Church Management Software (CMS) has become an essential tool for church ministry and it can do far more than store data, so the real question is how to choose one that best strengthens your ministry?
Toby Neal shows how the right platform can shape workflows to help move your church forward, what you should be looking for in a church management system, how to make your choice, and what to avoid if you’re switching.
Key points
- How Toby tested whether a platform actually supported ministry or simply stored data
- The deal breaker features that ruled systems in or outs
- The hard parts of changing platforms, and what to expect in the first three months
- How aesthetics matter
TOOLBOX:
Ep 405 Church database nightmares and how to avoid them
Rejoice and Tremble by Michael Reeves
Church Management Systems mentioned:
Toby’s list of checks:
- Name tags and checkin process
- Automated workflows (care, connect, explore, serve) from forms, from attendance, from tag
- All in one
- Robust registrations for events
- Groups that remind leaders to mark attendance
- Metrics and dashboards
- Workflows
- Automations
- Giving integrated with database rather than tithely and xero. tax statements that can be sent and can integrate bank info from xero.
- Robust system, apps work, online, speed, bugs
- Calendar for managing room bookings, venue hire
- Forms
- Clean easy to use aesthetic
- Big company, unlikely to be sold or close down.
- Manages duplicates well
- Secure
CREDITS:
This episode was brought to you by EA Insurance
The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia
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For ideas or questions please email [email protected]
Support Reach Australia’s online library
TRANSCRIPT:
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
00:00:00:13 – 00:00:04:16
Toby Neal
00:00:07:17 – 00:00:19:24
Pete Hughes
00:00:20:01 – 00:00:28:18
Pete Hughes
00:00:28:20 – 00:00:45:17
Pete Hughes
G’day, I’m Pete Hughes. And welcome to the One thing. It’s a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for the gospel centered ministry. And the one thing it’s brought to you by Reach Australia. We want to see thousands of healthy evangelists multiplying churches. We’ll see effective churches.
00:00:45:19 – 00:00:55:00
Pete Hughes
And there’s some great software out there to help churches be effective. We’re going to be talking to Toby Neale. You’re a bit of a regular on the podcast these days. Yeah. Welcome back.
00:00:55:02 – 00:00:55:20
Toby Neal
Great to be here.
00:00:56:00 – 00:01:09:23
Pete Hughes
Yeah, yeah. And, Toby’s, church and churches recently kind of swapped over, management system. So we’re going to dig into that. Before we do, though, you’re a bit of a reader. We’re getting it to the end of the year. Have you had, what’s what’s been the book of the year for you?
00:01:10:00 – 00:01:30:22
Toby Neal
The book of the year has been Michael Reeves Rejoice and Tremble. I first stumbled on Michael Rees when I was preaching on the Trinity, and I find books on the Trinity so philosophical. It’s all Homer, Lucy and, you know, all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah, I find it not very warm, but he wrote about the Trinity in such great warmth and devotion.
00:01:30:24 – 00:01:43:18
Toby Neal
And then this book, Rejoice and Tremble. Yeah. It’s all about what does it mean to see God? And I’ve always wondered that. Yeah. Like it’s a positive expression, but it doesn’t mean to have terror at God.
00:01:43:20 – 00:02:02:11
Pete Hughes
Great book. Okay, I won’t put that on my list. I’m read, though I do like Michael grave sites. Yeah. And that one on the Trinity. When I read it, it was called delighting in the Trinity. I think it’s changed its name recently to something else, but, yeah, you’ll find it, get into Michael Graves, but. Yeah, but for now, you press play on another episode of The One Thing.
00:02:02:13 – 00:02:23:03
Pete Hughes
What should you be looking for in a church management system or. All right, Toby, you guys have recently kind of changed over what should people be looking for? I mean, a church management system seems like the most dull and boring thing. It’s like the kind of thing that if you love, you know, excel. This is what you love.
00:02:23:05 – 00:02:27:22
Pete Hughes
But what exactly are you looking for when you go to to buy one of these or subscribe to one of these?
