An Innovative Approach to the Autodesk Foundation’s Partnership Success Plans
The Autodesk Foundation invests in a diverse range of organizations through funding, technology, and talent. It uses Partnership Success Plans (PSPs) to document proposed and completed engagements with its portfolio organizations. This project’s focus was to develop more interactive PSP creation methods that keep track of the goals, required resources, desired outcomes, and impact in both short-term (<1 year) and long-term engagements. In consultation with an Autodesk customer outcome executive, a new model was adapted from the Autodesk commercial division’s customer success plan framework and tested with one of the Foundation’s long-term investees.
It is designed to be pre-populated and then finalized in a two-hour workshop by representatives from the Foundation and portfolio organization. The organization’s background details areas of excellence, areas for improvement, and the organization’s mission. This information is used to guide the formulation of three to five milestones for the partnership. The milestones are then broken down into specific initiatives and ranked by a difficulty/importance matrix. Based on their level of priority, the initiatives are then grouped on a quarterly basis as SMART goals. The needed capabilities and engagement plans for each quarter are then derived from the goals. Finally, the outcomes and impact of the engagement for each quarter are determined by quarterly check-ins with the organization. Color codes are used to tie milestones to the rest of the activities in the process.
The Autodesk Foundation developed templates to incorporate Autodesk value-added services and expected outcomes to facilitate quick and consistent completion. The information is recorded in MURAL and then transferred to a PSP slide deck for presentation and documentation.
Based on the outcomes of the pilot project, this new PSP approach is set to become standard procedure for creating and documenting engagements across the Foundation’s portfolio, ensuring that organizations get the needed support in a timely manner.
The proposed long-term partner success plan workflow. Attribution: Joseph Kurebwa
