This is the company information page for the 2019 #ELGLHaverford award.
Learn more about the award program, and read about all of the honorees.
About Envisio
- Website: https://www.envisio.com/
- Contact person: Mike Bell
- Contact email: mbell@envisio.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/envisio/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Envisioinc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Envisioinc/
- Industry sector: Performance Management
- Minority/Women-Owned: No
- Does the company have an articulated equity/inclusion policy: No, but when I inquired about this they immediately remarked that they needed to articulate one, because it is a strong value of the company.
- Nominated by: City of Brighton, CO, City of Scottsdale, AZ, Anonymous
Engagement With ELGL:
- Blogs, Webinars, Podcasts with ELGL? Yes
- Events, Activities with ELGL? Yes
Working with the Company:
Describe your work and interactions with the nominee – how have you worked with them, on what projects, in what capacity?
- My previous organization, Goodyear, AZ, is an Envisio client. I managed the implementation and ongoing relationship with them from 2015-2018. Their strategic planning tool not only served to better align the work of the organization, but also helped identify significant improvements to our planning process and outcomes. I also continue to work with Envisio via their sponsorship of CivicPRIDE. In all my interactions with their team, it is clear to me that Envisio genuinely cares about helping local governments do their best work.
- We have worked with Envisio since 2016 and I’ve been involved with all of our project launches sense then. They started helping us with our Organization Strategic Plan, built a benchmarking tool that we could use for the Valley Benchmark Cities network, converted our Strategic Plan from a static PDF to online interactive dashboard, and helped us convert our Quarterly Performance Report from a static PDF to an online interactive dashboard.
- In late 2019, I remember having a staff meeting where we were sharing progress on strategic plan items across departments and our Assistant City Manager literally said, “there must be a technology tool out there that would help us monitor this.” As the person who owned all of the final strategic planning documents and actively tracked and monitored our progress, I made note that it seemed like a huge opportunity to pursue finding the right tool instead of continuing down the path of spreadsheets, shared documents, and meetings. The very same day I went for a run on my lunch break and turned on a govlove podcast only to hear an ad from Envisio asking, “Have a brand new strategic plan but not sure where to go next.” I signed up for a demo with them the very same day. While we certainly explored other similar tools. Envisio met us right where we were at. We had a strategic plan, but still needed time to develop true performance measures. We were making steady progress toward our strategic planning goals, but not necessarily clearly communicating that progress to our stakeholders. We worked with Envisio to further build out work plans for all of our business plan initiatives and have our checklists roll-up to track our overall progress on every focus area in our strategic plan. We just officially launched the public facing dashboard that corresponds to our tracked progress and we could not be more pleased with the feedback we have gotten from the community.
What was the product/outcome of your relationship with the company?
- We used the Strategy Manager product to manage the city strategic plan and supporting action items. Through the process of implementation, we were able to reveal some much needed improvements to the city’s strategic planning process and how to achieve better alignment across plans, measures, and tasks in the organization. The city’s performance management program was significantly improved as a result of both the tools and consultation from Envisio.
- We use Envisio products for our Organization Strategic Plan, our benchmarking work with Valley Benchmark Cities, and our Quarterly Performance Report.
What are three words you’d use to describe the company?
- Empathetic, Responsive, Adaptable
- Friendly, Responsive, Cost-Effective,
- Supportive, Collaborative, & Responsive
Describe the on boarding process for your work with the company – either when you personally started working with them, or when your organization did. What could someone else in local government know about starting work with this company?
- As a new employee implementing Envisio to a new organization for the first time, our initial onboarding had some mistakes. We initially tried to do a single mass training on the software and expect people to immediately become engaged. After minimal results, we consulted with Envisio staff to design a new approach. Over the next several months we worked together to craft a more thoughtful change management process that helped to demonstrate the value of the tool and bring people along. I commend Envisio for being a strong partner through implementation and learning alongside us as we on boarded.
- When we started in 2016 we started as a pilot program with them. I was able to set up our accounts from home on the weekend using my iPhone. Their program was very helpful for us in learning how to do strategic planning better within our organization. We had regular check-in conference calls to ensure we are on track which has continued to this day.
- Envisio really made the on boarding process as painless as possible. Before we had even completed training or entered our strategic plan into the web application, Envisio helped us track progress on a seperate work plan as an extended trial. It helped solve a need we had in the moment and allowed us to make the on boarding with Envisio part of what we were already working on in our day-to-day. It made the on boarding process feel less like on boarding and much more like a utilizing a partner to solve the problems sitting on top of your to-do list.
- Success working with Envisio products is more likely when your organization is actively working on or already has an existing organizational culture that supports performance management. It helps to have an established strategic or operating plan, and general alignment among leadership regarding the organization’s goals and way of doing work.
What is the company’s pricing structure? Please be as descriptive as possible.
- It has been a couple years since I last managed the contract, but I believe pricing was based on user licenses.
What’s the most interesting or fun aspect of your work with the company?
- Working directly with the staff to troubleshoot challenges and improve our change management approach was the best vendor relationship I have ever experienced. Because they were newer to the market when we first began using the strategy manager, we had a great opportunity as a city to help inform future enhancements and updates to the software. Envisio cared far more about being of value to local governments than simply making quick sales. I thought of them as a true partner in our performance management journey.
- We have done webinars for ELGL and others with Envisio. We often see them at conferences such as ACMA, ICMA and Transforming Local Government.
- One interesting thing is that I think for municipalities that are still in the early phases of strategic planning, or performance measures, Envisio offers a platform that can really grow with you. Their platform is flexible enough to meet a variety of needs and changing priorities. It acknowledges that strategic planning isn’t truly a linear process and that it is often necessary to change or make adjustments as work unfolds and priorities change.
How has your relationship with the company evolved or changed over time? How has the company reacted to or addressed any changes that your organization has requested in the scope/focus of your work together?
- Many of the staff at Envisio have gone from being vendors, to partners, to friends. Over the course of my time in Goodyear, the company added new dimensions of software to build themselves up to be a one-stop shop for performance management, from strategic plans to individual employee development.
- We started out working with them and Goodyear on a pilot using Plans in 2016, expanded to govBenchmark as part of the Valley Benchmark Cities following that, and then the Public Dashboard and Performance Analytics last year. They are extremely responsive to our requests, and place them on their timeline or find an alternative way to reach the same end.
- Envisio has always been super responsive to our requests for help. Since we operate in the real-world are usually urgent and never have enough lead time. They have never let us down and have been very responsive to feedback. We are excited to grow our partnership overtime and continue improving our organization through strategic planning, tracking progress, and measuring our performance on key measures over time.
Anything else to add about the company that we haven’t already asked you?
- Everyone with the company (past and present) have been wonderful to work with. The co-founders Mike Bell and Cara Ong are committed to helping local governments be successful. Kurt Juson leads an outstanding sales team. Kevin Knutson joined to help with their local government expertise in strategic planning and performance management.
- Liz, Ricky, Madison, Neonila and the rest of the team are so friendly and enthusiastic about customer success. We have done an Atlas post on our work: https://the-atlas.com/projects/creating-transparency-for-council-staff-community-using; and a case study on Envisio’s website: https://www.envisio.com/resources/case-studies/city-of-scottsdale