One of the great promises of using CRM for nonprofit program management is the ability to manage by metrics. In theory, if we could track all efforts and all outcomes in a system, then we could uncover those predictive indicators that lead to desired outcomes. We could then make adjustments to the program operations itself to reach those desired outcomes. To a great extent, this is possible, however, it is much more complex than it sounds. One of the root causes of the complexity is the fact that we often are not looking at all of the variables and are only looking at a subset. Making decisions on a subset of variables can sometimes lead to incorrect conclusions. Since I have seen this logic trail unfold a few times, I thought I would share an abstracted example of such a situation.

Take for example, Acme Org, a human services organization that has implemented a robust CRM solution that tracks almost all aspects of it’s program operations. Below is one of the critical reports reviewed by the Executive Team each month:

The organization is considering the use of these metrics for determining promotions, salary adjustments, and bonuses. After initial review, the Executive team expressed concern about Jon’s performance to Jon’s manager. Jon’s manager on the other hand knew that Jon’s metrics were low because he was always thrown on to the toughest cases. Being on the toughest cases each month meant that Jon would have to spend more time with each client and would be responsible for defining new engagement processes for working through complex cases. Unlike the other client service reps Jon spent a lot of time researching and speaking to industry experts to identify best practices that could be used by Acme to help future clients. In short, Jon was expanding the organizational knowledgebase, capacity, and quality of service delivery. Unfortunately, none of this was being recognized in the monthly report. Jon’s manager decided to add a new metric into the monthly report that would help recognize Jon’s efforts. The revised report is below:

The revised report gave the Executive Team more insight into Jon’s efforts and the demands placed on the Client Services staff.

The point of the example is to proceed with caution when using Metrics for Management level decisions. They can be a very powerful tool when well directed; however, there is usually a story behind every piece of data and it is critical that the entire story is understood before program level decisions are made.

If you haven’t already done so, make sure you get deep into Cross Object Formulas. They have fundamentally changed how we think and work with Salesforce.Com configurations. A Cross Object Formula is a Formula field that can traverse object relationships and pull down data into an object.

Take the following example. Let’s say you are using the Opportunities object to track Inbound Grants. Let’s say that you have a Payments object that has a Master/Detail relationship with Opportunities (Payments is the Detail).

You can setup the following Cross Object Formulas in the Payment object to reference elements from the Opportunity and Account.

Payment Made By (Account) = Opportunities__r.Account.Name
Payment For (Opp) = Opportunities__r.Name

The beauty of the Cross Object formulas is that it lifts many of the constraints we previously faced with Salesforce. We can now:
- Create more complex reports including more objects than we could in the past
- Avoid writing Apex for something as silly as replicating a parent or lookup field
- Ease data entry and report building for the end user by making data more accessible

There are some limitations to be aware of:
- Limit of 5 cross object relationships per object
- You can reference up (from detail to master) or sideways (lookup), however, for references from parent to child, you still need to use Summary Roll Ups.

If you haven’t already used these, you should definitely check them out as they can solve many common problems you may have faced in the past.

If you have any interesting use cases for cross object formulas, please post them in the comments.

A colleague of mine (Lisa Glass) recently began using encrypted fields in Salesforce. It turns out they are fairly simple to use. Encrypted fields need to be requested through the “Feature Activations Team” at Salesforce. You can just open a Support Ticket and put in a request for this. As per the documentation, this feature is available to all Enterprise and Unlimited edition accounts, which means all NPO’s should be able to access this.

How it works:

• It creates a new field type in your instance called “Text (Encrypted)”. This is fairly similar to a regular text field, except that the data is encrypted.
• In order to see data within an encrypted field, the user’s profile must have the “View Encrypted Data” option checked off
• Any user that does not have this permission in their profile will see a value such as “***-**-****” when they view the encrypted field. (Note: You can specify whether you want the Mask to be either a “X” or a “*”. You can also leave a portion of a field unencrypted, such as the last 4 digits of an SSN.

Limitations:

• Max length of 175 characters. (You can’t really use this to encrypt case notes.)
• Field value can not be Unique, External ID, or have a Default Value
• Can not search, filter, roll-up, query, or use the field value in a Formula
• Can not use in workflows and assignments

Overall, this is a very powerful feature and you should consider leveraging it in your instance if your are storing any sensitive data such as Social Security Number, Credit Card Number, Medical Info, etc.

