vfonds: loose administrations gone
Every year, in early May, numerous events are organised in the Netherlands to celebrate and commemorate. The National Fund for Peace, Freedom and Veteran Care (vfonds) has an important part in supporting these events financially. Choosing Salesforce has meant a lot to them in this.
The challenge
After his appointment, director Michiel van Hattem saw a number of challenges in vfonds's operations. The approval process for grant applications was mainly in the heads of a few employees, which posed a continuity risk. In addition, data capture was fragmented across different systems. An add-on to Outlook, while good at archiving, did not provide insight into the status of the 300-plus annual grant applications. The application process was inefficient and awards were made too much based on financial figures and too little on content. All this was the starting signal to look for a new information system.
"Salesforce is the best choice going forward because of its flexibility and scalability."
The solution
After touring lotteries and charities, a shortlist of possible solutions was drawn up: customisation, extending the old system or Salesforce. Van Hattem: "With customisation, you risk running into new limitations all the time. Salesforce is the best choice for the future because of its flexibility and scalability. The 10 free licences were the deciding factor in choosing Salesforce."
The result
With Salesforce, the request process is considerably more efficient than before, but dealing with standard solution is proving more difficult in practice than expected. The main process covers 80-90% of all incoming requests. Separate administrations have disappeared or are being phased out. Approval requests can be processed in a mobile app, which is fast and easy. Management can see at a glance what stage the requests are at. An added value is that new sources of management information have been tapped. For example, how many people were reached thanks to the award of a grant. Evaluation of projects is now much more content-based than before.
Van Hattem: "During the implementation, we learned a number of things. For example, that the Executive Board has a greater information need than estimated beforehand. Also, automating the application process turned out to be more complex, so the project took longer than planned. We have made considerable progress in correspondence with the applicant, but there is still room for improvement. The community is not yet user-friendly in practice, which is also a matter of getting used to. In the follow-up phase, closer integration with the website and marketing automation are planned. It is not yet easy to implement the necessary and desired improvements in the management phase, but consultations with TwoPurpose are positive. I expect that from 2020 we will really start to see what this choice has meant for the organisation. My ambition is that by then we will have positioned ourselves as THE knowledge leader in our field."
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