Quarterly Strategic Plan Update Summer 2018
It’s officially summer, and Eastern National is more than halfway through the second year of our strategic plan. It’s these accomplishments and changes that are not only helping us become a better partner but are transforming the way we collaborate and communicate as an organization.
This spring we made important strides toward our Partnerships goals. In April, we again partnered with the National Park Service to co-sponsor a training for NPS and cooperating association professionals. The training was a great way for us to share knowledge and strengthen collaboration. We also completed the final stage of a two-phase brand audit. The analysis we conducted will help guide us as we develop a comprehensive brand strategy moving forward. Thank you to everyone who participated in the Partnership Engagement survey. We are evaluating the results and we will use them to make sure we best meet the needs of our partners moving forward.
The Eastern National family is growing and developing as we focus on the important People goals of the strategic plan. The second phase of the Regional Realignment was a major milestone for support to the field. We added a Chief Operating Officer, Directors of Retail North and South, and two new Assistant Regional Managers. We are launching two important initiatives to address employee engagement, based on the results of last year’s survey. Two newly formed committees are beginning to implement employee development projects across all levels of the company.
Under the priority of Operations, our IT team continues to work toward implementing Office 365. The first phase of migrating EN’s email to the cloud was successfully completed earlier this year. The second phase of transitioning to the full suite of O365 applications is underway. We launched a new model for best practices in inventory and vendor management. We’ve recently added an Inventory Specialist and Purchasing & Product Development Specialist in each region. We converted several previously manual locations to Point-Of-Sale systems. We are close to selecting a consulting firm to assist with the selection of a new P.O.S. system that will meet our needs moving forward.
The launch of Eastern National’s philanthropic branch is a big step towards our Finance strategic goals. Eastern National is now an official fundraising partner for the Outer Banks Group: Cape Hatteras NS, Wright Brothers NMEM, and Fort Raleigh NHS. We’ve begun the search for a Director of the new Outer Banks Forever project. For over 70 years Eastern National has been a traditional cooperating association, making this milestone event extremely exciting for us and our partners. We hope to use Outer Banks Forever as a model for similar partnerships at other locations in the future.
Stay tuned for the next strategic plan update in the September issue of the ENformer!