Case Study – The Coeliac Soceity
The Coeliac Society is based in the Carmichael Centre for Voluntary Groups. It is typical of hundreds of voluntary health related charities. The Society has grown exponentially over the last number of years and has 11000 members on its database. It offers a range of services including membership, annual AGM, biannual conference, regional meetings, regular publications and sales of products related to the Coeliac condition.
The central administration has to manage information on members, support groups, regional groups, manufacturers, donors and officers. Over the years the number of data sources multiplied with vital information stored in multiple places: MS Access, multiple spreadsheets, MS Outlook, MS Word and on mobile phones.
A workshop with Enclude enabled the staff to present all the different activities, work processes and information sources on a series of flip chart pages. This was typed up and analysed and presented in the first full written account of the myriad of activities and services undertaken by this dynamic organisation. The report also identified duplication of information and effort, serious vulnerabilities, and lack of integration with accounts. Remote access was viewed as valuable for this national charity.
Salesforce CRM on-demand system was a perfect fit for the needs of the Coeliac Society. After designing the page layouts of contacts and contact organisations all information on the membership, professional membership, contact and manufacturers was migrated into Coeliac CRM using the data import tools. The events were listed and a payments section allowed contacts to register for events, pay membership and purchase items.
Vital to the success of the implementation were reports. Salesforce.com has a powerful reporting tool that enabled Coeliac Soceity retrieve the information it needed, when it is needed. Daily, weekly and monthly payment lists categorised by contact and item/event were important. A report on lodgements, grouping items as required by the Treasurer, saved hours of work each month.
Two on-site training days served to get staff confortable with the new system and surfaced great suggestions to week the system for easier use. The introduction of a mail merge and label tab, which is a free Salesforce App (applications) made life easier in the office.
FACT: A Cork charity evaluated several solutions for their ICT needs. Initially Salesforce.com topped the list but was rejected on basis of cost. Happy were they when Enclude gave them the good news of the Salesforce Donation Programme.
could" to sign post and encourage State funded charities to apply through ENCLUDE's Technology Donations programme - ENCLUDEit.org - for technology donations from major donors like Microsoft, Cisco and Symantec.