REMA logoSpecification report makes things much clearer

Client

Rotherham Ethnic Minority Alliance (REMA) is the umbrella body for Rotherham's diverse Minority Ethnic communities. It provides community development and capacity-building support and ensures that there is strong communication between these communities and local service providers and decision-makers in order to deliver high impact projects.

The challenge

REMA's existing data management system required a major overhaul to meet the organisation's changing needs such as the capacity to produce performance, monitoring and information reports. REMA had already selected a database and wanted it tailored to their specification. The organisation was advised by iT4C project definer Peter Munro to produce a specification report before employing someone to overhaul the database.

Our help

Susan Ayers, an iT4C volunteer and IT professional with over 20 years of experience, produced a Terms of Reference report which included proposed methodology, definition of deliverables and commitment required from REMA for the project. Sue held four workshops with the REMA board and staff and produced a specification for changes to their software and on-going support. Sue spent a total of 10.5 days working on the project over a 3 month period.

The results

  • Greater clarity and better understanding of their needs and requirements
  • REMA are better equipped to respond to members and funders

What our client said

We need to spend time understanding the needs of the organisation and wider stakeholders before changing anything. Before we had Sue's help, we were trying to cook for the first time without a recipe. Sue is clear, knowledgeable and patient with our team to ensure that we fully understood why our ideas were possible or not. Sue's expertise has added greatly to the way we think about reporting our work. Going through this process REMA has a greater clarity about how it needs to change its management systems to become more effective.

Taiba Yasseen, Chief Executive, Rotherham Ethnic Minority Alliance (REMA)

21st April 2011