The Institute of Export & International Trade (IOE&IT) have been going through a period of rapid growth and needed a CRM and website flexible enough to scale with them.
IOE&IT have grown 7-fold in just 18 months, highlighting the need for flexible and scalable CRM and content management systems. With a series of siloed project-based databases on their members, this led to a lack of confidence in the quality and consistency of the data held. Reporting on member activity was not a simple process and involved very manual intervention, combined with limited rules on the types of content collected, using this in a coherent way was a challenging process and inhibiting their use.
‘The rapid business growth has driven the need for a single view of our members.’
Andrew Berry – Project Director, The Institute of Export & International Trade.
The content management system (website) was not flexible enough for their needs and as they have grown it doesn’t have the capabilities needed to allow members self-service on many actions, something that their members are demanding more and more. Much of the management was not able to be done by the IOE&IT, adding another level of complexity and therefore aging content.
As the organisation has rapidly expanded the need for structured processes and scalable systems drove IOE&IT to look for help to start this project. They didn’t have the specialist skills, relationships, or the time to dedicate to this project, and therefore looked to the market to support them. Chrysalis Digital started to work with them to support running a process to understand their business needs, goals, and objectives before looking for the right suppliers.
‘This is a key investment for the organisation, requiring knowledge and specialist skills that IOE&IT just didn’t have in place at the time.’
Andrew Berry
As the IOE&IT are on a rapid growth trajectory, their business needs are evolving daily, it was vital to get flexible and scalable systems in place to match the pace of expansion internally and the desire to offer greater value to their growing membership. All teams, across the business, have been involved in the process from the very beginning so that they are embracing the change and are maximising the opportunities for automation that this is offering them.
This is one of the top strategic initiatives for IOE&IT and will underpin all the goals they have set out, therefore making the supplier selection and subsequent project roll out of vital importance to them, now and into the future.
‘The supplier choice became a little more subjective than objective but by mapping our business requirements ensured that we felt comfortable with this decision. Our one learning from this process, as a business in fast growth, is not to rely on a big bang launch and to consider some modularity into the launch process. Thanks to Ben, from Chrysalis Digital, he has helped guide the process from the start, we needed someone at the rudder to steer the project and pull in the right suppliers, it’s been hugely beneficial.’
Andrew Berry
IOE&IT are working towards their final launch later this year but are already seeing the benefits of making these changes now.
Chrysalis Digital provides a digital transformation service designed to help build a more agile, efficient and innovative organisation. With its broad cross-sector experience Chrysalis has helped many organisations map their digital path and through careful planning and assessment, choose the right technology partners. Chrysalis Digital is 100% agnostic when recommending CMS and CRM suppliers to its clients.
If you need any help with the next steps in your journey or just want some unbiased advice please call Ben Sturt on 07469 768990 or email info@chrysalisdigital.co.uk.