CASE STUDY
Stanford – Salesforce CRM Migration
Implementing a complete Salesforce CRM solution to migrate and modernize the Salesforce system, its processes, and its capabilities
Situation
Stanford is one of the top universities in the US and worldwide. Like other prestigious private universities, the organization attracts donors, especially former students, and public figures, who also secure naming rights for various landmarks, edifices, and events on campus. The donation relationships and processes are managed and tracked using CRM systems.
Stanford had relied on a custom-configured software solution, PostGrads, to handle their alumni and constituent database. The organization was looking to update to a more modern CRM system that would provide more features and processes — and options to leverage that data more effectively.
Solution
Salesforce CRM was chosen as a modern, effective, and efficient solution for system migration. Transiris took over development from a previous service provider to accelerate the delivery of the project, eliminate delays in the project, and provide technical and business solutions that were missing. After putting the implementation project back on track, we designed, developed, and implemented a large number of additional enhancements. Our Transiris team of experts began by reviewing the existing progress with the Salesforce migration and implementation. We looked at past planning, development, and implementation efforts to identify better ways to streamline and complete the process. Our next step was to take ownership of the CARD (Constituent and Alumni Records Database) migration track. We worked on Salesforce configuration, system administration, profile security assignments, and other tasks necessary for the migration.
Our secondary track was the integration of additional tools for Stanford to utilize the CRM system effectively. To this end, our development team worked to integrate a Smarty address verification tool to promote better accuracy for the CARD entries, and the WealthEngine analysis tool to gather actionable business insights from CARD entries.
Once the main implementation was completed, we provided process management, enhancements, support, and training so that the CRM system is continuously improved and adapted to new donation trends.
Outcomes
The successful implementation of Salesforce CRM and its additional integrated functionality allows Stanford to more easily and effectively keep in touch with constituents and alumni and reach out to them for fundraisers, donations, and events. Due to these efforts, Stanford demonstrated a marked increase in donations and funding compared to past efforts with the older CRM software.
In the support processes, we managed to significantly reduce the average open time of support requests, reduce the number of high-priority issues, increased user satisfaction, and allow the teams to focus on managing their relationships rather than tinkering with the CRM system. As a result, communication with alumni and constituents has increased in volume and quality – and IT and business are working better to enhance processes and deliver more donations to the organization as well as better value to constituents.