The right tools can help even the most widely distributed teams work together. They can foster communication and help organizations avoid the roadblocks that can distract them from their mission. They can bridge infrastructure gaps while freeing information to flow and users to serve. The right tools can resolve currency differences and make reporting across multiple locations seamless. They can bridge language barriers and serve up information that meets the needs of every user. With the right tools, you can stop worrying about committing an operational faux pas and devote your full attention to serving the needs of your global community.

We hope you enjoyed our series postings on how to keep your organization afloat when dealing with a global community. Feel free to share any additional tips you find helpful when working internationally!

Stay up to speed on all our Mission on the Move posts–catch parts 1 through 5 here: “Mission on the Move”

Download the full whitepaper to start learning about international accounting and how to better share information in your global organization!

Once you have gotten team members to access and share information, you need to be sure they are using the information available to operate as efficiently as possible. You want them regularly monitoring data to make smarter decisions. That means each user should have the level of access appropriate to their role and their relative position in the information stream.

Users at the central office are likely to have very different needs than users in field offices. Their focus will be on control and consistency. They will want to ensure they can effectively manage awards and grants and then disseminate funds to field offices. Users downstream in regional or field offices will have a different set of priorities. They are more likely to be concerned with usability and accessibility; therefore, they will want a simple interface that pushes information to them. Your software needs to be powerful enough to accommodate the requirements of team members wherever they are located.

Central Office

The central office has primary responsibility for awards and grants and fundraising activities.

Staff must manage regulatory reporting and compliance and ensure activities are in keeping with organizational missions and objectives. Central office teams need an accounting application that can take care of the basics like cash receipts and disbursements, payroll, budgets, and financial statements, as well as the unique requirements of non-profits like fund management, overhead allocations, and award and grant monitoring. They need to be able to push information out in different currencies and languages while accumulating results from a myriad of sources.

Regional Office

Each regional office has to share information upstream and downstream. These offices accumulate information from field offices for reporting back to the central office. Consolidation and reporting features will be important to staff in these offices.

What to look for in a global solution:

Field Offices

Each field office expends funds and then reports back to regional or central offices. Staff in field offices, busy with the job of serving those in need, will want to spend as little time as possible in the software. That means they need an easy to use system that pushes information to individual users.

What to look for in a global solution:

Stay up to speed on all our Mission on the Move posts–catch parts 1 through 4 here: “Mission on the Move” and stay tuned for next week when we discuss Bringing Everyone Together.

Download the full whitepaper here to start learning about international accounting and how to better share information in your global organization!

At the same time funds are flowing downstream, information has to flow upstream. Details about services provided, funds expended, and constituents served must find their way from the field offices up to the central office on a timely basis. Every person involved in the flow of information— from recipient to grantor—could conceivably speak a different language. Teams at the central office might speak English, while each regional office speaks another language and each local office speaks yet another language. If you are not careful, you may quickly wind up turning your organization into a virtual tower of Babel–with no one knowing if the organization is moving in the right direction.

Your software needs to support multiple languages so information can be shared with everyone on every team.

What to look for in a global solution:

Stay up to speed on all our Mission on the Move posts–catch parts 1 through 3 here: “Mission on the Move” and stay tuned for next week when we discuss Working with information – Central, Regional & Field Offices.

Download the full whitepaper to start learning about international accounting and how to better share information in your global organization!

In every global organization, there is constant downstream movement of funds from the grant manager at the central office to the field offices to the recipient. As the funds move across borders, they are likely to change currencies. A grant, for example, could be awarded in US Dollars then sent to regional country offices where it is changed to Euros, then used to purchase food in Kenyan Shillings. Your system should be able to automatically convert funds from one currency to another, at every step of the journey. You need a system that can easily track, manage and analyze funds in multiple currencies across each of the different entities.

