planning and to supervise the relationship with our current IT vendor.”

TechBridge leveraged its relationship with Accenture to provide an extra level of industry expertise and insight into the audit. With Accenture’s help, TechBridge was able to expand the scope of the benchmarking beyond the nonprofit community to reflect current practices in relevant business sectors.

Once the audit was completed, TechBridge presented Golden Key with a full audit report with an executive summary, highlighting key areas of focus, plus details behind each audit category. The report included the following key recommendations:

Scale back hardware upgrade schedules – the benchmarking exercise found that Golden Key was being too aggressive in refreshing their technology and that the organization could save on upgrade costs without impacting current use or growth.

Implement a physical security system to secure laptops and other portable devices.

Develop and implement a backup and disaster recovery plan.

TechBridge also developed detailed system documentation to ensure continuity for future Golden Key IT managers. “What TechBridge has allowed us to do is to gain a solid understanding of our current technology. We are now defining the future track to build the systems we need to be a truly global organization,” said Edmonson.