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Integrated CRM working seamlessly to deliver enhanced Membership Services

Finances

COMPANY OVERVIEW

The Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT) enables and supports treasury professionals throughout their careers by:

  • Providing clear treasury leadership and a trusted dynamic global network of experts

  • Raising the profile of the profession, growing its influence, and championing its success

  • Having high-level real economy influence and policymakers and regulators

The ACT educates through its competency framework, qualifications, training, and in-company learning programmes; grows networks through events, conferences, and regional groups; and guides, informs and supports through its policy and technical work, publications, and membership services.

The ACT’s vision is that treasury everywhere has the highest standards of professionalism, bringing success to organisations and creating strong economies through the strategic balancing of financial risks and opportunities. Its Mission is to embed the highest standards of professionalism and integrity in the treasury world and act as its leading advocate.

Accountant at a desk



Bluelight were extremely flexible in tailoring their processes to fit the ACT’s needs in the face of challenges such as the Covid pandemic and internal business activity.

  • Charles Cresswell
  • Head of ICT
  • The Association of Corporate Treasurers

 

THE CHALLENGE

The ACT recognised that their legacy CRM solution, which was used to manage their operations, was seriously hampering their ability to service their memberships needs effectively.

At the same time, they had previously implemented an on-premises version of Dynamics that their sales and marketing team used, which was sourced and supported by a different supplier, requiring complex integrations to enable a 360 customer view.

There was a compelling business case to move to a single cloud-based Dynamics solution. There was also the realisation that by unifying under one trusted supplier, major benefits would be achieved, with the client-supplier relationship being streamlined and improved, as well as the efficiencies of internal collaboration between all teams, using a single trusted source of truth.

Building on the close relationship the ACT had with Bluelight, they chose to move forward with Bluelight’s Dynamics CRM solution – BlueCRM.

The new infrastructure would resolve a number of challenges: -

  • Reduce annual support and maintenance across the ICT function

  • Provide greater stability around the hosting platform, with Dynamics being cloud hosted, at the same time as realising cost savings

  • Remove the risk of unplanned supplier discontinuation of the current CRM system

  • Re-unify the marketing/sales with operations on the same Dynamics 365 system, removing the need for ongoing system integration between business units

  • Provide robust integration to multiple 3rd party systems, including a customer self-service portal which could adapt to business needs

THE APPROACH

As with all Bluelight projects, it was critical to assess user requirements through a well-structured and well-attended joint Discovery program. Here Bluelight’s team ensured they understood a high level of detail requirement and began mapping out key relationships between the ACT, Bluelight and other critical third-party suppliers such as the ACT’s website partner and various other platforms.

The ACT also invested in an external project manager, and so a highly effective joint project team was formed with Bluelight leading the way and bringing all parties together, as well as providing project governance and guidance for when key decisions needed to be made to handle or avoid any bumps in the road that these complex implementation projects can encounter.

This project was to be no exception! Very early on in the project, one of the biggest ever bumps in history was encountered, that of Covid and Lockdown. This forced Bluelight and the ACT to make some significant joint decisions regarding the timescales around the project and delivery dates. However, with the correct governance in place, the joint project team was able to re-plan effectively and not lose sight of the end goal and aspirations of the project, with go-live being achieved in the summer of 2022.



Bluelight’s collaborative approach in leading the process across all parties enabled the ACT to focus on both resourcing their part of the programme as well as ensure that their business-as-usual activity was not adversely affected.

  • Charles Cresswell
  • Head of ICT
  • The Association of Corporate Treasurers
Accountants in a high rise building

THE OUTCOME

Despite the challenges, Bluelight, the ACT and its partners remained focused on the clear goals that needed to be achieved.

The project was completed by delivering to the ACT: -

  • A single, cleansed, and unified CRM

  • A unified, cloud-based CRM to manage all CRM requirements

  • A robust and cost-effective integration between BlueCRM and the ACT’s website

  • Multiple 3rd party integrations, including the ACT’s Learning Management System (LMS) and Exams/Assessment Management System (EMS)

  • A significantly simpler IT Estate and a trusted relationship with one supplier

THE BENEFITS

The major benefits the ACT are realising from their new integrated CRM can be summarised as follows: -

  • Immediate annual cost savings by reducing the number of systems, customisation and suppliers and reducing the complexity of the IT estate

  • Streamlining the effectiveness of the business and collaboration between teams by using the same integrated solution across all areas of the organisation

  • Fully cloud-based solutions ensure the ACT can benefit from both Bluelight as well as Microsoft's ongoing development roadmaps.

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