Story tools

Print this article

Email to a friend

Your feedback

Too often charities are persuaded to invest in costly IT resource without being clear as to its strategic value for their organisation. Knowledge management is a good example of this. Keynote speaker Ajay Burlingham-Böhr, Director of IT Strategy and Systems, Anglia Ruskin University says: “Knowledge management vendors would have us believe good knowledge management is about buying the right technology - in fact it's not really about technology at all, any more than writing good reports is about having a decent word-processor.”

The 2007 CFDG IT conference will focus on the two themes of strategic IT and new technological trends. The event is not only aimed at Finance and IT Directors but raises broader strategic questions that any charity should look at with regard maximising their technical infrastructure and management information systems. The conference, taking place on 1 March at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, brings together 15 speakers from the charity and corporate worlds, and providing eleven sessions over two streams there is something for everybody.

Ajay giving a preview of her speech said “Leading management thinkers believe that Information and Knowledge Management is more about maximising value from the tacit knowledge and skill locked up inside your organisation than it is about installing expensive knowledge bases to capture explicit information or achieving the paperless office.”

The conference will also look at other strategic issues such as how to manage your supplier relations effectively and who in the organisation really is in charge of IT and infrastructure decisions.

On the technical side, this conference wouldn’t be complete without a focus on new trends for the technologically-minded and with sessions on new interactive tools such as wikis and blogs, and a Microsoft representative giving a first hand insight into how the global giant sees it strategy regarding charities, this is sure to hit the spot.

This event is supported by CFDG subscriber companies Touchstone Group and Sayer Vincent.

Visit www.cfdg.org.uk for information about the Group and to see the conference programme and book online.

- Ends -

Notes to Editor:
The Charity Finance Directors' Group was set up in 1987 and is an umbrella group that specialises in helping charities to manage their finance-related functions. 

CFDG’s 1,150 plus members are responsible for the finances of charities with a wide variety of income levels. Between them our members manage some £11.3 billion in charity income per year.

For further information please contact Ernese Skinner on tel: 020 7785 6426 or email: ernese.skinner@cfdg.org.uk