Challenge

SAD’s biggest challenge in their daily work was data and contact retention, storage and management. In order to keep an overview of contacts of all types, projects and other important facts, SAD used to work with Excel spreadsheets, which are difficult to keep up-to-date at all times. The staff also used to work with Outlook for email communication but all information was stored locally on their PCs and devices and inaccessible for their peers.

Project Managers of SAD travel a lot in order to initiate, organize and support projects abroad. So far, they only had access to information saved on their own devices. Information they wanted to share with colleagues, had to be sent by email. Generally, data was captured and saved individually, which lead to duplicates and overall heterogeneous or inadequate data quality. When people stopped working for SAD, much of their data was in their heads, undocumented and got lost.

With SAD’s growth, increased complexity of projects and changing market conditions, the necessity for Change Management in technology and structure increased as well.

Solution

SAD required one single tool to store and manage data and information centrally. In order to have the flexibility to structure and manage the data in a way that satisfied their demands, SAD decided for the most suitable, cloud-based CRM solution, Salesforce.com, a reliable, user-friendly and cost-efficient CRM system.

With Nexell, recommended by Salesforce and the most experienced, certified Salesforce.org partner for non-profit organizations in Switzerland, SAD got support from an expert team that very well understands SAD’s valuable work and mission, its needs and technical requirements. Nexell provided some hands on advice for some business restructuring, information formatting and Salesforce best practices. Nexell also came to the aid of SAD to improve their data management and be more efficient in their daily work, by reviewing, adapting and consolidating the data to better suit their needs.

Aall data about contacts, institutions, projects and donations is now stored in one master system of record, Salesforce. Additionally, the system allows to track time for project work, attaching notes and files. With Salesforce’s dashboard and reporting function, they maintain quick overview about projects - from project status, via budget, costs, location, implementation partner, donations, to start date and duration etc.

In order to support Project Managers whilst travelling, the Salesforce1 mobile app provides all information mentioned at the user’s fingertip, on iOS and Android smartphones. Even in very remote locations, with poor or no connectivity, Salesforce1 allows for works offline. As Outlook is important to SAD, it is integrated with Salesforce. One click on the incoming email is enough to see Salesforce information in the Outlook application. A second click adds important emails to the contact history in the CRM, without changing between the applications.

Result

With the reliable, friendly and professional support of Nexell, SAD is very happy and pleased to have their information up to date, with improved data quality and structure, within a customized central CRM storage, including history, notes, meeting minutes, etc.

The new technical infrastructure complemented by the eMailing-Tool MailChimp, ultimately gives SAD the possibility to advertise, to create awareness for its mission and call attention to their projects with newsletter campaigns, to specific groups and contacts.

In addition, the new donation management system and their project time control and overview as well as the SF1 mobile functionality, results in an aligned and overall more flexible and efficient approach to their complex work.
Today, with a few mouse clicks SAD’s management has access to current project information including specification of project partners, progress and project cost control. Never was project monitoring and evaluation so quick and easy. A successful CRM platform is exactly what SAD needed in order to support their approaches to development and their success through sport & play.

Nexell is proud and thankful to contribute to SAD’s tireless efforts to create a better world.