Client Success
Digital Transformation
MALT:
Marin agricultural Land Trust
MALT initially approached us to partner with their IT service provider to help migrate their operations from an internal server onto the cloud. During that process, we worked with stakeholders across leadership and other teams to understand their level of comfort with using cloud-based products.
We learned that while each department had procedures they used to complete and document their work, team members had varying levels of technical acumen and different tools they used to do their work. This meant the organization did not follow a standardized process or best practices, making it difficult to consistently find what folks needed on their server. We wanted to ease the burden on employees by reducing manual and wasted time spent searching internal servers for materials.
The leadership team knew that their staff was lean and the volume of work was high and lacked visibility into the status of different projects because they were inconsistently using multiple tools for project management. As a result of these findings, they increased our scope to identify and implement a solution as well as drive efficiency through establishing standards and training the team on best practices. Our objective was to improve operational bandwidth and ensure the leadership team could effortlessly verify the progress of projects and campaigns.
Their Dilema
OUR SOLUTION
We learned that MALT’s existing ways of working were manually-driven, so we curated bespoke recommendations to create more operational efficiency. These included new software solutions for specific teams, such as a digital asset management tool for the Marketing/Communications team, a messaging tool for internal communication and collaboration, and a project management tool for the larger organization.
We handled all of the research and procurement for these tools, configuring their setup so that the new structure was tailored to MALT’s needs. From there, we built out a training plan for larger groups and individuals based on need. This was a great learning experience; anytime an organization implements structural changes, there will be resistors and individualized education is a key factor in gaining trust and buy-in.
Since we had identified a lack of project management best practices, we worked with team leaders to develop and facilitate multiple solutions. To ensure that project managers would be equipped to do their jobs effectively, we selected a single tool to organize projects and designed a standardized process for using it.
THE VALUE
As a result of our collaboration, MALT has seen dramatically improved internal communications with fewer email exchanges in favor of instant messages, and thanks to our help with their cloud migration they no longer face issues locating documents or knowing which file version is the most recent.
The project management solution we applied has allowed MALT’s leadership to follow operations and track projects efficiently. We have also seen internal collaboration on cross-functional projects improve, with delivery speeds increasing by approximately 20%. Related reductions in employee stress have provided additional bandwidth to increase productivity.