00:02:27:24 – 00:02:50:18
Toby Neal
I think back in the day it was just a database of people’s names. And you’d, you’d mark a role on Sunday that you’d use it for marking attendance. But these days we want a management system that directs the ministry that’s telling us information so that we’re not missing people, that it actually, aids us in our pastoral ministry of people.
00:02:50:20 – 00:03:09:18
Toby Neal
And so the more it can be doing the work for you and telling you what you need to know, so that you’re directed and so that people don’t fall through the cracks, you’re able to follow up and attend to everyone in the church that needs to be attended to. And how do you coordinate your entire team for the work of pastoring people?
00:03:09:18 – 00:03:11:21
Toby Neal
That’s what a church management system should be doing.
00:03:11:21 – 00:03:28:03
Pete Hughes
So it’s it’s a ministry tool. It’s not just like a piece of software that’s just sitting there in the background kind of thing. Okay, I want to get into some nitty gritty. We are going to get into some detail here. But what what were you looking for when you went? Okay, we need to get a new one. What are you looking for?
00:03:28:05 – 00:03:57:03
Toby Neal
Yeah, well, well, a lot of things we we we, you know, some people run different platforms based on what each platform is good at. So Planning Center, is the best services. I think it’s the, it’s the leader. And and it also does other functions, but then are a bunch of other programs which do good stuff. And, and we were looking for something that was all in one that had, that had work that we wouldn’t have to use different system for different things.
00:03:57:04 – 00:04:02:13
Toby Neal
That’s something we’re looking at. We use name tags to talk about another one thing podcast.
00:04:02:19 – 00:04:06:18
Pete Hughes
Oh yeah, that was huge. Yep. You were in the name tag debate. But yeah.
00:04:06:20 – 00:04:38:10
Toby Neal
But so we do name tag. We wanted something where people could check in and then it’d spit out a name tag. We’re looking for automated workflows. So workflows that help you triage people through a number of different steps and then ideally, that have automations baked into it so that if they hit a step, it automatically sends them an email that if someone shows up, rather than someone having to consciously send the email response, it can give them the information that they’re looking for immediately.
00:04:38:10 – 00:05:02:00
Toby Neal
So automations we love. We wanted robust registrations for events because we’re constantly running events. Can it do ticketing or do we need a run ticketing in Eventbrite or something like that? Or can you do it all from within the platform and with? That’s helpful because often you’ll put out an event and people will register up, but then you need a follow up, the people who haven’t yet registered.
00:05:02:02 – 00:05:33:06
Toby Neal
And if it’s in a different platform, you end up bombarding the people who have registered, asking them to register again when they already have registered. Yeah, and so having it all built in means you can just filter out those who have registered and haven’t registered. So robust registrations groups. And then the ability to send a reminder out to the leaders to mark attendance for their groups so that we don’t just have attendance data for services, but small groups so that we can check what groups, healthy and not healthy.
00:05:33:08 – 00:06:00:12
Toby Neal
Metrics and dashboards is really a new thing, which many of the platform teams have only just been introducing. But rather than having to export reports into Excel and do that, can I get a picture on what’s happening at church in one spot? We having giving integrated into it. So previously we had giving in tithe Lee and in just general bank transfer.
00:06:00:14 – 00:06:25:23
Toby Neal
But the platform that we’ve moved to, you’ve got the ability to import any of the bank deposits in and Lee filters in, and it can take its own donations so that then you’re able to get a picture of how what percentage of our congregation are giving. That’s helpful calendar for managing bookings, managing events forms easy to use robust.
00:06:25:23 – 00:06:50:02
Toby Neal
No bugs secure. One of the other ones is how it manages duplicates. Particularly if you’re doing regular check ins in our old platform. Fluoro. We just had so many duplicates. Old time was the way, where it where I’m planning setup, but the way it works is, it has quite a good way of stopping duplicates from emerging.
00:06:50:02 – 00:06:52:09
Toby Neal
So there’s some of the things we’re looking for.
00:06:52:13 – 00:06:55:24
Pete Hughes
Yeah. What about a settings? Is the settings really matter?
00:06:56:01 – 00:07:18:14
Toby Neal
I mean, I’d prefer functionality, all the functionalities more important than a setting, but the esthetics, whether or not it is when there’s good esthetics, people find it easier to use the thing. Yeah, it’s easy to use or not, but with good esthetics, people feel more comfortable using it. Yeah. Draws you into using it a little bit better.