There is a lot more information on best practices and usage examples within Salesforce Help.

At NPower, we have worked on a fair number of CRM projects and we are trying to figure out the question of CRM timing. When is the best time for an organization to implement a CRM solution? I have taken the OLC (Organizational Life Cycle) Model and mapped that against our experiences with CRM success.

Stage 1: Startup Stage - The organization is still figuring out it’s mission and funding streams. Operating procedures are in flux and can quickly change based on grants, board members or funders. Technology is not really a core requirement.
Stage 1 CRM Outlook: Investing in a CRM Solution typically doesn’t yield great results because many of the underlying assumptions will change over the next few years. A very simple fundraising CRM solution can be effective in this environment, however, using CRM for operational purposes may not yield a good ROI.

Stage 2: Growth - At this stage, the organization has proven that their mission is a sound business idea. They have proven that they have the operational know-how to execute on their mission. They have secured a stable base of funders and a good core of board members. Their attention has turned from survival to growth.
Stage 2 CRM Outlook: This is likely the stage at which a CRM solution can have the greatest impact on an organization. Implementing a CRM can provide substantial gains on the fundraising side, while also cataloging a history of all fundraising interactions. On the operations side the CRM can begin to model organizatonal procedures and collect valuable performance data. If the CRM solution is implemented in an intelligent manner, it can scale and flex as the organization grows and evolves.

Stage 3: Maturity - As an organization reaches a certain scale, it’s growth will slow. At this stage, the organization is very good at executing on it’s mission. It has an extensive base of funders and they have very specific expectations of this organization.
Stage 3 CRM Outlook: This is a very tricky stage for CRM deployments and a lot depends on the organizational culture and leadership. If the organization culture is receptive to change, then a CRM solution can serve as a great engine for operational improvements. If the org culture is not receptive to change, then a CRM solution will likely replace some existing systems and only provide marginal efficiency gains.

Stage 4: Decline - The organization begins to lose stable funders and board members. New startups take away fundraising streams and the organization is perceived to be less effective and not as innovative in a modern environment. The organization begins to cut back on programs, staff, and all non-essentials as it seeks to find a way to reach a stability point.
Stage 4 CRM Outlook: Surprisingly, this could be a great time for an organization to move towards a CRM solution. Organizations in this stage are often heading back towards stage 1. This leaves them open to process innovations and funding changes. This willingness to explore new paths can make a nimble CRM solution an effective solution to manage the massive changes that the organization must face. The difference between this type of organization and a stage 1 organization is that they also need to carry forward the massive amount of data and relationships that they have amassed over their years.

The above is not meant to be hard and fast rules about good and bad times to get into CRM. They are just some observations from our years of CRM consulting experience. There will undoubtedly be many organizations that are exceptions to the above rules for a variety of reasons.

It may take years to fully understand the impact of the CRM solution, however, the clear winners so far seem to be those organizations that are in a growth stage.

I’ve been busy writing Apex, so no time to post to the blog. One thing I’m learning is that once you have some useful Apex code, like the lead conversion and payment processing tools we’ve created, it is easy to deploy it to multiple organizations — and that is just what we’re doing. However, in every case there are small tweaks to make, and more test methods to write, and more debugging, so it important not to underestimate the time needed to reuse your solutions.

We currently have two open positions in in our growing CRM consulting practice here at NPower Seattle (and many clients ready for help!). If you have Salesforce expertise or other relevant experience and are looking for a opportunity to work with nonprofits on a great team of developers and implementors, please take a look at these.

NPower Seattle serves over 450 nonprofit clients each year by providing technology consulting, education and training. Our clients include arts and environmental groups, human services agencies, food banks and youth-serving organizations.

Find full job descriptions at http://www.npowerseattle.org/getinvolved/jobs/index.htm. Submit resumes and cover letters to Resumes (at) NPowerSeattle.org.

