Charity seeks certainty and dependability in its Dynamics CRM provider
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Epilepsy Action is a national charity that supports the 600,000 people in the UK living with the condition. Every person’s experience of epilepsy is different. It is a condition that can affect people at any time in their lives and has profound impacts from social isolation, financial hardship, barriers to employment and even death (an average of 1,000 people die from epilepsy every year).
Beyond people living with epilepsy, Epilepsy Action supports parents and carers of people with epilepsy, teachers, healthcare workers, nurses, and employers. Epilepsy Action’s work also involves engaging with MPs and clinicians to improve the lived experiences of people affected by epilepsy across the UK.
Epilepsy Action has 70 staff, a network of volunteers across the UK, and a turnover of approximately £3.5m. The charity receives no government funding. Around a third of annual revenue comes from legacies (donations left in people’s wills), with the rest generated from individual donations (direct debits, one-off cash donations), fundraising events (including Facebook Fundraisers), grants, corporate donations, and charitable activities.
Our search for a reliable and experienced CRM supplier led us to Bluelight, and I’m pleased to add myself and Epilepsy Action to the comprehensive list of Bluelight’s clients who are massively positive supporters of them.
- Jon Eaton
- Director of Communications and Digital Engagement
- Epilepsy Action
THE CHALLENGE
In 2017, Epilepsy Action engaged with another Microsoft Dynamics provider with an accompanying NFP product to replace ProgressCRM. Due to several factors, progress on this project had been very slow, and a project that should have taken 18 months was estimated to be only 40-50% complete by October 2020. One team only had gone live with the solution, but there remained a projected 44-month timeline for completion of the project that should have originally only taken 18 months
EA engaged the services of the well-known and trusted consultancy Hart Square to gather a comprehensive set of requirements, build a tender, run the exercise, and advise EA on what internal teams and structures they needed to have in place to ensure a successful implementation the second time around. The procurement process began in September 2021, and by Christmas 2021, EA had appointed Bluelight and was ready to get underway with the project.
THE APPROACH
EA approached Bluelight via HartSquare to migrate to Bluelight’s BlueCRM Dynamics product, which is developed specifically to focus on the NFP sector. The basis of the requirement was to ensure it would also offer the future-proof CRM EA needed to support their evolving objectives.
The CRM was seen as the heart of the transformation, but two satellite projects were running simultaneously:
- Move the Finance platform over to Business Central
- Replace the existing Portal and expand the functionality to manage Membership, Preferences, and Events.
Both systems would need to integrate with BlueCRM.
Bluelight’s energy, expertise, and guidance were instrumental in helping us reach our go-live point. We are excited about the opportunity to expand upon the strong foundation they've established for us.
- Jon Eaton
- Director of Communications and Digital Engagement
- Epilepsy Action
THE OUTCOME
By taking a highly collaborative approach, the project was delivered successfully, on time, to budget and went live in November 2022. The Go Live of the new CRM solution enabled Epilepsy Action staff to all work in a single environment, ensuring a single point of truth for their members, volunteers, fundraisers, and helpline.
The core elements of the project were:
- Detailed analysis of business requirements across all departments
- Dynamics CRM implementation
- Enhanced support through the data migration from legacy Progress CRM and the Helpline Service’s Dynamics 365 instance
- Integration functionality deployed across a multitude of platforms across departments within EA, such as:
- JustGiving, GivePanel, Enthuse and MuchLoved for Fundraising
- Assemble and EventBrite for Volunteering
- SmartDebit and HMRC for Finance
- E-Learning for Training
- ClickDimensions for Marketing
THE BENEFITS
The benefits EA realise from their new integrated CRM are summarised as follows:
- Have a unified 360° view of its users all in one place and use the insights gained to deliver improved value to members, fundraisers, volunteers, and support to contacts accessing the helpline
- Use a CRM that is more embedded and easy for users to access in the working culture and processes of Epilepsy Action. With the old system, one staff member acted as the conduit for all CRM-related reporting information. Everyone throughout the organisation has access to the information they need to review, update, and create in the most effective format.
- Increase member engagement by providing more targeted communication based on a database of personas and engagement activity through ClickDimensions
- Provide all Epilepsy Action staff with an overview of contacts and their activity with the charity so information isn't siloed into teams, departments, or separate systems.
- Allow Epilepsy Action staff to work more efficiently and collaboratively within one single system and provide more resources to members through improved automation and integrations, leading to fewer manual processes.
- Dynamics CRM implementation and data migration from legacy sources
- Produce departmental dashboards to allow a complete overview of each business area within the system
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