Using CiviCRM to get to know our clients

De Goede Woning

De Goede Woning is a Dutch housing society. It provides social housing for those that are not able to buy or own their own house. The organisation had and has financial transaction software in which it documents its primary process: renting out its houses and the administration of its tenants and the contracts it has. What was missing was a tool to document more information about tenants. But also about any relations the organisation had that either were somehow connected to its tenants or were otherwise relationships, such as suppliers, government organisations and representatives, etc. A central place was needed from which staff could find what was going on with relationships, which actions were taken, what was communicated, etc.

Organizational focus
Social Service
Organization type
Association
Non Governmental
Non Profit

Background

To have a central database with all relevant client information in there.

Challenges

To figure out with the projectteam what exactly was needed to be supported, what was considered to be relevant data to record. Another thing was that the organisation was used to having a supplier of its software that would do / help with the implementation.

Solution

It was chosen as a tool to prototype with. It turned out that the way it supported the processes was more than was hoped for when we started. By the time the prototyping fase was over, it was agreed to implement CiviCRM.

Functionality

The CiviCase functionality turned out to be key to the project, next to the core civi activities functionality. Recording static data and showing data from other applications was very useful and initially what they expected to be able to do, but the CiviCase functionality resulted in an enormous amount of extra functionality for processes that were previously entirely supported by a number of spreadsheets. The fact that everyone now had the same transparent data available on their screen was an enormous step ahead.

The project team consisted of the project manager from De Goede Woning, 4 key-users (though during the project there were some changes) from the business and both Eriks from EE-atWork to develop integration with DMS and financial system and to help and support project manager and key-users to stay in control both of the implementation work as well as keeping the rest of the organisation updated of what they were doing and how it was going. The IT department was involved in conversion of data, but not as part of the project team.