00:07:18:14 – 00:07:19:21
Toby Neal
So. Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:19:23 – 00:07:37:02
Pete Hughes
Now, it sounds like what you really wanted was something that was all in one that you weren’t going using, like 100 different kind of programs, that this thing kind of did everything really, really well. When you, when you set down, did you actually go through a list and go, okay, here are all the things I want this thing to do.
00:07:37:08 – 00:07:47:21
Toby Neal
Yeah, yeah. And then we had to wrote, we wrote, tested, all of the different softwares to work out. Okay. How do they all perform on all of these different functions?
00:07:47:23 – 00:07:56:12
Pete Hughes
Which I think is a really important thing for every staff to do, because every church is going to be slightly different and the different products may work better for different people.
00:07:56:12 – 00:08:25:20
Toby Neal
So yeah, one of the things we learned at that point is every platform will have, strengths and weaknesses, but it’s not always good to kind of tally up strengths and weaknesses, because in some products you’ll get a heap of strengths and then maybe just one weakness, but that one weakness is very significant. And so what we had to do as a team was not just write down what is strengths and weaknesses, but what are the game changer strengths and what are the deal breaker weaknesses.
00:08:25:22 – 00:08:29:10
Toby Neal
And then that then shaped our decision making process.
00:08:29:16 – 00:08:39:17
Pete Hughes
Yeah, I think because we talked about it before we came on that you kind of whited those weaknesses off of these weaknesses we can live with or these weaknesses are actually not these are the.
00:08:39:19 – 00:08:49:21
Toby Neal
Esthetics is a weakness you can live with. Sure. But for us the ability to check in effectively is is a game changer. If it’s a deal breaker, if it doesn’t have that, we can’t we can’t do it.
00:08:49:21 – 00:09:06:10
Pete Hughes
Sure. Yeah. And that’s to do with your the way you do ministry. So the way you’re doing ministry is affecting that thing. Okay. Told me through some of the workflows I know some people are going to go, okay, you do workflows. That makes it a bit easier. Talk me through some of those workflows because I think there’s some detail there that people want to hear.
00:09:06:12 – 00:09:28:06
Toby Neal
Yeah. So, some of the workflows, we have a first time visitor workflow. So contacts are added automatically when they attend church for the first time. And they’ve given us that email and it asks our follow up team to connect with them via SMS just once. So it’s just like, hey, great to have you at church. Toby, love to see you again.
00:09:28:06 – 00:09:53:11
Toby Neal
Reach out if you need anything. Just how do we make that first visit warm? And then also they’ll get an automated generic email random from Vine Church saying Welcome to church. Here’s some information. Love to see you again. And that’s first timer. The other part of that process is we ask the connect team to mark the integration category.
00:09:53:11 – 00:10:14:14
Toby Neal
So we’ve created a custom field within each person’s profile. Are they open and looking for church? Are they open and exploring Jesus? Are they closed and just visiting or are they unknown? And if they’re open and looking for church, then if they come back a second time, we really need to invite them to onboard our new come a membership course.
00:10:14:19 – 00:10:20:21
Pete Hughes
So that’s sort of like a triage moment at this point. So I’m going, how do we actually help this person the best? Like we get to work out what they do.
00:10:20:21 – 00:10:45:24
Toby Neal
As soon as they’re marked as that. Yep. Then they automatically pop up into our onboard process. So if they attend a second time. Yep. So first time we just say hi. Second time. Yeah. If we’ve got the integration data then we can actually do some of the the open exploring Jesus. We’ll send them an email straight away inviting them to the explore course.
00:10:46:00 – 00:10:59:04
Toby Neal
And if they come a second or third time you know we’ll personally get in touch with them. So that’s what that part of it’s doing. And so that first time is it a workflow. It sends them into other workflows.
00:10:59:04 – 00:11:16:24
Pete Hughes
So let me just kind of get that because there are some things there that the program the software is doing automatically. So it’s spitting out an email. But there are also some things that your staff are doing. Yeah. And in terms of sending out the the text, which, I was talking to someone earlier this week actually, and they said, one of the things I loved about this church was it was so warm.
