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Working with Voluntary and Community Organisations (VCOs) - Guidance for telecoms suppliers

By Mark McLean

This article provides guidance for telecoms suppliers on working with voluntary and community organisations (VCOs).

The Challenges

Working with smaller VCOs can be a challenging prospect because it’s not just their budget that’s likely to be lower – they may not have the knowledge or specialist staff that you find in larger organisations. However, the Telephone Helplines Association, working with a range of smaller VCOs in 2006, found that there was nonetheless a high level of interest in telephony products and services. If you are willing to put in a bit of extra effort to understand (and to help them understand) their needs, working with a small VCO can provide an interesting change of scenery for your sales and support staff, and may enhance your own corporate social responsibility credentials! 

VCOs may often have restricted budgets for specific projects, so you’ll be talking to a project lead, but take time to gather an organisation perspective and to check the overall ICT picture as you may be able to help the VCO join-up or consolidate separate systems or ways of working. Find out about timescales too – processes for gaining funding decisions can often be delayed and then, when money is made available, funders expect projects and services to become reality in short order.

What suppliers can do

The more you can find out about the needs of the VCO’s funders, the more value you are likely to add to any proposal. For example, products and services with flexible built-in reporting capacity are likely to be useful for those VCOs that need to demonstrate outcomes.

If you want to differentiate yourselves from the competition, demonstrate a genuine interest in the nature of their work and show them that you would like to respond to their specific needs rather than pushing a standard product or service.

Unless you are talking to someone with a clear knowledge of telecoms, the use of technical jargon is not likely to impress VCO customers, so stick to Plain English and define any ICT terms clearly.

It is important to be clear and full about pricing elements, as the VCO is likely to be judged by the accuracy of its costing estimates. Be honest about end-of-contract arrangements and any extras associated with implementation or training. The VCO will appreciate you giving them a discount because they are a charity, but will not appreciate financial surprises.

Finally, if you have already done some work successfully with VCOs and would like to promote your work with the sector, then sign up with the ICT Suppliers Directory. You can also use the directory to identify potential competitors.

For more information on meeting your telephony needs please read the Good Telephony Guide (8.2 MB PDF file. Requires Adobe Reader. If you don't already have this, download it from Adobe).