This article, by independent database expert Peter Flory, is reproduced with permission from Membership Today magazine.

Gary Hawkes joined Farleigh Hospice as the charity was about to launch the public phase of its major capital appeal for £6m for a new purpose built hospice. "At that time we had an old in-house database that was proving restrictive in terms of some of the fundraising we wanted to undertake.

"We'd been struggling with processes" explained Gary, "We did little direct mail, segmentation was a laborious process using spreadsheets, and it was difficult to allocate campaigns and donations to codes."

This case study looks at how ProgressCRM was able to streamline all the fundraising at the Hospice

Farleigh Hospice decided that a new database solution was needed to accurately cover its Light Up A Life campaign requirements, and trace fundraising trends, along with a more efficient general contact relationship management solution. The implementation of the ProgressCRM project was carried out in two phases, LUAL first and then general fundraising and customer relationship management.

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In a workshop session at the CharityIT Conference on 7 November 2007, Robin Fisk presented "Enhancing relationships in your contacts database via your website" 

Robin, together with Product Strategy Manager Jim Mathieson, explained the whys and the hows of integrating your website with your fundraising or membership database to enable 'supporter self-service' - and a whole lot more.

They demonstrated web site integration between ProgressCRM and ProgressCMS- Content Management System- in the form of a role play scenario showing a solution from both back office and supporter perspectives.

As part of the services provided to customers under their SLA (service level agreement) Fisk Brett is pleased to offer an occasional 'health check' of their organisation's processes. A free of charge initial review by their Account Manager will help to identify where improvements might be made, and Progress users can then choose to book a full Business Process Analysis. 

Following the initial one-hour session, the full analysis would cover

• Analysis of key areas of your business (for example the flow of money through the organisation from envelope opening to thanking)
• Making detailed recommendations for streamlining approaches
• Identification of potential savings (monetary and time).

It is almost certain that this alone would make the consultancy pay for itself!

In addition to talking with the database administrator, the Fisk Brett consultant would hope to spend time with managers and department heads to obtain an insight into what reporting and key business performance indicators are required; how information flows through the organisation and how knowledge is shared; and the organisation's future (and strategic) use of ProgressCRM. In many cases, this will lead to suggestions for significant ways to improve the way people work, leading to significant cost savings, improved efficiency, and increased income.

You can download this Word form to your PC, to complete on screen. Then simply save the completed form, and email back to Fisk Brett as at attachment to FBSupport@advsol.com