Case Study
Improving CRM systems in the charity sector
Clarasys spent seven weeks working ‘pro bono’ with a national charity, helping them to better integrate a CRM platform into their daily operations. With users disengaged – and little knowledge of the platform capabilities – there was a real danger that the charity would see no return on their investment.
With almost 1,000 employees and over 27,000 volunteers, the charity has to be able to respond to the market the same as any large corporation. So it was vital that they started making use of their data to drive growth and align to their strategic objectives.
When Clarasys teamed up with the charity in October 2013, they were undergoing a major restructure to improve the effectiveness of their services to different parts of the UK.
Our first priority was to understand how the charity was using the CRM system across the organisation and to find out what the senior leadership team wanted to achieve. Their focus was to align their projects with the strategy – but they needed a clear strategic oversight of the organisation; something which the CRM system was not yet capable of providing.
Clarasys was quickly able to understand the problems and identify key areas for improvement, looking at processes and systems. The team drew up a list of user requirements and worked closely with the business to prioritise these into an list of tasks.
Clarasys initially identified the redistribution of licenses to those users that would provide the most value to the collection of appropriate data. This then required that the users had the ability to use the system correctly. Clarasys then custom-made a training programme to cover the functionality that mattered most to the organisation.
We made improvements to the sales processes – to reflect the way the charity was tracking tenders – and we undertook data cleansing activities to make sure that bad data was removed and that users were able to record the data that reflected reality. The addition of new fields and validation rules further enforced the system’s ability to collect good data.
The last piece of the puzzle was the development of reporting functionality, so the charity could ‘see inside’ their organisation and make use of their improved data. With the creation of a reliable pipeline report the organisation was finally able to make valuable insights.
Clarasys is looking forward to continuing its relationship with the charity, helping them to realise their strategic objectives through the coordinated use of people, data and technology.
