From Chaos to Clarity – Streamlining Data Integrity
In 2022, Julia Wong of the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund (FARF) 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 FARF was first established, their database was not able to label the difference between each of these different types of people. “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 FARF 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 FARF team] did not want to fix their database issue until we had full confidence in someone to help us with it.”
Already having worked with Summit One to achieve previous Salesforce-related projects and having a wonderful experience, Wong and the FARF team went back to Summit One for assistance on their current, unkempt database.
“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:
Streamline their organizations’ data entry processes to make it easier for their staff
Easily recognize the various roles that different people play in their organization’s community
Eradicate the number of duplicate contacts in their database
Reorganize, simplify, and tidy up each page in their database’s layouts to make key information about each contact easily accessible, and group contacts together by their roles
After working with Summit One to achieve these goals, Wong shares how satisfied FARF’s team members were with the results. One of the biggest results FARF has seen is a much clearer understanding of who the members are and their role within the organization. “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 FARF 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 FARF team because the clutter was significantly reduced and only the most relevant information was presented.
With Summit One’s extended knowledge of the Salesforce platform, they were able to help FARF 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 the FARF team has saved a remarkable amount of time when it comes to interacting with their community.
Now that they have an enhanced Salesforce system and have a fresh perspective on how they can utilize their data, FARF’s team is looking forward to scaling their organization on the Salesforce platform now that they can have confidence in their data, day-to-day processes, and streamlined communication abilities.
“The more we can integrate and streamline our processes, the more time [our staff] will save,” Wong affirms, “FARF’s confidence and dependability on how to use Salesforce for their organization will also increase as our data becomes cleaner.”
- Julia Wong
We at Summit One are grateful for the experience of guiding FARF 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 FARF’s 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 to FARF’s goals efficiently.
“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!”
- Julia Wong
As a world leader in advancing research with a mission to find better treatments and a cure for Fanconi anemia, FARF’s nonprofit organization has supported over 260 research grants to more than 202 Fanconi researchers worldwide. Since being founded in 1989, FARF’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 FARF. If you are interested in learning more about Summit One’s Salesforce Consulting Services, click here.