The following are answers to typical questions.
Strategic Plan versus Business Plan
Business Plan often refers to the plan that you create before you start your business while Strategic Plan often refers to you plan after you are already in business. That said, some use the terms interchangeably.
Whichever term you use, Concise is a tool that facilitates creating and updating your organization’s vision, mission, goals, and actions while providing the tasking and tracking necessary to manage your plan and the process — all web-based so your organization has access whenever from wherever.
SaaS – Software as a Service
Customers always own their own data. Concise will never use or sell a customer’s data.
Customers can only see, add, edit, report on, or delete their own data.
Customers pay to use, but never own the Concise Planning software. Nor do customers have any implied or actual rights of ownership or other rights of use to the Concise Planning software.
Customers agree not to use their access in order to try to reverse engineer or copy the Concise Planning software for either internal use or for commercial purposes.
Already Have a Plan?
Question: We recently completed our current plan or we have a couple of years left on our existing plan. Could we benefit from Concise Planning? How?
Answer: Absolutely, YES, you can benefit from Concise. In fact, those who already have a plan — whether it is current or needs to be udpated — get essentially as much benefit as those who started without a plan and they realize the benefits faster because they can start with their existing plan as the base. Here is why and how:
Having a plan is about ten percent of the process and zero percent of the reason for a strategic plan. Strategic plans are NOT static documents that you complete, file away, and then periodically update. In fact, the very terms 3-Year or 5-Year Plans are, themselves, misleading and unfortunate.
Components such as Vision, Mission, Core Values and Goals tend to be long-term is scope and relatively slow to change once thoughtfully and reasonably created. Success Measures, on the other hand, tend to be those goals and targets that you establish for the next one to five years to help measure your progress. These are the desired ends.
Where you are is S-W-O-T: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
The transition component incorporates assumptions and develops strategies on how you will move the organization from where it is to where you want to be. Once you have developed strategies, it is time to get to work. Your organization needs:
T4
Tasks – actions and items that the organization will understake over the next 12 to 18 months that will move your organization toward achieving its goals and objectives
Tasking – assignment of responsibility for completing the tasks without which tasks will not be completed on time
Timelines – deadlines by which tasks are to be completed
Tracking – mechanisms to monitor and stay abreast of progress WITHOUT burdening the organization with more meetings and reports
Concise Planning is specifically designed to help you organization and structure your plan, but, most importantly, assist you with T4. Therefore, it does not matter whether you have a current plan, an out-dated plan, or no plan at all. Concise Planning can help your organiztion operate better, faster, easier, and cheaper than without Concise.
Tight Budget?
Concise Planning is VERY affordable (typically $50 to $150 per month for the entire organization depending upon the number of users) — hardly a budget buster for even small organizations. That said, there are additional considerations to consider:
What is the cost and the value of productivity in your organization?
For discussion purposes, ignore all of your operating costs relating to productivity except labor. Depending upon the size of your organization, labor costs alone total several hundred thousand dollars to millions of dollars per year. Consider: With a 2,000 hour year, the cost of a person making $50K per year attending a 1-hour meeting is $25 which is more than the annual cost per person of Concise Planning.
The subscription for Concise Planning is less than the cost of a Coke and candy bar per user per month. In fact, Concise Planning actually saves people time and makes them more productive resulting in Concise Planning paying for itself many times over.
All or Only Some People in the Organization?
The choice is yours as to the number and selection of specific persons in your organization granted access to Concise Planning. We certainly recommend that persons who comprise your strategic/leadership team be included along with those whose back office/daily tasks you wish to track and those involved in asset management relating to your capital reserves.
Ultimately, you will quickly discover the answer relating to your subscription needs. Concise Planning allows users to increase or decrease subscription levels as needed thereby providing you the flexibility to adjust when and as needed. There is no penalty for upsize or downsize adjustments.
What is someone leaves?
Obviously, you do not want to lose the information related to a person who leaves your organization. Nor, however, do you want that person to be included in your subscription count. No problem. The subcription count is based upon user accounts, not the number of people in your organization list in the database. IF someone leaves, simply delete their user account. That person will no longer have access to Concise Planning and the will no longer be included in your subscription count.
Cancellation / Refund Policy?
The Concise cancellation / refund policy is very simple: Cancel at any time for any reason. You will immediately be sent a refund for all FULL months remaining on your subscription for which you paid.
Access for ‘Outside’ Persons?
Yes, you may include an outside consultant or other person not directly affiliated with your organization among your users. The contractual restrictions relating to not trying to reverse engineer Concise Planning apply to all on your user list including persons ‘outside’ your organization that you authorize to use Concise Planning.
Training & Support
The reality? Concise is specifically designed to be easy to learn and use. Most find the applications so intuitive as need no more than an hour of training. That said, the training and support available without charge include:
Concise uses a Train-the-Trainer approach. We provide 2 free training webinars for your selected trainers.
Concise also provides complete, detailed flash training demos that are accessible to all users at any time.
Concise also provides support via email (or phone when necessary).
Should, however, you wish additional training, Concise will arrange it at your convenience for a nominal fee.
What Concise is NOT
Concise is not project management software. While it does offer tracking and management capabilities, it offers more including capital reserve management, functional structuring, and contact management.
Concise is not accounting software, ‘what if’ economic modeling software, or a website hosting company.
Concise is not a clone of or competitor for school management software, student registration systems, student learning systems, parent/customer communication systems, classroom / facilities scheduling systems, or fund raising systems such as Blackbaud, Edline, RenWeb, or others. That said, these companies’ offerings do not compete with Concise Planning.
Concise is not a clone of the popular email/personal contact/personal tasking systems such as Outlook, Google, or Yahoo. Concise is not an individual contact management system like Act or Goldmine. Concise Planning is a relational system designed specifically for the organization, NOT the individual. The differences are monumental in terms of managing and coordinating efforts across the enterprise. If you have lingering questions about the differences, contact us. We will be glad to have that conversation — and so will you when it is over.
Concise is not some complex solution costing thousand or dollars that requires weeks of training or an IT department to use or maintain. Concise Planning is easy to learn, easy to use software that facilitates productivity.
Customization
Concise sincerely wants and appreciates customer feedback and suggestions as to ways to improve our software and service to better meet your needs.
We make every attempt to incorporate customer suggestions for which widespread interest and utility appear to exist. Concise attempts to incorporate such enhancements as quickly as possible without charge and, whenever possible, without price increases to our customers.
For suggestions that have less universal appeal or utility, it is key to remember that Concise is a multi-user system. Customization for a single user is, therefore, outside the concept and pricing of a SaaS offering.
That said, if you believe that your organization must absolutely have customization, contact us to discuss your needs. We will either give you a price or a quick, but polite no.