The Story Behind the Success
For many industries, technology has been on the rise. From cloud computing and the internet of things (IoT) to managed services and data analytics, tech innovation is disrupting traditional business models. Now, these trends are forging a path in the nonprofit space, rapidly changing the way nonprofits operate and scale. Early adopters will accelerate their success, while laggards risk obsoletion. This is especially true in a post-Covid world, where remote workplaces, virtual customer engagement, and digital business are the new norm.
In this article, we’ll explore how the proactive implementation of new technology and processes is helping a national nonprofit accelerate business success.
- Client: Shatterproof
- Sector: Nonprofit
- Location: North America, headquartered in the United States
- Mission: Shatterproof is building a national movement to treat addiction like the chronic disease it is, break the stigma to inhibit positive progress, and offer evidence-based resources for prevention, treatment, and recovery.
A Nonprofit Proactively Modernizing Its Technology
Struggling with common obstacles often faced by rapidly growing nonprofits, Shatterproof was seeking an experienced information technology expert to help modernize their backend infrastructure and processes. With antiquated systems and security challenges inhibiting their plans for growth and expansion, Tim Kobosko, Shatterproof’s Chief Information Officer, consulted SC&H Group’s Technology Advisory practice for guidance.
A fruitful start to the engagement, distinguished by the right technology to serve Shatterproof’s needs, then led to an introduction to SC&H’s Data Analytics team. Together, our services helped address some of Shatterproof’s most pressing needs:
- Enable a secure remote work environment
- Alleviate budget and personnel constraints associated with technology management
- Mitigate cybersecurity risks
- Strengthen data security and privacy
- Streamline data, analytics, and reporting
- Collect and display data in an accessible format
- Optimize their customer and partner experience
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Technology and Data Enablement to Help Shatterproof Expand
SC&H’s technology group helps business leaders better leverage existing and new technologies, navigate the dynamic IT landscape, and ensure their organization has the proper software, systems, infrastructure, and security in place to scale.
We worked alongside the Shatterproof team to advise on key technology initiatives including but not limited to back-office efficiencies, website functionality, and third-party vendors.
High-level Approach:
- Assessed the current technology environment, specifically security controls and cloud software solutions, with the context of Shatterproof’s plan to rapidly expand
- Identified and implemented the best technology, allowing Shatterproof to effectively operate with a lean back-office IT function
- Established a safe cybersecurity and data privacy environment
The Data Analytics practice designs modern data solutions that enable the intentional collection, combination, visualization, analysis, and reporting of data spanning all critical business units into one centralized location.
Shatterproof’s ATLAS platform was the primary opportunity at the onset of the engagement with our Data Analytics team. This resource offers quality care metrics for Shatterproof’s treatment facilities, allowing Shatterproof’s key constituents like insurance providers and facility owners to access real-time data and information.
High-level Approach:
- Resolved issues with and introduced new data-based capabilities for the ATLAS professional portal
- Built and embedded Power BI dashboards, making data and reports accessible to state agencies and insurers
- Implemented sophisticated data pipelines and integrations that allow for live data collection, new streams of data, and data filtering
Scaling the Shatterproof Business Model to Save Lives
The proper cloud technology and cloud infrastructure continues to allow Shatterproof to do things they historically couldn’t, enabling them to turn their model into a revenue-generating asset. Through Shatterproof’s ongoing work with SC&H, and with the right technology and strategic data information systems, Shatterproof has been able to:
- Work securely, collaborative, and efficiently as a now fully remote team
- Expand into six additional states: DE, NY, WV, LA, NC, MA—providing treatment guidance to 13% of the US population
- Plan for expansion into five other states in 2022: CA, FL, NJ, OK, PA—increasing their treatment guidance to 40% of the US population
- Improve the display of insurance information in ATLAS
- Integrate ATLAS into state resources such as helplines and justice system databases
- Increase their ATLAS traffic, with more than 130K visits in their first year
- More than triple the number of people using Shatterproof resources to find lifesaving treatment
Learn more at shatterproof.org
Learn more about ATLAS by Shatterproof at treatmentatlas.org
Video Transcript
How SC&H Group Helped Shatterproof with Digital Transformation
- Tim Kobosko, CIO | Shatterproof
- Greg Tselikis, Principal | Technology Advisory Services
- Nick Scott, Director | Data Analytics Services
Tim Kobosko: Shatterproof is a national nonprofit whose mission is to eradicate the addiction crisis in the United States. Shatterproof has a very entrepreneurial mindset. We move very fast. In my estimation, technology was left behind a little bit upon my arrival, so I really needed expert technology guidance.
Greg Tselikis: Shatterproof, like most nonprofits, has a lean IT team. SC&H Group being able to come in and be an extension of their team has really helped them realize a lot of efficiencies, have the right resources—ranging from cybersecurity experts and data experts to cloud applications experts. Tim and the Shatterproof team having access to our entire team has enabled them to make solid strategic decisions in many of these areas.
Resolving Technology Break-Fix Challenges
Tim Kobosko: When Greg and the team arrived, the initial plan was really to stabilize the environment to make sure that the break-fix issues went away. We then wanted to standardize across the organization; how we access the corporate applications, and how we secure our data.
Greg Tselikis: There were a lot of disparate systems. The organization worked remotely and didn’t have systems that connected together to allow the organization to be flexible while remote. Putting a lot of systems in place that enabled that was really important out of the gate. It really became apparent that there was a huge need for data analytics, given the amount of data that they deal with.
Streamlining Data to Drive Better Business Decisions
Nick Scott: One of the core areas of need coming out of our Tech Advisory practice working with Shatterproof was to scale up their data infrastructure to handle their expansion into additional states.
Tim Kobosko: ATLAS is a platform that Shatterproof has invested in and actually created several years ago. It’s a treatment locator platform. Shatterproof’s secret sauce is the quality care metrics of those treatment facilities. It’s really important that you get in the right treatment with the right quality care. At the root of that is data on the treatment facility and through the analytics team at SC&H, we’ve really realized that data, visualized that data, and allowed us as an organization to make decisions based on that data.
Nick Scott: We’re able to cover everything regarding how they’re bringing all the information from their different facilities and their insurance carriers onto their website, and how they display it to different folks that are accessing the site. A lot of what we’re striving to do by putting in some of these more sophisticated data pipelines and integrations is to allow Shatterproof’s resources to focus more on what their core mission is versus performing a lot of menial tasks behind the scenes. This ensures data is clean and what they’re representing on their website is accurate and available to folks.
Greg Tselikis: We really become an extension of both the IT team at Shatterproof and Shatterproof as a whole. We’re brought into many conversations across the organization that relate to technology just to be a sounding board so that they can focus on the mission.
Tim Kobosko: It’s been transformed a bit at every juncture, and it’s allowed us to go from what I would call a sort of a mom-and-pop operation to an enterprise-level data schema, which is really feeding the front end and making a difference and at the end of the day, saving lives, which is what Shatterproof is all about.
