Age Concern Canterbury now see the big picture
Getting all the clients and teams onto one platform has meant Age Concern Canterbury can now see a client’s whole association with them. “We can access valuable information at any time, spot trends, and target people’s needs much better.”
infoodle has been working with Age Concern Canterbury for some time and it is great to be able to talk with Trina about their experience
infoodle: Firstly Trina, tell us a little about your organisation and what you do.
Age Concern Canterbury: We are a charity that works to achieve wellbeing, rights, respect and dignity for older people. We have a number of teams including Elder Abuse Response Service, Visiting Service (matching volunteer visitors with socially isolated clients) Social Outings (coordinating outings for morning or afternoon tea, which is a door-to-door service), Home Support (matching vetted Service Providers to clients needs – gardening, cleaning, tradespeople etc), Staying Safe Driver Refresher Courses, Falls Prevention and a quarterly magazine – Keeping On
infoodle: What made you look for a new CRM or donor management system? Why was your old system not working for you anymore?
Age Concern Canterbury: We were using a very old out of date system that was difficult to maintain and keep up to date, we couldn’t pull meaningful information out of it and there was no support available as the system designer had retired and was no longer supporting the system.
infoodle: What made you choose infoodle over other systems?
Age Concern Canterbury: I looked at many options, what stood out for me with infoodle was how customisable it was to suit our varied needs, the online training courses, the availability of personal support, being New Zealand based, and being able to add the different packages that we needed, with the ability to upgrade and add to this as and when was needed. And, it was essential that it integrated with Xero beautifully, which it does.
infoodle: How did the onboarding process go for you? Did you go with the big bang approach (all changing over in one go) Or did you roll it out slowly? Would you recommend this approach to others?
Age Concern Canterbury: Things are done a little differently now, we painstakingly dragged the data we needed from the old database (their issue, not infoodle’s) and modified what was needed to go into infoodle and sent it away to infoodle to upload. These days, this can be done yourself. We did roll it out slowly as it was a lot of changes for us and we wanted to customise each area, then teach the staff what was relevant to them. Because of our complex needs I would recommend this approach as each of our teams use infoodle slightly differently.
infoodle: What has been the main benefit from moving to infoodle? Is there one particular thing that stands out? Have you found a package that works really well for you?
Age Concern Canterbury: The main benefit was getting all the teams onto one platform so we can see a client’s whole association with us. It is straightforward to use, easy to customise and help is always an email or phone call away. What I have particularly loved is when we wanted to do something a bit different in infoodle, the support team was always there to help and make it happen. They value feedback and take on suggestions to make things even better. We have CRM and Finance for our membership, donor database and Home Support Services, and Events for our Social Connections teams.
infoodle: How has infoodle improved your administration and removed your pain points?
Age Concern Canterbury: infoodle’s reporting means we can access valuable information and trends, meaning we can target people’s needs better, keep on top of our database, and contact people with information specific to them. I love that whatever we enter into infoodle can be pulled into a report which helps us understand our clients needs better.
infoodle: They say that “Time is Money” but often organisations like yourselves work with volunteers. Has moving to infoodle saved you or your volunteers time? Are you able to focus on other areas that you were not able to get to before?
Age Concern Canterbury: Not all of our volunteer teams are using infoodle actively yet, But, we can now easily contact all, or certain volunteer teams to let them know about events etc. Previously there were a lot of unnecessary spreadsheets and double-ups of information. We use the reporting function to find volunteer matches, matching clients needs with volunteers skills, which is now almost instant. So yes we have saved a lot of time.
infoodle: Do you have any advise or words of wisdom to give to other people thinking of moving over to infoodle?
Age Concern Canterbury: We have found infoodle brilliant, I love that we support a New Zealand company, it is user-friendly, cost-effective, customisable, easy to access help when needed and integrates beautifully with Xero.
infoodle: Thanks Trina, we love having you part of our infoodle family and look forward to working together for many more years to come.