00:11:17:05 – 00:11:33:23
Pete Hughes
And they, they texted me afterwards. That was the thing that they mentioned. And then there’s also the the triage and kind of working out their next steps. It’s those sort of things that, that workflows doing. And this kind of helps you do that. Yeah. Quickly and effectively. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Tell me a bit more about so yeah.
00:11:33:24 – 00:11:37:08
Pete Hughes
Are there other workflows there that you got that you, that you found helpful?
00:11:37:08 – 00:11:56:03
Toby Neal
Yeah. So I guess our explore workflows, if they’re marked as open and exploring Jesus that sends them into that will send them an email about the course and will send them a text message. Just saying, hey, great to have your church. You know, we’ve got this thing on. I’m Toby, love to meet you. We’re running it Tuesday night.
00:11:56:05 – 00:12:07:05
Toby Neal
It’s dinner. So you’ve got both, the branded email which shows you’re an organized church. You know what you’re doing? You know, there’s confidence in that. You can.
00:12:07:05 – 00:12:07:16
Pete Hughes
Trust us.
00:12:07:17 – 00:12:28:11
Toby Neal
You can trust us. But it’s a bit impersonal, as the SMS compliments up with the personal side. Yeah. And then we’ll typically only do one. And if they don’t reply, we won’t chase. Sure, we do start chasing after they’ve attended 3 or 4 times. We will chase them. Yeah. But you know, first time as we just, you know, one email, one SMS and then that’s it.
00:12:28:11 – 00:12:53:04
Toby Neal
Sure. Onboard workflow. So as soon as, someone’s attended, I think it’s twice in the past six weeks. Then they land and they’re not a member of the church. Then they land in that workflow and that sends them emails until they come along to our board. So it sends them two emails. It’ll send them one email and wait, about two months.
00:12:53:04 – 00:13:13:15
Toby Neal
And then if they haven’t attended onboard yet, it’ll send them another email. Right. And then I’ll add them into if they haven’t responded after two months, someone needs to give them a call. Sure. Though, some of this is trying to do the work of getting people to come to things, which isn’t 100% dependent on us making phone calls.
00:13:13:17 – 00:13:52:14
Toby Neal
When it’s dependent on us making phone calls, then there’s a capacity issue. It just takes up time and a lot of this can be automated. Yep. So but then when you automate you need to make sure it’s personal. So there’s personal bits in there that’s explore on board. Like we’ve hooked up the on board one quite sophisticated so that then if they do come to on board, so if they register and attend and we mark attendance for the whether they attend, then it automates the follow up to on board email so that we don’t have to remember send that it just as soon as I check in to on board
00:13:52:16 – 00:14:17:21
Toby Neal
sends them the follow up email which asks them, are you on board or are you going to try and find another church? And then from that, then that triage is asking to help them join a community group. Help them start serving. So that’s another workflow ministry workflow, which, goes through a number of different steps. You want me to go through that?
00:14:17:23 – 00:14:28:06
Pete Hughes
Actually, I think we can probably I think people kind of get the picture of that. So, but all of this is, sorry, cuz you might need to just do a little bit of edit there.
00:14:28:08 – 00:14:29:01
Toby Neal
Is that your daughter?
00:14:29:04 – 00:14:31:07
Pete Hughes
Yep. Yeah. Cuz Kiya.
00:14:31:11 – 00:14:31:22
Toby Neal
Kiya.
00:14:32:01 – 00:14:32:19
Pete Hughes
Yeah.
00:14:32:21 – 00:14:34:05
Toby Neal
She. Yeah.
00:14:34:07 – 00:14:34:17
Pete Hughes
Yeah.
00:14:34:19 – 00:14:39:08
Toby Neal
She’s named after, a, a Korean car brand.
00:14:39:10 – 00:14:54:24
Pete Hughes
Well, yeah. When she was young, actually, she went through this phase of going, so Nokia was Nokia, Ikea. And so she was claiming all these companies as hers and, yeah, sadly, I think there was a moment when she realized they weren’t actually named after her. Yeah.
