The Challenge
Headway West London was using multiple shared spreadsheets that were becoming unmanageable and they required a system that was process driven that would allow an easier way to collaboratively work as a team and to easily see at which stage a referral was. The visibility of appointments, emails and phone calls tracked against these client referrals was required to allow the charity to be more efficient and grow. They also wanted the ability to be able to manage the companies and professional contacts they work with to deliver the services.
The Solution
In February 2022 Headway West London decided they needed a CRM System to manage the services they offer, and they appointed KMS as the implementation partner. The first thing KMS did was to apply for the not-for-profit pricing Microsoft offer for charities to their Office 365 tenant, instantly reducing the subscriptions Headway West London were paying monthly.
The main part to the Dynamics 365 customisation was the creation of a custom table called a ‘Referral’. The general method for a user to follow within Dynamics 365 was for them to create or find the contact / client in CRM, then create the ‘Referral’. The refined business process flow within the referral then guided and forced the users to follow the specific process through the appropriate stages. Certain data fields were set as mandatory at certain stages and automated workflows were set to alert the users of the system of tasks to be completed. Referrals could be signposted to certain companies and contacts could be linked to each other using connections. System ‘Dashboards’ and excel templates were setup to allow the board members of the charity visibility of the monthly progress and to see if targets were met.
The Outcome
Within 4 weeks KMS implemented the entire system for Headway West London, this involved carrying out the consultancy to get the requirements, creating the Dynamics 365 environment, customising and configuring the system, transferring the existing data from excel into CRM and completing the user training. Headway West London users were provided a URL to the customised ‘App’ to access the system, they were trained how to link emails and appointments from Outlook into Dynamics to the referral and the shared mailboxes functionality within Exchange / Outlook was also introduced.
Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic knock on affects and the flexibility of using Microsoft Teams, the entire implementation process was carried out online and it proved an effective and efficient method of delivery.
“We are very pleased with the finished product as we have a much more efficient system that we can use to store our data, keep track of new referrals, and easily access our database of signposting information. KMS were incredibly helpful throughout the whole process and were always on hand to offer support and answer all our questions. We have been using the system for a few months and have been finding it very accessible; many tasks which we used to do manually have now been automated and take much less time. We really appreciate KMS’ support in helping us to achieve this project.” – Sara Din – Project Lead – April 2022.
For more information about Headway West London, please go to their website at https://www.headwaywestlondon.org.uk/.