Your system should also make it easy for you to update conversion rates and to comply with foreign currency reporting requirements, while handling VAT or sales taxes as needed. In short, you need a system that is built for international use and equipped to handle multiple currencies as well as the reporting and compliance challenges of a global organization.

What to look for in a global solution:

Stay up to speed on all our Mission on the Move posts–catch parts 1 and 2 here: “Mission on the Move” and stay tuned for next week when we discuss global solutions for dealing with multiple languages.

Download the full whitepaper here to start learning about international accounting and how to better share information in your global organization!

Once everyone has access to your system, the next challenge of a global organization is to get information from the person at point A to the person at point B in a usable form. Most projects are initiated at a central office. The central office handles administration, promotion, and fundraising in support of services that are delivered by teams of volunteers and staffers in the field. Some organizations have regional- or country-based teams that support the local field offices, while others provide direct field office support.

Since grant administrators and the staffers who deliver services are rarely at the same location, it can be an arduous task to disseminate information among the entire team—especially when you are crossing countries and even continents. Every time the baton passes from one person to another, you are in danger of losing information or spreading misinformation, so you need a system that can translate across multiple currencies and multiple languages.

Stay up to speed on all our Mission on the Move posts–catch part 1: “Accessing Information” and stay tuned for next week when we discuss global solutions for dealing with multiple currencies.

Download the full whitepaper to start learning about international accounting and how to better share information in your global organization!

In order to use or share information, you must have access to the system that contains it. In many cases, field workers and aid recipients are in remote areas with limited or spotty internet connections and unreliable access to power. Unless you plan to drive around the globe in a mobile IT van, you will have to rely on local connectivity to keep the information flowing. And that isn’t always easy. You can’t rely on either a centralized network or stand alone software applications to meet your needs. In order to get information to and from workers in these conditions, you will need a number of different deployment options. You want a centralized, robust database that can send and receive information in a number of different ways.

You might encounter any of the following infrastructure scenarios at a field or regional office:

1. Reliable Internet access, acceptable bandwidth, and a reliable power supply

2. Reliable Internet access, acceptable bandwidth, and an unreliable power supply

3. Limited Internet access, insufficient bandwidth, reliable or intermittent power supply

Rather than delivering a one-size fits all solution, your provider should offer deployment options that best utilize the resources available at a given location. Ideally, you want a solution that can be deployed via the Internet and also offers Portals and Terminal Services, as well as replication capabilities.

Download the full whitepaper to start learning about international accounting and how to better share information in your global organization!

It’s hard enough to communicate with team members across the room, but many of today’s NGO’s and multi-national non-profits must stay connected with people around the world. They often cross geographical, cultural, and political boundaries to reach those in need. They manage people who speak different languages, manage funds in multiple currencies, and manage applications on diverse technical platforms. As they spread their cause globally, these organizations encounter hurdles and difficulties of every sort in an environment of increasing government oversight and shrinking budgets.

As Richard Gere learned during a New Delhi awards show, a single cultural misstep can ruin your relationship with an entire country. Likewise, a single operational misstep can be the kiss of death for an organization striving to make a difference in a given country. No one wants to miss a delivery, deploy the wrong supplies, or send electrical equipment to a location with no electricity. It is the mission of these organizations to get the right aid to the right people in the fastest possible way. To do so, they must wade through a ton of details, manage paperwork, and disburse funds while keeping everyone informed. Fortunately, today’s software can help global organizations maneuver around the roadblocks that are likely to appear on the way to global success.

In the weeks to come we’ll be taking a closer look at global organizations and their relationship with information—how they access, share and use it. In each area, we’ll examine the ways in which technology can help these organizations stay connected and avoid the kinds of operational faux pas that can prevent them from accomplishing their mission.

Stay tuned to this blog series “Mission on the Move“– a six-part series where we’ll be releasing posts every Tuesday, starting tomorrow. As always, we hope that you’re able to put this information to work for your organization–we’re here to help you, so let us know how you feel about our content!