In 2022, Julia Wong of the Fanconi Cancer Foundation decided her organization had been struggling for too long trying to work with their chaotic database.
As a rare disease nonprofit organization, many people in their community tend to wear different hats - some of these people being family members, donors, or researchers. When Fanconi Cancer Foundation was first established, their database was not able to clearly identify these core constituents. “This caused a lot of overlap and confusion,” Wong told us, “To add to this, some contacts [in FARF's community] were entered twice without any way to distinguish the difference between the two.”
Wong and the rest of the team needed a way to distinguish who each contact was and what their “primary hat” was to avoid organizational confusion and risk data integrity. “The only problem was that switching to a new database seemed extremely daunting to our nonprofit,” Wong explained. “We didn’t have any knowledge of Salesforce’s administrative [resources], so the team did not want to fix their database issues until we had full confidence in someone to help us with it.”
Already having worked with Summit One to implement a Program Management System and having a wonderful experience, Wong and the Fanconi Cancer Foundation team went back to Summit One for assistance on their current, unkempt database with the overall objective of increase constituent engagement.
“Summit One is extremely helpful at talking through a daunting task and easing worries about transitions. It’s scary to start a Salesforce project when you don’t completely understand it, and it’s incredibly nice to have complete confidence in someone to help you through it”.
- Julia Wong
When Wong and her team returned to Summit One for assistance, they explained in detail what outcomes they were looking to achieve from working with Summit One on this project. They were hoping to:
1. Increase donor and constituent engagement
2. Simplify and streamline data entry processes for internal staff members
3. Easily recognize and differentiate the various roles that different constituents play in their organization’s community
4. Eradicate the number of duplicate contacts in their database
5. Reorganize, simplify, and enhance the Salesforce User Interface and User Experience, making the most critical information easily accessible by staff function and constituent category
After working with Summit One to achieve these goals, Wong shares how satisfied internal team members were with the results. One of the biggest results they have seen is a much clearer understanding of their constituents, the role within the organization, and a simplified data entry process. “It makes our day-to-day operations of data entry and contacting people much easier,” Wong noted, “Now I can look at a contact and immediately understand the different roles they play within the organization, ” adds Wong. As a result of Summit One's customer-centric mindset, the Fanconi Cancer Foundation team was able to quickly and easily access significant and relevant information, have trust in their data, and navigate their CRM with ease. Wong mentions how this change was extremely helpful for the entire team because the clutter was significantly reduced and only the most relevant information was presented.
With Summit One’s extensive knowledge of the Salesforce platform and User Experience design principles, they were able to accomplish its goals of becoming a more data-driven organization and not letting their CRM get in the way of amplifying their impact. Wong concludes that their organization’s data entry processes are much smoother, and internal staff has saved a remarkable amount of time when it comes to interacting with their community.
Now that they have an enhanced Salesforce system and a fresh perspective on how they can utilize their data, the team at Fanconi Cancer Foundation is looking forward to scale their organization on the Salesforce platform. Confidence in their day-to-day processes, streamlined communication, and an intuitive user experience were all critical components before the Fanconi Cancer Foundation could increase their adoption and utilization of the Salesforce Platform.
“The more we can integrate and streamline our processes, the more time [our staff] will save,” Wong affirms, “Fanconi's confidence and dependability on how to use Salesforce for their organization will also increase as our data becomes cleaner.”
We at Summit One are grateful for the experience of guiding the Fanconi Cancer Foundation through their digital transformation and hope to continue to broaden & enhance their use of the Salesforce platform to yield even greater results.
Wong described, “I’ve really enjoyed working with the Summit One team. The weekly progress meetings and quick responses were both extremely helpful in knowing that our project was moving forward and at such a quick pace!"
When Wong was asked to rate her overall satisfaction regarding her experience with Summit One, she gave us a rating of 5 out of 5 for each of the ten metrics that were listed. The ten metrics considered Summit One’s performance when it came to their overall level of partner engagement, as well as the outcomes of our engagement, relative to the resources that were invested into the project. Wong was also very pleased with the value of the effort Summit One put into the project, and mentioned that our ability to keep her informed on their engagement status and progress could not have been better. Wong added that Summit One did an exceptional job at appropriately managing all risk factors, communicating their solutions effectively, and applying their knowledge of Salesforce products and technology relative to Fanconi Cancer Foundation's goals.
“Whenever we start a project with [Summit One], I have full confidence that the job will get done accurately and quickly. Not only are they good at what they do, but they are lovely people to partner with. I would highly recommend the Summit One team to anyone looking to level up their Salesforce database!”
As a world leader in advancing research with a mission to find better treatments and a cure for Fanconi anemia, Fanconi Cancer Foundation has supported over 260 research grants to more than 202 Fanconi researchers worldwide. Since being founded in 1989, Fanconi Cancer Foundation's outstanding donors and researchers have enabled them to fund $33 million in research projects dedicated to providing education and support services to families affected by Fanconi anemia worldwide.
We were appreciative and grateful to work with such a prominent organization as the Fanconi Cancer Foundation. If you are interested in learning more about Summit One’s Salesforce Consulting Services, click here.