00:14:55:04 – 00:15:02:07
Toby Neal
Let me think. Maybe then I have a point there. All of that. A lot of this depends on people checking in on Sunday. You want me to hit that?
00:15:02:08 – 00:15:13:17
Pete Hughes
Yeah. I was about to ask that question. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of this is based on information that people have given you and that’s to do with the checking process at the start. Is that right? Yeah.
00:15:13:17 – 00:15:33:13
Toby Neal
So as people arrive at church, we encourage them to check in. They don’t have to if they don’t want to. But most people are okay. They check in, they get a name tag, then that immediately Mark summers attended the service. And from that we’re able to get all of our reports. First time visitor never checked in before, that kind of thing.
00:15:33:15 – 00:15:48:02
Toby Neal
So we have iPads set up. Regulars can check in with their phone number there. And without that data, it’ll be a lot harder for us to be doing all of the flows after that drop.
00:15:48:04 – 00:15:57:09
Pete Hughes
We’re going off a little bit off on a tangent just for a moment, but how many new people as they’re walking in actually do give you the details in their first visit?
00:15:57:11 – 00:16:02:01
Toby Neal
It would be about 90%. Okay. Yeah, yeah, it’d be very high. Okay.
00:16:02:03 – 00:16:19:18
Pete Hughes
Yeah. So you use your, the CMS a whole bunch of I. That’s some of the workflows. I think we’ve also mentioned, you know, use it for service scheduling and things like that, so. Yeah. Yep. What was let’s, let’s move to the process of actually changing over.
00:16:19:20 – 00:16:31:21
Toby Neal
Just maybe there’s one other thing, which is, both planning center and church sway in particular. Maybe I shouldn’t mention the names.
00:16:31:23 – 00:16:33:21
Pete Hughes
You can cite just some of the ones that don’t look it.
00:16:33:22 – 00:16:52:16
Toby Neal
Yeah. One of the other things is some of the products have the ability to do tax receipts at the end of the year. And some of our churches, our church, we have a bunch of tax deductible funds. And to send out the tax receipts at the end of the year is a very laborious process. Yeah. Whereas, some of the products have the ability.
00:16:52:16 – 00:17:19:03
Toby Neal
And one of the reasons as laborious is churches often have different ways you can give, you can have like, an electronic gateway like tightly or planning center or what I think church sweet does giving that comes in. But still most people give as a bank transfer, right. That comes into your accounting program. And then that is incredibly laborious to send out the annual tax receipts.
00:17:19:05 – 00:17:32:04
Toby Neal
Some of the products have the ability to import that giving matched to donor profiles, and then just click a button that sends them, and that saved us a significant amount of time. Sure. Management.
00:17:32:04 – 00:17:44:02
Pete Hughes
This sounds like something that if you’re looking at that’s something that you need to ask the question about. Yeah, okay. Talk us through about the process you’ve changed over. Tell us about the process of changing over what what needs to happen.
00:17:44:04 – 00:18:17:06
Toby Neal
Well, I think the key thing is you need one person responsible. And that person is not always it’s not necessarily a person with tech skills though that is needed. They need like this unique combination of tech skills and ministry knowledge because they, NATO, understand how everyone who’s using the platform will use it. And because any platform you move to is going to have pros and cons, and some people, it’s going to be worse than where you’re currently at, and others it’ll be better than where you’re currently at and you’ve got to manage okay.
00:18:17:08 – 00:18:34:02
Toby Neal
Some of our team will benefit here. Some of our team will have costs here. How big are those costs? Are they deal breaker or are they just it’s a bit frustrating. And how big are those strengths. And so someone with ministry wisdom needs to be in on that.
00:18:34:04 – 00:18:35:18
Pete Hughes
So you guys who was it for you?
00:18:35:23 – 00:18:55:14
Toby Neal
Well unfortunately it was me. Think we we had a bit of turnover in our team and I just, I just so happened we had new people on the team who weren’t used to using church management software. Right. Yeah. So they couldn’t be it. And then we had other people who were, but they weren’t great on tech. Sure.
00:18:55:14 – 00:18:56:22
Toby Neal
So it just so happened it had.
