Hi, this is Scott Klisures, Colin Regan of Deloitte Consulting LLP, and Gizelle Gopez also with Deloitte, and President-Elect of the Atlanta-area Evaluation Association. We are here to share tips on how to customer relationship management (CRM) platforms in performance measurement can increase the utility of your data for program improvement and enhancement.
As technology architects and evaluators, we work with a variety of grantmaking organizations, including state and federal agencies that manage and monitor large amounts of performance measurement and indicator data sets to assess grantees’ program effectiveness. Monitoring is an ongoing process that complements evaluation by focusing on a specific question about the performance of an intervention. It provides a snapshot in time as to how well a grantee may be progressing towards a desired result or outcome as the program is being implemented. By using CRM platforms to manage your data across a range of grantee portfolios, it can provide program and evaluation staff more structure and consistent information. We have outlined some tips to consider below on how to link your monitoring activities with CRM platforms and its utility in performance monitoring.
Hot Tip #1: Before working with the CRM platform, first map out your performance measures to specific components of your logic model. By placing performance measures against the program logic model, evaluators can better visualize planned activities of an intervention, how they link to desired outcomes, and the indicators for achieving progress towards the desired results.
Hot Tip #2: Design a performance measurement template to standardize the collection of large data sets. By creating standardized data collection tools for your performance measures, the data you are collecting is aligned with information you are seeking from all grantees and is also useful for your program implementers and beneficiaries.
Hot Tip #3: Consider using CRM for collaboration and advanced analytics. Finally, we suggest taking your performance measurement data to the next level by utilizing CRM. CRM is a centralized platform where you can store grantee performance data that has built-in data quality checks and data dashboards, allowing for easier data aggregation and analysis. The platform also provides grantees an opportunity to collaborate with each other via discussion boards or online communities of practice to share programmatic and evaluation leading practices and resources, helping to promote the use of evaluation findings.
We hope this post provides information you need to enhance the management and utility of your performance and indicator data to inform your interventions. If you have questions or would like to learn more, feel free to contact Gizelle Gopez at ggopez@deloitte.com.
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