Something that seems to be a common dilemma for many churches is deciding whether to change to a new, better church management software (CMS) or not. Some of the more common, good quality CMS makers are Logos, Shelby and ACS and many churches are using some version of one of these. There are others as well, but these are just a few of the more well known ones.
A church may feel like their CMS is not meeting their needs and perhaps they should dive into a newer, better product. But quite honestly, your CMS may not be the thorn in your side, it may actually have more to do with your processes and a new software system is not going to remedy that.
The step before the first step in deciding whether to pursue a new CMS is to re-evaluate your processes. Each church is unique, so there is no cookie cutter approach to analyzing your situation, but the key is to forget the fact that you have always done things a certain way. The reality is that the way you have always done things may or may not be right and it may be time to make some changes.
Also, don’t make the mistake of blindly changing from your current system to one that is simply an equal and that really brings no improved features or additional features. In others words, don’t give up on ACS and switch to Shelby or go from Logos to ACS. In my opinion, those 3 are similar enough that changing from one to the other brings no real benefit.
Granted, I’ll probably beat this drum to death, but it’s worth repeating. If you already use some version of one of these top tier CMS and know you need a change, don’t go horizontal. Look at the true price vs. the true cost and give FellowshipTech a good hard look. The benefits far outweigh anything else. There is top tier, as mentioned above, then there is supeior tier…FellowshipTech.
My real point here though, is don’t change your CMS just to change, changing blindly will not fix your processes. Fix your processes first, then look at all your options and change only if there is real benefit added.
Totally agree. In fact, I’d suggest that if a church can first develop a solid and scaleable process for maintaining data, I don’t see why Microsoft Access couldn’t be used! I’m exaggerating, of course, because check-in, web integration, geomapping and check-reading modules have made the more popular CMS packages invaluable. But at the heart of tracking membership, visitors, visits, payables, receivables, inventory, employees, etc., you have first the process and then the database.
Jim, this is a great post. Any project, technology or otherwise, within a church must go back to the mission statement. So often the internal processes of the church are not even close to that mission. There is not system, software, or technology that can be effective without having the great processes in place. One thing that FellowshipOne did when we implemented it was to cause us to look at our processes. We changed many of them for the better.
You’re right – the software should facilitate the process, not the other way around.
Particularly helpful as I start helping out in our church office tomorrow and am
considering just what I need to consider if we were to choose software to assist us.