“In some instances there were up to 150 validation rules for interactions and getting certain types of input into the system,” he says. “There were so many things to track, so much data, and we were managing the best we could before Salesforce.”
Integration with the government’s EA3000 system was a simple process, and did not require the use of any third party middleware, Hawkey says. Now job opportunities are populated directly into Salesforce and are updated on a weekly basis.
“We can also look at the individual job seeker and see what experience they have and what they want to do, and we can track them through the employment seeking process,” he says. “We can also show the government what we have done for that individual as a process to get payment from the government.”
Once Mission began using Salesforce it began to see other parts of its business which could benefit from using CRM, Hawkey says; particular in managing the relationship between corporate partners/donors and our staff.
“In our corporate partnership division we have implemented Salesforce for the 25-30 people managing relationships there,” he says. “We have also made some deployments for government relationships and managing apprenticeships for apprenticeship seekers and organisations offering them.”
Another benefit of opting for an in-cloud provider was that Mission would not have spend time and resources considering how the organisation’s branches could access the CRM application.
“We didn’t have to think about how we would deploy the application or whether we needed some sort of remote desktop environment if it was on on-site application,” he says. “Because it’s in the cloud, as long as you can get to the Internet it’s OK.”
Admittedly, Mission has experienced an up-tick in its network activity and cost as a result of opting for the cloud option, however this has been a limited concern, Hawkey says.
“Our network traffic is now higher as a matter of course as people are accessing the Web more as a general trend,” he says.
Hawkey says that the decision to move to a CRM system was a big one, but one that has already justified the investment.
“What’s important for us is that this allows us to run the business more efficiently: having information at your finger tips, having a consistent interaction process with clients, being able to track the performance of sales reps. We can make sure things aren’t slipping through the cracks,” he says.