What does it take to run one of the nation’s oldest and largest social services agencies? Ask the IT team at Goodwill Industries-Suncoast
in St. Petersburg, Fla., and they’ll proudly tell you about Support 2020. The name alone suggests a clear vision of the road
ahead.
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2006 InfoWorld 100 Winners
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But peer back a few years and you’d see that divisional operations weren’t so well-defined. “We had lots of small data kingdoms
housing data of many different shapes and flavors,” recalls IT Director Charlie R. Chisholm. Disparate applications had ceased
to play well together and efficiency had taken a turn for the worse. So Chisholm and his team of three technologists labored
for years and produced Support 2020, an intranet-based suite of applications that now serves as the clearinghouse for all
information throughout the Gulf Coast agency. “It became our obsession -- to bridge all the different data,” from budgeting
and accounting, to client and sales tracking, to employee management and training, Chisholm says.
Chalk one up for obsession. The data warehousing and integration project was so successful in linking up their operations
with participating partners, such as vocational training groups and drug rehab centers, that the team more recently built
it into a subscription service for small businesses and nonprofits nationwide.
Operating a nonprofit has a unique set of business challenges. “Probably our biggest aggravating factor was the dynamic nature
of our business,” Chisholm says. “We are driven by contracts awarded to us by outside federal, state, and local agencies related
to our mission. These contracts are a moving target requiring wide-ranging variations in our operation and reporting needs
from contract to contract and year to year.” Goodwill-Suncoast tried on several occasions to work with outside developers
and in one too many cases spent money that failed to yield desired results.
The solution came by way of an in-house effort to combine several desperate collections of data into one cohesive data warehouse
offering cross-application reporting and manipulation. The Microsoft SQL Server 2000 databases and Cold Fusion front end are
co-located in Bethlehem, Pa., offering Goodwill and its subscribers the kind of data integrity and redundancy they may not
ordinarily be able to afford.
“It works with existing applications to allow for cross-application data reporting and retrieval,” Chisholm says. “It is perfect
for small nonprofits that have little or no IT budget. We can work with the agency to integrate their existing data or provide
them with the tools to manage their data completely.” Eight area agencies currently use Support 2020, and all money received
goes to support Goodwill’s outreach.
A still greater number subscribe to Support 2020 as an online service. Companies can custom design a robust assortment of
features that work best for them. Take training, for example. Managers can log on and create their own training modules when
an employee needs more knowledge about a certain aspect of the business. Or they can register for various classroom opportunities.
Ultimately, it’s providing opportunities for efficiency at the corporate level and support at the individual level that motivates
Chisholm to keep adding improvements. Presently the group is working on a grant-writing module.
“I love the project and the product, and I’m always ready to do a demo for anyone who asks,” Chisholm says. “There’s not an
aspect of this agency’s business that’s not supported and impacted by it -- every clerk, every contractor. It even tells us
when a member of our staff is having a birthday.”
2006 INFOWORLD 100 WINNERS
Top 10 Finalists
Computing/Tech Distribution/Supply Chain
Education Financial Services
Government Health Care
Insurance Manufacturing
Media/Multimedia Pharmaceuticals
Retail Services
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Transportation Unspecified
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