Overview
Key challenges: Managing membership, collaboration between departments, import data, integration with third party applications
Why Salesforce?: Data in a central place, accessible, secure, requires little day-to-day support
Why ShoNet?: Qualified, supportive, professional, ability to perform to a high standard
Impact: Collaboration between teams, complex progresses made easier, time efficient, membership cycle automated
ECIS was originally established 50 years ago as the European Council of International Schools, but has expanded to have a global reach. It is now simply referred to as ECIS.
ECIS managing membership
ECIS needed to have better visibility on how they were engaging their members. Margaret Banjo, Membership Engagement Lead says “More importantly, as an organisation we sought to be more agile by reducing the time between member feedback and the subsequent implementation of changes. We needed a system that would not only facilitate collaboration across departments, but also empower the organisation as a whole”.
Initially ECIS decided to triangulate with other sources to validate their data. However, this had limited success due to the lack of resources in-house to have the data verified at a pace which would serve the demands of the organisation.
ECIS explore possible solutions
As a next step, the ECIS team decided to identify the key issues which would create the list of their requirements. Margaret noted “…the time it took to export data was slow and impeded the time taken to make an informed decision. This was further exacerbated by our limited ability to amend data individually or to import data from third parties. Although we had access to third party data we were unable to leverage this as we didn’t have the support to build a system to “talk” to third party software”.
ECIS contacted the ShoNet team and were impressed by their responsiveness. ShoNet provided a thorough analysis of ECIS processes and dependencies. This allowed them to look at the root cause of the challenges they were facing, and address the assumptions they were making about their data management.
Benefits of partnering with a good partner
One of the benefits of having an experienced Salesforce partner is highlighted by Margaret: “Having a Salesforce partner come in and give an objective assessment of our system has allowed us to look at our database from the point of view of our client. By walking us through the very minute details of the Salesforce system, we are now able to use Salesforce to do more than we desired; and ShoNet is always on hand to offer support.
Margaret notes one of ShoNet’s differentiators is that “There are a lot of qualified people and organisations, of which ShoNet is one. ShoNet’s USP lies in being able to perform to a high standard whilst being personable”.
ECIS’s impact and success
After a year of using Salesforce, ECIS are now able to track their member’s engagement through emails and calls. They also have visibility of all their invoicing pipeline from potential members to aged debtors. Margaret adds, “This puts us in a position to make evidence-based decisions. Although ShoNet were initially brought in to work on the Salesforce and CRM components, we engaged them further on linking our website to speak directly to Salesforce. This has significantly brought down the transaction costs associated with processing membership and professional development applications. The impact can be measured across a number of departments”.
ECIS has seen many positive and lasting changes from using Salesforce, including:
· Data is more accessible, with departments collaborating more. As an organisation that champions collaboration amongst educators, a database that can facilitate collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders speaks to their core value.
· Changes can be made to their database in house and require little day-to-day support.
· The ability to contact ShoNet to deal with the more complex issues. ECIS are planning on engaging ShoNet in a campaign which sees ECIS use automated data cleansing.
· With a better understanding of Salesforce’s scope, they have extended their system to meet other previously unanticipated needs.
· Through their work with Salesforce they have enhanced their institutional capacity making the impact of ShoNet’s work sustainable.
Margaret leaves this as her closing remark, “We will be engaging ShoNet in our upcoming data project which will see various components of our membership cycle automated. I could not speak highly enough of ShoNet. Steve, who is our main contact with ShoNet, is now an integral part of our team”.
Contact the ShoNet team to realise the benefits you can experience for you and your organisation.
For more information on ECIS please visit: www.ecis.org