Evangelical Alliance

The Evangelical Alliance UK is a Christian organisation with national offices in London, Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast. Formed in 1846 they represent over one million Christians in the UK. They bring together individuals, churches and Christian organisations and agencies who want to see spiritual and social transformation in our society. They seek to uphold Christian values and strengthen Christian witness throughout the country; and to see the Christian viewpoint inform and influence public opinion through media, through government and through public life.

They currently use Progress to support the work of their membership, events, and major donor fundraising and have plans to expand the use further so that all of their staff based in London will be using Progress as a centralised system, with additional access for the other national offices too.

The Evangelical Alliance is an excellent example of how a large implementation project can be well managed internally.

Evangelical Alliance's database project began in 2001 when they decided to source a new database, initially to replace their membership and events databases and then eventually their 25 other smaller databases held in Access and Excel.

They put together a comprehensive proposal detailing their needs and presented this to the trustees. Four independent IT Directors of other charities then validated the proposal.

Using a consultant to help source potential suppliers and put together an invitation to tender helped them to shortcut through hundreds of potential suppliers to just a few, reducing the project by months.

To compare suppliers Evangelical Alliance devised a scoring system that ranked the functionality they required against the shortlisted systems. Progress scored highly particularly for Gift Aid, interface to Sage, data transfer, and the overall flexibility of the system.

They also felt more confident in choosing Fisk Brett as they felt the company would respond to their needs better, would consider suggestions for future developments and had a good reputation for implementing successful projects.

The project was divided into three phases. The first phase began with the scoping of the project. Mark Lawrence, Project Manager at Fisk Brett, recalls "The initial task was to understand and document Evangelical Alliance's business requirements. "I worked in close partnership with Tim Manley, Evangelical Alliance's Database Manager, who was able to advise me on their business practices and their current use of their databases."

Mark and Tim were able to produce a thorough and detailed plan for the rest of the project encompassing conversion, training, and testing. Tim explains "It was vital that the system was rigorously tested and we took a 'back to basics' approach to this and divided the test plan into three sections. The first was to check that the data mapping that Mark had done had gone to the correct fields. Secondly, we looked at the functionality and tested all the elements that we would use to ensure we could replicate all our current processes as well as fulfil our new requirements. Finally we tested all the reporting requirements. "

This thorough approach to testing allowed Tim to spot any potential issues, and ensure that all the users were adequately trained before going live. Mark reviews the 8 month project. "The project ran extremely well for two reasons. Firstly, having a systematic approach from the beginning saved time later and meant that the data conversion and implementation was much easier to manage. Second, Evangelical Alliance, and Tim in particular, were extremely organised from the outset and approached the project in a methodical and organised way. This and regular communication ensured a good working relationship and the success of the project."

Helen Calder, Associate Director Finance & Operations at Evangelical Alliance concludes "We were extremely pleased with the implementation as a whole. Fisk Brett understood our needs and what we needed to achieve.

"We appreciated the fact that they were able to be flexible and willing to put in extra effort to ensure the smooth running of the project. We had planned to use an external project manager but found there was no need and we were able to bring the project in on time and on budget."

Tim writes in April 2006...

"It is now 2 years since we went live and we are delighted with the choice that we have made. Initially we trained the existing users of our previous database and then over the next 21 months rolled the database out to all our staff, the last of our national offices gaining access in December 2005.

"Progress met our initial expectations and we are continuing to develop new applications for it on a regular basis. It really has helped us to Progress as an organisation" he quipped.

For more information on Evangelical Alliance, visit

www.eauk.org