Successful Digital Transformation with CRM at the heart!
COMPANY OVERVIEW
The Federation of Master Builders is the largest trade association in the UK construction industry representing the interests of small and medium-sized building companies and lobbying for members at both national and local levels.
Since 1941, FMB has been supporting and promoting small and medium-sized building companies, including sole traders, across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. As a champion of quality construction work, FMB advocates for continuous improvement in building standards. The FMB badge of quality recognises the best in the SME building industry.
FMB is a not-for-profit organisation run by members for members, which means membership fees are re-invested into supporting and promoting Master Builders. Their vision and values shape the culture of FMB and ensure that their members are at the heart of everything they do.
The FMB work with strategic, association, commercial, and charity partners to accomplish their vision of being “the go-to organisation for all who value building quality.”
I'd strongly recommend Bluelight as a CRM partner. They are very easy to work with, and I found their consultative approach invaluable when building our solution.
- Simon Green
- Head of Membership Services
- Federation of Master Builders
THE CHALLENGE
FMB realised that its old website, portal, and CRM system needed to be revised and required a significant overhaul. They had commissioned Pixl8 to provide a new CMS but were also seeking to move away from their existing Dynamics system and integrate with a CRM that could better meet their needs. Specifically, they wanted a system that could fully support their functions and provide a complete range of insights into their membership base.
Bluelight's BlueCRM was the perfect solution for this challenge because it already had an established integration with Pixl8's Preside Platform, and FMB was already a Dynamics user. This meant that adopting the new system internally would be straightforward, data migration would be less complex, and a Phase 1 project could be delivered quickly by utilising Bluelight's standard Dynamics product and existing expertise to provide the Portal and CRM integration. Both FMB and Bluelight have implemented effective strategies to continuously identify and work together towards enhancing the capabilities of the CRM and website.
THE APPROACH
A short discovery phase was undertaken to clarify and refine the essential functional requirements for the CRM and its integration with Preside CMS to provide FMB with a functioning solution at speed. Once this was understood, a project plan was built in collaboration with FMB which allowed FMB to feel confident that Phase 1 requirements had been captured, that the data structure had been understood, and that the services around training and UAT support were robust and facilitated the smooth delivery of the new CRM.
A key driver during Discovery was understanding FMB’s requirements for Phase 1 and considering how these could be delivered quickly using BlueCRM’s standard product. This allowed for a relatively short implementation phase, with development and data migration starting in earnest at the beginning of June, leading to a Go-Live date in the last week of September.
The buy-in from all stakeholders allowed this challenging sub-four-month timeline to be met, which meant that all functionality, data, and integrations were in place for UAT. There followed a very intense month of testing and verifying that all the implementation components would deliver as planned for the CRM and Portal solution going live, as planned in September.
Since then, FMB and Bluelight have worked closely together to roll out enhancements and additional functionality that could not be verified and designed during the initial Phase 1 implementation.
BlueCRM was a vast improvement in the user interface it delivers in Dynamics, and it’s so much easier to use the CRM and data views compared to our previous Dynamics configuration.
- Liz Porter
- Digital Manager
- Federation of Master Builders
THE OUTCOME
The project was a resounding success, meeting all initial scope requirements on time and within budget.
These requirements included:
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A fully migrated CRM solution that seamlessly incorporated a membership and events portal, as well as a bespoke new Preside CMS platform
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Data migration from the legacy CRM third-party systems was integrated to manage direct debit payments, marketing communications and payments directly through the CRM.
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The latest user interface has significantly enhanced the CRM experience compared to the previous configuration.
Opportunities to improve data quality were identified through multiple iterations of data migration, ensuring data integrity. Furthermore, Bluelight conducted discovery workshops and playbacks to address convoluted processes around Membership, Finance and Case management. The requirements of each department at FMB were heard and implemented.
Despite challenges encountered during CRM implementation, FMB, Bluelight and Pixl8 worked together to deliver a new Members portal successfully.
THE BENEFITS
FMB benefitted from the digital transformation project in a huge variety of ways, not least of which was that they could now deliver online services to their clients with confidence in the accuracy of data provided by the CRM to a new attractive and fit-for-purpose portal
Other benefits included:
- A new future-proof CRM
- Extensive and robust integration with new Website and Portal using BlueCRM API
- A close and collaborative relationship
- Ongoing improvement and extension to meet evolving client needs
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