Message: 16

Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 22:47:03 -0000

From: "Kevin McCord" <kmccord@fbcnorth.org>

Subject: a better way

Since I have the benefit of working with Shelby in a previous church, I did a good bit of research before implementing at my new church. I thought I would share some things that really worked.

On the advice of a great Shelby trainer I did not convert my data. I imported only the data from our envelope company then went to work having my staff ladies and volunteers key in families from cards filled out at the service. We will later merge in some historical info from our old database and work through salvation, baptism, and membership dates.  On the advice of another person and based upon my own experience I decided that we would never subject any new user to a 1, 2, 3 or worse 4 straight days of training. We would certainly not train at all until the system was on their computer and ready for use. We train for 1 hour in the morning, then send them off to do their thing. This means I have to do a lot of things at first (build and run reports), but they only have to know what they need to know to get their job done.

On the financial/contributions side, I learned from 2 wonderful trainers in Dallas that you have to sit with the individual and work through each task several times until they have it down. Then you just come along and review the entry prior to finalization once or twice to be sure they haven't forgotten critical issues. Try having a whole new Chart of Accounts and a new GL at the same time. That is not something I would recommend, but we are going to survive it.

****Thanks to Stephen's basic web interface I have instructed my pastors that they aren't allowed to go into Shelby yet (if ever). They can use EZ-View or the Basic Web Interface to look up people data.  

Maybe someday church management software will have the minister in mind as the end user, but that just isn't the case yet.  I will say honestly that QueryLibrary is an important part of auditing this initial data entry. Correcting data entry mistakes before they become habitual is critical. On the other hand, giving the staff permission to make mistakes because we know we can catch them later takes some of the stress off of them.

We went live January 1 with Payroll and direct deposit, Contributions, GL/BankRecon, AP/Check Express, Membership, and Globafile of course.

It will take 2-3 months to migrate all procedures and ministries into Shelby. The key is to make sure we started everything with the fiscal year. This made data conversion far less critical.

I think the biggest thing I took from this experience is that just about anyone can install software. Many folks can show people how the software works. However, making the software work in any given church takes a combination of people and it takes a lot of time. I want to say thank-you to the great network of Shelby trainers, users, consultants out there who have given me advice and shared on this forum insights that made a big difference.