This article originally appeared in Association TRENDS.
Public Affairs Council faced a technology problem not unlike many other associations. Its website technology was cumbersome and faulty, and there wasn’t a staff member who had the background to really support IT in-house.
Faced with an increasingly unreliable system, PAC knew it needed to find a permanent solution. Ultimately, a new vendor moved the association’s system to the Cloud. As a result, the staff has become more efficient, with the unintentional benefit of an improved work-life balance.
PAC finance and administration director Reggie Nance said before the association moved to the Cloud, it’s technology was housed on-site in a server room. A consultant came in twice a week to work on issues that might have come up in the past week.
The problem began when PAC’s website started to experience more problems. The staff person who maintained the site was not an IT expert, so the consultant would have to be called. This situation was challenging enough when it happened during the week. But it was exacerbated when it happened on the weekend or worse, when key staff were at a tradeshow and the site went down.
Another problem was in backing up. PAC would back up its system by manually taping it.
When the situation became untenable, PAC reached out for a better solution and found Cetrom, a Cloud provider founded by Christopher Stark, who is a former CIO of a trade association.
Stark said when they first started to work with PAC, it was discovered there was a simple virus/anti-virus problem, but “it became pretty clear that [PAC] needed a little more TLC if they were going to maintain an on-premise solution.”
Read the full article here.