Strategic Innovations specializes in providing a broad array of consulting services to local governments and non-profit organizations. Solutions are based on implementing best practices, maximizing resource effectiveness, enhancing productivity, and containing costs. Anytime you are dealing with change is a time when Strategic Innovations can provide assistance. Consulting services generally fall into one of six areas: strategic planning, technology planning, general consulting services, local government services, facilitation, and project management. We invite you to explore the site to learn more!
Strategic Innovations is pleased to announce the expansion of the business as Cindy Causey takes a more active role. Ms. Causey is assuming responsibility for clients who have engaged Strategic Innovations for financial management and accounting services. In the past, these clients have received service from President Jeff Causey on a regular basis. By transitioning these clients to Ms. Causey's responsibility, Mr. Causey will be able to focus on more unique projects that require heightened project management skills and attention. He will also be able to devote more attention to the development of new services and products, including enterprise content management systems and customer/constituent relationship management systems aimed at the public sector and not-for-profit organizations.
Ms. Causey is an experienced, executive-level finance professional. In the past, she has held finance director positions with organizations like the American Red Cross (Charlotte chapter) and Alsco, a national building products manufacturer. Ms. Causey also has municipal government experience having managed the utility billing and revenue management functions of a large North Carolina city. Ms. Causey is a graduate of Meredith College with a degree in Business Management/Accounting.
If you are interested in the services that can be provided by Strategic Innovations for your organization, please feel free to contact
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Causey Interviewed for CFO Magazine
Written by Jeffrey G. Causey
Monday, 06 August 2007
Strategic Innovations, Inc., president Jeff Causey was recently interviewed for CFO Magazine. The article, Spreadsheets Are Free, (also available as a pdf) is a quick review of the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite, and especially the Calc (spreadsheet) component. Mr. Causey represents a "user" in the article and an example of someone who has built a business without using Microsoft Office or Excel.
Strategic Innovations has been recommending OpenOffice.org as an excellent alternative to other office suites, especially Microsoft Office. Many benefits can be realized by making the switch to OpenOffice.org, including:
cost - not only is the cost of OpenOffice.org - free - a great benefit, but organizations can also avoid costs related to license management. If you buy "packs" of licenses for an application like Microsoft Office, making a switch can also help you avoid tying up resources in spare (excess) licenses.
training - As Microsoft Office 2007 starts to make inroads into the market, you may be faced with training issues. First is the cost of retraining your employees to use their office suite, which can be avoided by using OpenOffice.org which sports a familiar interface. Also, if your organization transitions to Microsoft Office 2007, you will incur a reduction in productivity while employees learn the new software and then deal with the inevitable errors.
document formats - by using OpenOffice.org, organizations can benefit from using an ISO approved document file format. This increases the number of options available to use the documents (many other programs can open OpenDocument Format documents, the default for OpenOffice.org). For organizations with long-term archival responsibilities, this may be an issue as well as the OpenDocument format is publicly available, ensuring documents can be accessed long after today's software is relegated to history.
"togetherness" - as noted in the article, our personal experience with OpenOffice.org is that it is much better at sharing information between the different component parts (e.g. pasting spreadsheet information into a text document). This is based in the suite's roots as noted in the article and it shows in real life usage.
These are just a few of the benefits of OpenOffice.org. If you would like more information or assistance in transitioning your organization to using OpenOffice.org, please contact
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Last Updated ( Monday, 06 August 2007 )
Strategic Innovations Completes Information Technology Strategic Plan
Written by Jeffrey G. Causey
Thursday, 17 May 2007
Strategic Innovations is pleased to announce the recent completion of a strategic information technology (IT) plan for a non-profit organization. Over the years, this organization had developed and implemented a variety of hardware and software solutions on an ad hoc, largely unplanned basis. Heightened by personnel changes and growth of operations, this method of making IT investments had produced a lack of awareness and understanding of deployed assets as well as an inability to leverage IT assets in pursuit of the organization's mission.
After an assessment and gap analysis was completed with the client, Strategic Innovations developed a plan identifying both long- and short-term objectives tied back to the organization's mission, values and overall strategies for service delivery.
Moving forward, Strategic Innovations will be assisting the organization with development and implementation of several of the recommendations in the IT Plan. These will include development of policies and procedures related to measuring IT investments, asset replacement policies, and business continuity/disaster planning. Strategic Innovations will also be assisting with deployment of a constituent relationship management (CRM) application, a document management system, and a new collaboration system. Using the IT Plan as the framework, Strategic Innovations is projecting savings of over $20,000 for the organization compared to their former methodology for making IT decisions.
For more information on how Strategic Innovations can help you with your IT planning or deployment of various systems like CRM or document management, please feel free to contact us.
