Nonprofit legacy built on Salesforce
Active listening helps nonprofit transform technology and user mindsets
The new CEO made it clear—it was time for a digital transformation to eliminate disparate, disconnected technology and centralize on Salesforce.
The organization's director of product management, a past client, brought us in as part of our Salesforce consulting efforts. Our team got to work reviewing the tech stack and deskside user stories. The results, while not unusual, were still shocking—one user was reading data on one computer, writing it on paper, then re-entering it into another computer.
What's more, there was no ERD and the home-built solution central to the tech stack needed to be replaced.
The mission
The organization required technology unification, as well as a big change in thinking. They (like so many we see) were stuck in a "this is how we do it" mentality.
We knew discovery would be critical to the success of this project. Done well, we'd have the basis for user stories and requirements, as well as the relationships and trust among end users that would help them embrace change.
Our solution
We started by listening, meeting extensively with small groups and individuals to understand workflows and needs. In addition, we conducted considerable user acceptance testing in which we demonstrated specifically how their input led to decisions about the new build. Knowing their input was heard and appreciated made adoption much smoother.
This organization had complex security requirements and permissions between departments, as well as very different marketing and data needs across teams. Walls were established through permission sets, and the implementation of Pardot and Marketing Cloud supported various user needs.
Like many of our engagements, we started with out-of-the-box solutions as a fractional CMO, designing as much as possible utilizing standard functionality and minimizing the need for custom programming.
What happened next
The new technology eliminated unwieldy legacy processes and provided tremendous efficiencies welcomed by users. The single technology platform unified the organization and changed the minds of even those most set in the old ways.
Clean and consolidated view of data
Clean, consolidated data takes courage, but drives marketing wins
The president got it—in order to sell more, this SMB needed to market more strategically. That meant getting to know their customers and prospects. But that requires good, clean data.
Tackling data quality is not a job for the faint of heart.
The mission
The data was seemingly all there. Our team could see all the basic elements—name, address, email, phone and history. Unfortunately, we could also see multiple records that were clearly representing the same person. There might be separate records for Jim, James, Jimmy, Jamie and Jimbo Johnson, all with the same mailing address and various emails and phone numbers.
This was a problem—you can't convince your customers that you know them by sending up to six mailers or emails to different names.
We sought to create an accurate picture of each person that would immediately reflect updates without adding storage costs. This wasn't just a technical challenge—the organization wasn't fully on board with the fairly significant scope of this effort. After answering questions such as "are we chasing our tail?" and "is it worth it?" with a clear business case, we were able to move forward.
Our solution
We worked closely with the development team to craft a solution that worked with the client's existing Salesforce instance. Ultimately, we created an engine that generates a single view of a customer by connecting disparate data sources, scoring and displaying all names and nicknames and various contact information. Based on past interactions, we were able to suggest the best names and addresses to use.
There are similar tools on the market for this type of task, such as Data Cloud, Hightouch, Segment, Plauti, Informatica (now Salesforce) and Domo. Relavise can generally work with any of these tools, or recommend a replacement that best fits your needs.
Our solution dedupes data, generates an identity without changing the source data and displays results in a CDP view. Unlike most tools, which create separate golden records or modify source data, this tool maintains data integrity, creating persistent identities while preserving source data.
The value is multifold:
● Data sovereignty: Source systems remain unchanged
● Cost efficiency: No additional storage or data movement costs
● Implementation speed: Potentially faster deployment than enterprise CDPs
● Flexibility: Can work across multiple source systems simultaneously
What happened next
Being able to access a single view of a person without modifying source data or incurring additional data storage costs allows the company to market far more effectively and efficiently.
AI capability
Training, data quality, connectivity analysis, and full AI capability
Everyone is talking about AI, and for good reason. The challenge as we see it is to separate what you can do from what is practical and worthwhile. Anything is possible—but what will have the biggest impact on your business?
Relavise helps uncover the most expensive challenges, best competitive opportunities, and greatest potential for efficiency, so you can make well-informed decisions.
The mission
The goal should always be to leverage the advantages of AI tools such as Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT without exposing your proprietary data to the universe. You can benefit from the equivalent of hundreds of data analysts and engineers, but the results will only be as good as your source data allows. Data needs to be connected, organized and clean.
In addition, teams need to understand what AI means to them and their tasks—what can be used safely and how to use it.
Our solution
Relavise works with organizations to educate and train, as well as implement VibeFoundry.
When a company collaborates with us, the answer is an AI solution that reflects precisely your needs.
Everything begins with a knowledge audit that informs training sessions such as:
- Basics of AI: Out-of-the-box solutions, confidentiality and limitations, overview of large language models (LLMs), how to write a prompt
- Foundational knowledge and data science insights: A look at building a bespoke AI agent, what happens behind the user interface, AI and machine learning, training and testing a platform, ensemble large language models (LLMs), retrieval augmented generative applications (RAG apps), measuring success, and how to easily build a proof of concept
- A deep dive into your data: Including reviewing data sources, your ERD and quality
What happens next
Once you know what pains can be addressed, associated costs, and potential paths, companies can focus on key market differentiators that will be worth the time and effort. The first steps are an educated team with the knowledge to utilize AI properly and safely and ensuring clean and organized data. That way, you can unlock the power of your data while keeping information out of unauthorized hands.