United Way of Metropolitan Dallas (UWMD), an education-, health- and community-focused nonprofit serving Northern Texas, has successfully completed a cloud transformation project withAccenture,Salesforce and certified Salesforce partnerConfigero. The project aims to drive efficiencies in UWMD’s business operations and to leverage data for donor engagement and retention. Specifically, UWMD has invested in cloud technology to get a complete view of its complex business processes, automate labor-intensive tasks and enable more internal collaboration.
“Ourpartnership with Accenture, Salesforce and Configero is a great example of how United Way is keeping pace with therapidly evolvingdigital ageto actively enhance and engageour internal team, donors and volunteer base,” said Jennifer Sampson, McDermott-Templeton Presidentand CEO of United Way of Metropolitan Dallas. “We can’t rely solely on the traditional donor base. Digital allows charities to efciently reach a new generation of donors. Our goal is to mobilize the North Texas community using digital tools to connect casual observers to United Way’s cause, and engage them as volunteers who ultimately become donors.”
Having data in a single platform will help UWMD analyze and segment data to personalize the right experience atthe right time for the right individual. This will help ensurethat the funds UWMD receives from companies and individuals have more reach and impactacross the community, impacting lives on a larger scale.
Internally, the project has also helped propel a stronger teaming culture for UWMD. Before this project, departments like Finance, Resource Development, Community Impact or Marketing operated independently. Each department used its own systems and technology for individual purposes. By using the Salesforce Platform and with Accenture’s management of the deliverables, there is now an effective cross-pollination within the organization. As a result, UWMD has become more unified and operates as a stronger team. With the baseline back office system in place, UWMD can now accelerate customer-facing capabilities across marketing channels.
This cloud transformation project lays the foundation for a long-term digital strategy to create deeper engagement and foster richer relationships with the organization’s donors and community in Dallas. The additional resources gained and more collaborative internal culture supported by better tools will now enable the UWMD to focus on more effective ways to reach new audiences.
In approximately one year, Accenture has transformed UWMD’s operations with early results, such as:
- Reduction in workload for critical operations, including the replacement of manual processes typically performed with paper forms/spreadsheets and automation of donor acknowledgement letters
- Improved view of donor and prospect data in a single platform in order to better analyze data for reaching a wider audience and convert prospects into volunteers and donors and using more mobile and social capabilities for deeper community engagement
- Tighter integration across its business units from automated workflows for processing donations
UWMD selected the Salesforce.org Nonprofit Success Pack, a suite of cloud-based tools specifically designed for charitable organizations, with Marketing Cloud-powered capabilities and the ability to create customized functionality for pledge processing and payouts. UWMD now can activate core capabilities, such as one source of truth for data, workflow automation and security and governance across key groups, such as Gift & Record Management, Customer Relationship Management, Marketing, Pledge Processing, and Accounting among others.
“Like many of Accenture’s global clients, United Way of Metropolitan Dallas is transforming the way it works to better serve our community,” said Jorge Corral, office managing director at Accenture Dallas. “I am proud that Accenture has been able to play a role in helping United Way fulfill its mission to change lives forever in North Texas.”
Accenture was tasked with enhancing donor and prospect relationship management, streamlining end-to-end processes by eliminating manual processes where possible, and storing one version of truth for donors, prospects, and other key data. The completion of this project means greater efficiencies and visibility for United Way to manage its core operations, which in turn increases the organization’s community impact.
“United Way of Dallas is undergoing an incredible digital transformation to better connect everything that matters on a single platform,” said Lori Freeman, Vice President, Nonprofit Industry Solutions and Strategy at Salesforce.org. “By using Salesforce technology and through our partnership, United Way of Dallas can engage with their community in a more meaningful way.”
“United Way has achieved incredible efficiency by moving to the Salesforce Platform, and the benefits will be reaped by both their team and the community they serve,” said Jody Hamlett, President and CEO at Configero. “This is just the beginning though, and the team is proactively looking for opportunities to add new functionality and features to their Salesforce environment. Embracing one platform and going ‘all in’ on Salesforce unlocks possibilities for innovation that we are really excited about pursuing with them.”
Accenture is a leader in helping organizations move to the cloud to take advantage of a new era of service delivery and flexibility, where applications, infrastructure and business processes are brought together and delivered as-a-Service. Accenture’s Cloud First agenda offers comprehensive, industry-focused cloud services including strategy, implementation, migration and managed services, and assets including the Accenture Cloud Platform that can drive broader transformational programs for clients. Accenture has worked on more than 20,000 cloud computing projects for clients, including three-quarters of the Fortune Global 100, and has more than 44,000 professionals trained in cloud computing. The company has been innovating in cloud technology for over a decade and holds more than 200 granted patents and pending applications across its global cloud portfolio.
