Custom-built platform enables Community Justice Centre, Down Syndrome Association and the Singapore Children’s Society to better manage resources and stakeholders
SINGAPORE, 9 October 2015 – Microsoft Singapore, in partnership with Customer Capital Consulting, has announced the launch of the Donor and Volunteer Engagement (DoVE) platform – the first localised and custom-built software of its kind in Singapore powered by Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With DoVE, voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs) in Singapore will be able to increase their productivity by leveraging on technology to drive better management of their operational activities, as well as enable mobility of its volunteers.
Adoption of technology in VWOs for managing of volunteer and donor database in Singapore is low today as organisations often require a dedicated solution to meet their unique requirements, within the constraints of limited IT budgets. In addition, local VWOs require a solution that is able to manage a large number of interactions with donors, volunteers and other stakeholders. Due to the small workforce of many of the VWOs, this solution needs to be easy to use, require shorter training time, and yet remain compliant to local statutory requirements.
To meet these requirements, Customer Capital Consulting, a Singapore-based consulting firm specialising in customer relationship management, collaborated with Microsoft Singapore to develop DoVE. During the development phase, both large and small VWOs were involved to ensure that the solution could meet the industry’s needs. This localised-for-Singapore solution is a customised solution built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, an enterprise customer relationship management business solution from Microsoft, with both hosted and on-premise deployment models available. DoVE provides VWOs productivity tools to manage their core business activities, including donor and donation management, volunteer management, and the flexibility to scale according to stakeholders and programme requirements.
The platform has since been successfully pioneered and used by several VWOs, including the Community Justice Centre (CJC), Down Syndrome Association (DSA) and the Singapore Children’s Society (SCS).
“There are not many VWO solutions localised for Singapore’s context like DoVE in the market, and VWOs here needed a platform that has the key local VWO processes incorporated and is compliant with Singapore’s key statutory requirements,” said Tham Wai Mun, Director of Customer Capital Consulting. “In addition, local VWOs have a wide range of differing requirements, and needed an agile, flexible solution that could also easily integrate with other Microsoft applications, like Office, Outlook and ERP solutions.”
Simplifying stakeholder management for better insights
DoVE simplifies donor and volunteer management by creating a more comprehensive database that tracks the large volume of interactions, such as donations or volunteer services. With a more comprehensive and robust database built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the platform also allows VWOs to better mine data, create deeper insights and ultimately drive more effective outreach with donors, volunteers and other stakeholders.
The Singapore Children’s Society (SCS) is one such VWO that has migrated to DoVE to better manage donor relations. The organisation manages over 100,000 individual donors and at least 8,000 corporate donors, who engage in 25,000 transactions on an annual basis. The society had previously deployed a bespoke donor management system. However, with a widening donor base and increasing compliance requirements, it needed a platform that could scale with its growth, while strengthening its existing relationships with its donors.
“While we can’t control factors affecting our donors’ outlook and decisions, technology tools like the DoVE platform enable us to manage our donor outreach better,” said Chia Boon Khiang, Director of Fund Raising, Singapore Children’s Society. “Thanks to DoVE running on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, our team has enhanced its capabilities in data mining and analysis. This means we can better determine which of our donors are the most active, their preferred communication channels, average donation amounts, frequency of engagement, and preferred modes of payment.”
SCS now dissects data by geographic information to understand which parts of Singapore are more active in donating, and this helps the team focus more on these zones and optimise outreach in areas that need improvement.
The Community Justice Centre (CJC) also relies on DoVE for tracking the performance of its fund-raising activities. The organisation, among other activities, run an annual fund-raising golf tournament which sees participation from law firms, corporations and partners from the private sector. With the platform, CJC is able to better target its outreach towards donors depending on past preferences and participation, thereby improving the VWO’s productivity in conducting fund-raising activity.
Familiarity breeds productivity with DoVE
The DoVE platform integrate seamlessly with other Microsoft service, such as Outlook and Office. Given this level of integration, combined with users’ familiarity with these productivity tools from Microsoft, VWOs are able to easily adopt the platform and quickly train staff and volunteers.
The Down Syndrome Association (DSA)’s move to DoVE has seen significant productivity gains. Prior to adopting the DoVE platform, staff and volunteers typically maintained records and databases on makeshift platforms, such as Word or Excel documents and even across different devices or email accounts.
“It can be difficult to manage, especially if you have volunteers who keep the data on separate computers, USB flash drives or email accounts,” said Andrew Soh, Manager, Down Syndrome Association Singapore. “We became dependent on volunteers and staff being physically around to manually manage relationships with stakeholders.”
“Another key consideration we had when we chose a solution was the ease of use,” said Soh. “We needed a solution that provided a certain level of comfort, given our familiarity with other Microsoft products, in order for us to adopt the system wholeheartedly.”
With the adoption of the DoVE system, DSA has been able to generate databases with about 500 donor, member and volunteer names in a matter of minutes from two hours – a vast improvement of what typically used to take up to two days. This has improved the Association’s capability to target the right donors, volunteers and members, reaching out at the right time, and planning suitable activities for stakeholders.
Enabling integration and mobility for VWOs
DoVE is a highly flexible platform that can be integrated with other existing platforms of the organisation. The Community Justice Center (CJC), for example, adopted DoVE for donation and volunteer management and extended DoVE to incorporate its legal aid application process for the public
“CJC is a small team, but we need to reach out to a very big group of people,” said Leonard Lee, Director, Community Justice Centre. “In terms of managing our time and resources, technology plays a big part in making sure everything runs smoothly.”
At CJC, DoVE allows the organisation’s staff and volunteers to access information on-the-go, on mobility devices. “Our job demands that we provide services not just within the office,” Lee shared. “As Dynamics CRM Online running on the cloud, we can access DoVE from virtually anywhere. This is a benefit when we handle cases in court and need essential information on-the-go.”
A trusted and secure platform
With compliance being key for donor and donation management among VWOs in Singapore, it is important for organisations to deploy a trusted and secure platform. “One of the biggest concerns we had from members and from the board was storing data on the cloud and the security of the database,” said Soh. “Given the nature of our organisation, security is paramount when choosing the platform to manage our databases.”
Microsoft is committed in creating a trusted and secure platform that respects the privacy and security of the data that is store in the cloud. The company is the first major cloud provider to be independently verified as having adopted ISO/IEC 27018, the world’s first international cloud privacy standard.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online has also been assessed and certified as complying with Level 2 of MTCS SS, which is designed to address the needs of most organisations running business critical data and systems through a set of more stringent security controls to protect business and personal information in potentially moderate impact information systems using cloud services.
“As a technology company that is all about empowering individuals and organisations to achieve more, we are heartened that our technology is enabling VWOs to create real impact for their beneficiaries.” said Ngiam Foong Chee, Director, Marketing & Operations, Microsoft Singapore. “We look forward to seeing Microsoft Dynamics CRM continue to transform and empower the social services sector to increase productivity, optimise care plans, and improve financial management through gaining deep insights that will help improve decision making.”
To find out more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM, visit http://www.microsoft.com/en-sg/dynamics/default.aspx