How we saved Ireland Active 90 days of admin time by implementing Salesforce
Sector:
Nonprofit
Technologies:
Nonprofit Success Pack
Ireland Active are the leading and trusted fitness voice of the industry in Ireland, they work to be the go-to organisation for leisure, health, and fitness and promote the work of the sector. They also run the Register of Exercise Professionals (REPs Ireland) which works to help professionalise the fitness industry through the promotion of fitness standards.
When Cirrico started working with Ireland Active we understood that there were a few important key areas that were important to them;
- They are a small team with limited admin-power
- They wanted something sustainable which would enable them to build on what they had
- They wanted to be able to have one place for all data which would enable them to do more.
Laura Croudace, Technology Impact Evangelist spoke to Stephanie Mac Sweeney to find out what impacts working with Cirrico, implementing a Salesforce had made to Ireland Active.
Stephanie explained “We are a small team at Ireland Active and we had previously had Salesforce,a few years ago, the organisation decided to move the CRM system to a new independent software which had a good reputation for being smart, slick and could do everything but in reality it was so overly sophisticated and complex which created user difficulty. The system was quite unique and therefore difficult to find a supplier to deliver appropriate training for the team on how to use it effectively “
At Cirrico we love helping the non-profits and businesses with purpose which we work with get down to the simplest way of managing their data, and being able to accelerate impacts because of the work we do to implement Salesforce.
“We decided to go back to Salesforce as we knew it was the best answer for REPs Ireland, and we needed something that was going to last and stand the test of time, so we wouldn’t waste valuable resources and time redeveloping a CRM system again. For us Salesforce was the answer, we have a long term plan of where we want to get to and for us we can just keep adding additional features to the platform in the future”
Ireland Active knew that to be successful they would need Salesforce to save them time so they could focus on other things.
“One of the Salesforce features that appealed to us was being able to work with the Cirrico team and build custom email templates that have all of the relevant attachments on them, so when someone applies to become a member, I can click a few things on my screen and the email goes off with all of the information which is incredible. Before we had Salesforce I was spending countless hours a week doing membership emails, now I spend about 3 hours a week doing this specific task as it’s been set up to suit our needs, and the preset email templates have been incredible- I have saved so many hours working through Salesforce.”
Saving Ireland Active 15 hours a week, which measures to 60 hours a month, or 90 days a year (!!) is a great benefit of using this technology, just from them sending templated emails.
During the Define and Plan stages Ireland Active explained to Cirrico that they were mostly working off spreadsheets with records that oversaw things such as organisational revenue, membership numbers, etc., and having to manually sift through data if their teams or board put a data request in. This would result in spending hours trawling through various systems and spreadsheets to be able to get some form of data based answer.
Stephanie explained “If I receive a request for data, or questions, rather than it taking me a day or so to get back to them, I can now get back to them within the time it takes me to run a report off Salesforce, which is super quick!”
At Cirrico we are obsessed with creating impact, and using data to drive your organisation forward, future-proof the organisation and enable you to make smarter, more agile decisions based on the questions you need answers to. Stephanie explained to Laura that having Salesforce as a CRM wasn’t just having a slick, helpful, time saving data base.
“One of the things I can now do through Salesforce is future plan our marketing campaigns, and use data to see when people are not renewing their membership, or when it’s likely to get super busy for example when personal trainers graduate with their certifications. We are able to pre-plan where we market and when thanks to the insights we have available- when we think there is going to to be a dip in membership and cancellations roll in due to Christmas being on people’s minds for example it’s meant we can offer membership incentives at this time of year to be a more sustainable organisation which is great!”
Janid Iqbal, Senior Salesforce Consultant shared more about the technology implemented
The Technology Stack We Implemented
- Salesforce NPSP
- Salesforce Platform
- Salesforce Experience Cloud
- FormAssembly
How did the tech work behind the scenes?
Once the project was completed Ireland Active gave the ability to all of their members to log into the online portal and update all of their personal details along with their qualifications. Members also had the ability to fill in the embedded online form within the portal to renew and pay for their yearly memberships. This would then filter through into the Salesforce CRM where the administrators could review and process all memberships and applications.
Having NPSP installed on the platform gave Ireland Active the ability to manage memberships easily through opportunities, use standardised naming conventions and be able to track affiliations members and various different clubs. Memberships could be renewed in bulk within opportunities which would automatically update the members contact record. NPSP provided the ability to do this and saved Ireland Active countless hours of work.
The final part of the project was that Ireland Active used the Salesforce API capabilities in order to integrate all the members’ details on their public website. This allowed members of the public to search for various different trainers based on the qualifications entered by them on their online portal profiles. This made the end-to-end process seamless as members could easily update and renew memberships which could then be approved and bulk changed within Salesforce. This would then lead to the public website trainer directory being fully live and accurate to be searched on.
