Case studies

Devon Wildlife Trust – digital review

---

Devon Wildlife Trust came to me after a third party digital review that had come back as a single page with no actions and no information. They needed to understand how their digital tools could work across the organisation. After a brief pitch process I ran a full review over 6 weeks: a group workshop, confidential one-to-one discussions with each key team member, a tool-by-tool assessment and a look at where knowledge actually sat. The output was a Digital Integration Plan with a roadmap and costed resources.

What was the problem?

Devon Wildlife Trust approached me following a digital review that had been carried out by a third party. The initial review report was a single page and gave DWT no actions and no information.

They needed to get a better understanding of how the current digital tools could work efficiently across the organisation.

Following a brief pitch process I was commissioned to carry out a full review over a 6 week period and present the findings back.

What did I do?

1. Group workshop. The initial meeting was a workshop with the full team in attendance, a question and answer session establishing the overall way they use their tools and which departments were responsible for which areas. That gave a clearer understanding of the tools, the issues and the knowledge within the organisation.
2. Individual discussions with each of the key team members. This provided a much deeper dive into their individual issues, how they use the tools and what they thought were the main barriers. Talking one to one, confidentially, gets more out of people than a room does.
3. A review of each digital tool to establish whether it was the correct tool for the job, and how the tools could link up better, and what the potential organisational workflow could look like.
4. Knowledge in each department, with recommendations for training. There was an initial view within DWT that everyone needed to know all the tools and every aspect of using them. That proved inaccurate, and specific training was suggested in the final report instead.

What was the result?

A detailed Digital Integration Plan. It talked DWT through how they were currently using the tools in place and where the issues were.

By taking a step back and working out what they as an organisation wanted to do, then fitting the tools to the process, they realised where they had been going wrong. Just because they had the digital tools, they thought they had to use them, without really knowing how or, more importantly, why.

The plan included a roadmap for how DWT should approach the digital transformation, which made it less of a daunting project to take on, and an outline of internal and external resources with approximate costs.

What does this show?

A review with no actions is an invoice. The single page DWT had been given before was not wrong, it was simply unusable, and the difference is whether anyone can do anything differently on the Monday after it lands. The other lesson is about tools: having them is not the same as needing them, and fitting the tools to the process only works in that order.

---

This is a digital health analysis. On what a review actually owes you, see a review with no actions is an invoice.

Questions people ask

What makes a review usable rather than just correct?

Actions, priorities and a roadmap. DWT already had a review: one page, no actions, no information. The second one ran 6 weeks and ended in a Digital Integration Plan with a sequence and costed resources, which is the difference between knowing and being able to start.

Why speak to people individually as well as in a workshop?

Because they say different things. The group workshop established how the organisation thinks it uses its tools and who owns what; the confidential one to ones surfaced the individual barriers people will not raise in front of colleagues.

Does everyone need training on every tool?

No, and assuming so is expensive. DWT started from the view that everyone needed to know all the tools and every aspect of them. The review found that inaccurate and recommended specific training against what each department actually does.

---