Auditory Verbal - Scaling Impact for Success!
Sector:
Nonprofit
Technologies:
Nonprofit Success Pack
Auditory Verbal UK (AVUK) is a nonprofit that support deaf babies and children and helps them learn to listen and talk through a family-centred early intervention programme. As well as supporting deaf children and their families Auditory Verbal UK also provides training to professionals working with deaf babies and children who want to qualify as LSLS Certified Auditory Verbal therapists and/or enhance the work they already do. AVUK is a team of 25 clinical, operational, fundraising and communications staff and had never had a CRM previously until working with Cirrico to implement Salesforce.
When Cirrico started working with Auditory Verbal UK we understood that there were a few important key areas that were important to them;
- They are a small team, working across multiple departments with limited admin-power
- They wanted something scalable and sustainable which would provide them with huge impact long term
- They wanted to be able to have one place for all data which would enable them to do more
Laura Croudace our Technology Impact Evangelist interviewed Gary Rainbird from Auditory Verbal UK on the journey to implementing Salesforce.
Gary Rainbird, Database and IT Manager explained why they decided to update their ways of working with Cirrico.
“Like many organisations that grow from small beginnings so much data was held in multiple places, in Excel sheets, an Access database, paper files, Outlook and of course the knowledge held in people’s minds.
When tasked with looking into a CRM for AVUK I did have some concerns as to whether Salesforce might be too big an organisation to provide a solution for AVUK’s needs. It was clear however that the platform’s scalability, flexibility and wealth of consultancy and support options – and indeed its pricing offer to NFP’s – made it an attractive choice.”
Gary went on to say: “I knew from the start that whichever technology I chose was a long term investment and it was my responsibility to make sure we invested in the right product. As a small charity we needed something that would meet our immediate and future needs.”
The team at Cirrico worked with Auditory Verbal to fully understand the way we currently worked and what the very detailed and unique requirements were of the various teams at AVUK.
Cirrico want to ensure that all customers get the technology they need to ensure the biggest impacts can be made, for Auditory Verbal UK they needed multiple teams to have the best technology Gary explains what was crucial for the project to be a success.
“For example recording the detail of an important first contact from a child’s parent and ensuring our clinicians could get back to them promptly had a number of points in the process that made it open to delays. Now that process has been reproduced in Salesforce and we can provide a more streamlined service to anyone contacting us As the team at Auditory Verbal hadn’t worked with Salesforce before we knew that user-adoption would be as important as building the platform successfully in the first place. Cirrico helped train the various teams in using our bespoke version of Salesforce.
Cirrico ran the project, keeping to plan and timelines but importantly showing flexibility when asked and did their best to accommodate us when we required any changes. Their primary aim was always to deliver us a successful product and one we would be happy with.
If I could go back and tell myself something at the beginning of the project, it would be to get onto Trailhead sooner, the knowledge I needed to be able to move quicker is all on there and it is a great resource”
AVUK works nationwide and internationally and Salesforce makes it far easier for us to pull real-time data to support our activities, eg identifying families we’ve supported in a specific geographic area which can be a great help in certain grant applications or showing how many enquiries we’ve had in a given time period to help us with capacity planning.
Salesforce enables us to produce customized reports that took so much time to extract from many disparate sources previously.
Taking on new technology is an exciting but daunting idea for many nonprofits as they sometimes haven’t used all the options they have to choose from, at Cirrico we are really passionate about the idea that no question is a silly question, and it is suitable for any organisation.
“Salesforce is so scalable and adaptable for any organisation wanting to create impact and do more” says Gary
At Cirrico we want everyone to feel excited and inspired by having Salesforce as their main source of information and trust. One of the ways we ensure projects are powerful and create impact is working across multiple teams in the define and plan stages to ensure that we grasp the different teams and individuals needs.
When Laura asked Gary how using Salesforce felt for him he said:
“I would describe Salesforce as taking everyone’s knowledge, the stories and information stored in everyone’s minds, and sharing so everyone has access to it. I’m looking forward to speaking to Cirrico in 6 months’ about the impact that having the technology has made to Auditory Verbal UK!”
We think that is a pretty strong result and look forward to seeing the impacts that Gary shares in the future!