00:18:56:22 – 00:19:12:02
Pete Hughes
To be lucky. You you want it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We’ll talk me through your process. How did you do it? But tell us about the preparation. What? How did you. I mean, obviously you had a list of things that you were working through, and working through those, strengths and weaknesses. But what else did you do in terms of preparation?
00:19:12:02 – 00:19:28:19
Toby Neal
Yeah. So we’ll then test driving the products with the staff and writing out the strengths and weaknesses, but then write up a list once you’ve made the decision that, yep, this is where you got to write up a list of all the actions you need to do to migrate. I think we think, it’s just people and data, right?
00:19:28:19 – 00:19:55:21
Toby Neal
That’s all it needs to come in, but not if you’re using the management system to manage because you have groups. Obviously you have groups and services. So yeah, many of the program. But then you have all of your reports, your forms, your emails, your workflows, your calendars. And I think that’s probably the area where we forgot just how much list creating and workflow creating and automating work.
00:19:55:21 – 00:20:04:09
Toby Neal
There was that stuff you can’t migrate, you just have to recreate in the new software. And that takes quite a lot of time.
00:20:04:11 – 00:20:19:07
Pete Hughes
I just go back to saying, when you got your staff to test drive it, did some staff go, I really like this one and not that one, and vice versa. Like it was there a little bit within the team of going, oh, I like that one, but not that one. Or where people generally kind of going, we’re all on the same page.
00:20:19:09 – 00:20:30:08
Toby Neal
And yeah, they were on they’re all on the same page. They I mean, our team is quite tech savvy. So as soon as I laid out, here’s what I’ve noticed about this. And yes, everyone’s like it was very easy to. Oh yeah.
00:20:30:12 – 00:20:43:19
Pete Hughes
I think it helps that you’ve got you’ve got criteria that you’re working towards. It’s not just who likes what. And I like that color more than that color. All right. So once you’ve got all that how did you go with migrate the actual migration of data. How did that work out?
00:20:43:23 – 00:21:05:23
Toby Neal
So I had two weeks when I wasn’t preaching and I just said, okay, this is yeah, I, I am not good at, you know, planning something over a period of like three months and, you know, doing a two system approach. I can’t keep all of that in my head. No, I’m better at just going, let’s go deep for two weeks, work really hard.
00:21:06:00 – 00:21:36:15
Toby Neal
So, that’s what we did. Two weeks. But that two weeks got all the data migrated into it. And our check ins on Sundays, the minimum check ins that we need to run church was set up. But then there was another three month period after that where, there was a significant amount of time of, fixing and creating new workflows, new automations, things that we set up wrong, fixing all of that.
00:21:36:15 – 00:21:47:14
Toby Neal
So it was probably a three month process, but a two week, very labor intensive thing where you’re importing the data, but then you’re creating all the lists.
00:21:47:14 – 00:21:55:09
Pete Hughes
Sure. But you didn’t do a double thing at the at any point where you were trying to use both right systems. It was like, nah, it was turning that one off. Turning that went on. Why?
00:21:55:09 – 00:22:17:22
Toby Neal
Well, there were some things we could keep using our old platform for, like right to go, form. So some of our get in touch. Sure. I, I’d like to rent out this facility that could stay on that old platform for, for a little because that doesn’t impact the people load management within it. So we could just respond in the other system.
00:22:18:01 – 00:22:25:11
Toby Neal
Yep. But anything related to people flows and how they’re engaging with us. We wanted it to be day on day one. Moved. Yeah.
00:22:25:13 – 00:22:35:15
Pete Hughes
Okay. So you’ve migrated everything across and we’re all good. Not quite what’s tell us what happens afterwards. What’s the next step along the way?
00:22:35:21 – 00:22:55:24
Toby Neal
Well, there’s a lot of training. Just ongoing training for the staff. The platform we went to, it’s it’s pretty easy to understand, but, there is design philosophy in how we are going to use the platform, and there are different ways you can do things in any platform. And so you need to norm that with your team.
00:22:55:24 – 00:23:18:17
Toby Neal
Here’s how we’re using it here, here, here and here. We had although I was responsible the main person, there were people in the team who could then own certain things. So as on our teams use of, the Planning center services module a lot. And so he became the expert on that. And anyone who had an issue went to him.
