The National Trust has launched a new website as part of a £40 million technology investment programme.
The new digital platform was launched last week and announced by Sarah Flannigan, the chief information officer of the Trust, at the Charity Technology Conference, run by Civil Society Media.
Flannigan told the conference that the highly-flexible website enables staff and volunteers across the National Trust’s 550 plus locations to share information about the conservation work they are doing, in a range of media – from photographs to interactive timelines.
The website is a core feature of a digital strategy that the charity has been rolling out this year, transforming everything from budget systems to the visitor experience.
Flannigan said that the new technology implementation is expected to deliver £100 million worth of impact and savings.
"We precisely costed the impact of our technology transformation strategy, right down to small details such as how many minutes per day the newly installed tills would save volunteers and staff," she said.
The organisation-wide digital transformation is the product of an extended period of advanced planning, she said.
"Until last week, our digital presence was fundamentally flawed," said Flannigan. "Our technology systems were out of date by around 30 years – we needed to upgrade everything."
Flannigan said that in order to do this, she and her team embarked on a concerted campaign to engage the staff and volunteers across all the locations managed by the charity.
"Because we were asking people to look at things differently and directly change the way they were doing things, we needed to create a compelling vision; one that everyone could buy into," she said.
She said a volunteer and staff-centric campaign incorporated elements such as incentive schemes, work experience in different job roles, training days and even a music video about the transformation made by the employees.
"It was important to celebrate each small achievement, special moments, that you could sprinkle like magic dust throughout the process,” she said. “That was the difference between failure and success."
So far, Flannigan estimates that the technology strategy has delivered £3.8 million in tangible benefits since the charity began to implement it earlier this year.
