Charity Case Study
Established in 1982, the Army Families Federation (AFF) is a charity that is the independent voice of Army personnel and their families and works hard to improve the quality of life for the Army family around the world.
They help with regards to any aspect that is affected by the Army lifestyle, whether it’s housing, money, employment, wellbeing, health or more. The charity is independent of the Army and offers confidential advice for those who need it.
When visitors to the AFF website want to contact the team, they are able to email, telephone or submit enquiries online. For the latter, they would be directed to an external piece of software that would allow them to complete an online form, which would then be forwarded on to AFF.
The organisation was concerned that due to a lack of encryption, and with no data retention policy in place, this software wasn’t secure enough to protect data, which left both parties vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
The set-up also meant that the enquiries team would have to log in to the external platform, manually generate an enquiry form in their own database, and then deal with the enquiry, which proved to be a very time consuming manual process for the team at AFF.
As we are AFF’s existing Dynamics partner, our Customer Success Manager engaged with them to start discussions on how to approach a solution to combat their data security fears and streamline this critical process.
After discovery sessions with our team, it was decided that the best solution was to implement a D365 Power Portal which would allow customers of AFF to log enquiries through their website straight into their existing D365 solution. It was imperative that the new system was to be as similar as possible to the current solution so that visitors would remain familiar with the process of getting in contact.
Being hosted on Microsoft Dynamics 365, the solution is backed up by high levels of cyber security that would ease the concerns of AFF. We have also heavily invested in Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO 27001 accreditations to ensure that data security is maintained at all times. A data retention policy is now in place, and Army families who reach out to AFF can now do so in even more secure ways than before.
This solution has now been transitioned into our Managed Services team, meaning AFF can alter their digital solution along the way as they see fit.
“Adam sorted everything out for us in a calm manner, and he made the process completely stress-free.”
From an internal perspective, the enquiries team now has a complete view of online enquiries that come through the website, rather than having to log in to the external program and then manually enter the information into a database. The new solution allows the AFF team to quickly scan over the enquiries and ensure that they reach the appropriate team so that the issue can be resolved as quickly as possible.
On average, this has saved over five minutes per enquiry for the team, allowing them to handle more enquiries in a shorter space of time, and as a result, provide more help to those who need it and increasing their impact.
The implementation of the new system has also made creating enquiry reports a much more straightforward process, with all information available in the portal so that the writers can generate all of their information from one single location.
Along with other charities whom we support, AFF have taken another step on their digital transformation journey to avoid siloed and disparate systems, providing One Version of the Truth on the Microsoft Dynamics platform. Tackling common issues such as limited resources and capacity, investment in the Dynamics platform and partnering with TES allows charities to “do more with less”.
This solution is so much easier for us because all the information is right there, available for us to view, without us having to spend time tracking the information down elsewhere.”
Karin Jenkins
Office Manager, Army Families Federation
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