00:23:18:22 – 00:23:43:12
Toby Neal
Our comms director became the expert on forms, registrations and emails. So then she then started training everyone in that, volunteers to be on us, us moving to this new platform. It was a way easier for the volunteers. In fact, one of the reasons we moved was our volunteers were having problems with the old platform we were on and this new platform from day one.
00:23:43:12 – 00:23:50:24
Toby Neal
It was just very easy for them. And so there was very little inertia there. Yeah.
00:23:51:01 – 00:24:13:21
Pete Hughes
Okay. When you moved across, did you kind of makes changes to the way that you did things, or, you know, the way that you were using the software, like it’s a different system. Did you sit back? Actually, we could make that easier. Or do that or clean up that workflow. Or did you do any kind of clean up as well, or was it just moving the data across?
00:24:13:23 – 00:24:38:11
Toby Neal
There was only very minimal. Yeah. Only very like we changed how we use our people. Categories. Previously we had kind of like you’re either in the congregation or you’re in the crowd or you’re merely a contact. And I just realized it’s probably easier just to have either your part of the congregation, you have a category, or you don’t have a category, and that’s the indication, right?
00:24:38:16 – 00:24:46:14
Toby Neal
You’re not part of the church. And that was very small change. So pretty much the way we system architected was the same.
00:24:46:14 – 00:24:47:17
Pete Hughes
Yep.
00:24:47:19 – 00:24:56:09
Toby Neal
Well very happy with our previous platform. It it’s just closing down. So we had to move. So we’ve tried to replicate everything we’re doing there. Yep. Onto a new one.
00:24:56:13 – 00:25:10:00
Pete Hughes
Okay. Were there moments where the moments where you got things wrong, like, like, did the whole thing just go smoothly and this seamlessly?
00:25:10:02 – 00:25:32:24
Toby Neal
No. They’re always. Well, the system, it itself works. Yeah. And that’s why one of the reasons we went to it, because it’s less buggy. But the way we set things up doesn’t work sometimes. And, so lots of mistakes there. And you just fix that afterwards. And sometimes some of the things you expected it to be able to do, it end up not being able to do that.
00:25:32:24 – 00:25:37:15
Toby Neal
And then you’ve got to go rethink, okay, what are we doing here. So yeah.
00:25:37:17 – 00:25:54:20
Pete Hughes
All right. I think we’ve kind of covered everything I have to go to. The one thing was this anything else that you want particularly wanted to say that I might have missed? Not now. Go. All right. Alrighty. Toby, this is the one thing give us. If there was a church leader out there thinking about maybe changing systems.
00:25:54:22 – 00:25:57:19
Pete Hughes
What do you think is the one thing they’ve got to get right?
00:25:57:21 – 00:26:19:09
Toby Neal
I think you want to find something that doesn’t just, give you names and phone numbers, but something that really aids the ministry and tells you the information you need to make good decisions, to know who to follow up, and actually does some of that follow up for you, by sending emails and automating things like that.
00:26:19:11 – 00:26:36:16
Pete Hughes
Okay, excellent. In the toolbox I am going to put in, there was a list of things that Toby actually talked about that he thought was really helpful in terms of what he was looking for. I might put that list in the, in the toolbox, as well as a previous episode, from one of our church sweet friends also talking about what do you look for?
00:26:36:18 – 00:26:54:09
Pete Hughes
But one of the things that you may want to do is just do an audit of what’s the management system you’re using. Is that actually helping you? Is it time to actually maybe think about using a tool that’s going to be better for you? Toby might. Thank you. This is obviously been a lot of work for you, so I’m really glad that you’ve been able to share that with everyone else.
00:26:54:09 – 00:26:57:06
Pete Hughes
And, it’s been really helpful. Thank you very much for joining us.
00:26:57:12 – 00:26:58:22
Toby Neal
Thank you.
00:26:58:24 – 00:27:07:02
Pete Hughes
This is also maybe an episode you want to talk to about as a staff team, but, if you found it helpful, why don’t you pass it on, on on use chat soon.