I was having lunch with a friend the other day and he told me about a recent horror experience he had within his own organization. His organization just completed a fairly large internal CRM project and was rolling out an application. During a training session with a core group of users, one of the users attempted to move from one screen to another without saving and lost some data. Mortified that her action was a bug in the system, she lashed out at the training staff and soon infected the entire classroom with a negative perception of the application. The training staff was eventually able to regain control of the session and finish it out; however, they all now know that an enormous user adoption hurdle lies ahead of them.

I wanted to bring up this story to illustrate a critical point that we often think about in our CRM implementations. Know your influencers!! It’s easy to fall into a trap where you assume management support equals end user support. This may be true in smaller organizations or organizations that have a very hierarchical organizational structure and culture. However, many organizations are operating in more flat and distributed models. This often means that the loud voice of a peer can be just as influential as that of an Executive Director. Getting insight into who the influencers are and getting buy in from them early on in the process can help to avoid situations such as the one above.

At ONE/Northwest we’ve been looking into Vertical Response (VR) as an emailing solution that is integrated with Salesforce.com. We’ve just completed our first implementations, and I wanted to share what we’ve learned about how VR behaves with Salesforce. I’m going to try to lay out what I know in as concise terms as possible. Some of this is already known to many of you, but it was surprisingly hard for me to get my head around. When I get something wrong please comment on this post and I’ll update as necessary!

First, VR for Salesforce.com is best thought of as an individual Salesforce user’s personal application for sending mass emails rather than a shared solution for an organization. Here’s why I say that:

1. Each Salesforce.com user has their own VR account, and it is impossible for those accounts to share lists
2. If one person starts a send, someone else can’t complete it
3. If one person sends an email, they are the ones who will need to pull the stats back to Salesforce
4. If a subscriber opts out, they are globally opted out of emails in Salesforce

Now that I’ve said that, let me say that VR accounts can share some important info:

1. By creating your email Templates as Email Templates in Salesforce.com, they are available to all Salesforce/VR users.
2. Salesforce Campaigns can be used to represent each send, and the stats get pulled back to them, so those are visible to all Salesforce/VR users. They can even be used for segmentation of future sends.
3. You can pool send credits ($) between any number of users, you just have to email VR and tell them which users.

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Salesforce is so reliable and available, it is easy to forget to back up your data locally. Lately, I’ve was reminded that it is a good idea to back up your Salesforce data from time to time. Salesforce allows administrators to download a complete export up to once a week.

It isn’t that you have to fear for the Salesforce database crashing or being lost. I recommend downloading for a couple reasons:

• It could help if you ever accidentally make unintended changes to data and want to return to an earlier state.
• It could also be helpful in the event that Salesforce or your internet access ever goes “down” at a critical time – you’d have a way to access your data offline.

To download the backup, go to Setup (Administration) | Data Management | Data Export. Click the button – a while later you’ll get an email with a link to download your data file. Save it somewhere safe.

Alternatively, if you use Demand Tools, you can back up to a file as often as you like. I use this to create a copy of the database in a Microsoft Access file.

I recently spent some time learning more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and I must admit the product looks very interesting! For those of you that are more familiar with Salesforce.Com, I will try and draw out some of the similarities and some of the differences. I haven’t had a chance to do a nonprofit implementation with Dynamics CRM, so this is very much just a first look based on information I have read and some online demos.

The first major difference between the two platforms is how they can be run. Salesforce is locked in to the On-Demand model. Microsoft offers the ability to run Dynamics CRM either as an Internal Application or as an On-Demand offering through their CRM Live service. At first glance, it appears as though Dynamics CRM would be more feature rich when run as an internal server based application. It derives its value from making the assumption that end users are most familiar with MS Office Suite of Products. It has very tight integration with MS Outlook and MS Excel. Below is a screenshot of how CRM Dynamics looks in a familiar MS Outlook Environment:
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In a previous post, I talked about a few ways that I customize web-to-lead forms. One key change I make is to ensure that certain fields get filled in for every web lead. In a Salesforce page layout, you can require fields, but web-to-lead doesn’t allow you to do this - any web-to-lead form submission will create a lead, even if critical fields such as last name or email are left blank.

Most of our clients want to make sure their leads fill in a minimum amount of information, such as name and email. Moreover, you can catch spam by requiring sensible entries - since spammers don’t always fill in the fields.

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