Legion Scotland is the largest ex-service membership charity in Scotland. They provide comradeship, support and a voice for veterans. The charitable organisation has over 139 branches and 60 associated Clubs across Scotland. With a membership of more than 26,000 of all ages, serving personnel, veterans and non-ex-service. Each branch is run by a volunteer committee dedicated to providing service and support to the Armed Forces Community. Legion Scotland aims to make a difference every day in the lives of Scotland’s veterans by providing community, friendship and practical advice, whether they left military service yesterday or 50-plus years ago.
Problem
Legion Scotland was dealing with two issues:
1-Accurate data collection and amalgamation of member information
The organisation had a massive dataset regarding the details of its members. This included their names, addresses, date of birth and fees. However, this data had been collected at the branch level, and the amalgamation of data at the central server needed to include the required information.
The organisation had increased membership, which was indicated by an increase in the signup at the individual branch level, but when it came to tracking down the members, there was no way to do that. Tallying back information from every single branch slowed the operations at the head office. Menial tasks were tedious without any system in place, and this led to overall business inefficiency.
2- Managing the financial aspects of the business
The organisation had been using excel spreadsheets to get information on different events and their respective budgets. This was, again time consuming and prone to errors. And would often lead to duplication of data and would create extra headings.
The problems of the organisation were:
- The amalgamation of member’s information at the central level was difficult
- Couldn’t track back the actual person with the membership ID
- Distorted internal communication
- Duplication of data
- Increased errors
- No system in place
- Time-consuming
- Increased inefficiency
Solution
Legion Scotland wanted a system to assist them in managing and keeping track of the information for its 26,000 members, so they could better serve them. Additionally, the charity needed a system that would aid with recording cases for veteran support, as well as something that, in the future, would support the events programme and the requirements for the finances.
Alastair Duff, the Database Administrator at Legion Scotland, mentioned further details on their requirements, “We required a customer relationship management system that was both affordable and capable of enhancing our central services as well as the speed with which our Head Office operated. In addition, because of the one-of-a-kind nature of our business operations, we required a solution that was not “out of the box” but rather entirely customised to our needs. In addition, we needed something that would improve our internal communication, help us overcome the problem of duplication of financial data and can improve efficiency of the overall business operations.”
Alastair mentioned that Legion Scotland looked at NetSuite, Harlequin, Microsoft Dynamics and Access Group during the selection. The main influences factored into the decision were the cost, implementation speed and the new solution’s customisability.
He elaborates on selecting NetSuite, “We implemented NetSuite as it was competitively priced for a charity and its flexible system was customisable to suit our needs. We had been considering Access Group first, but the price offered to us by Cofficient suited us better. Cofficient has worked with other membership and charitable organisations which really put our mind at ease.”
The organisation also went on further, using NetSuite Finance in November 2020, which has helped them streamline their business finances and has made access to invoices and budgetary information easier.
The organisation needed a solution that could:
- capture critical information about the members who need support
- streamline the operations that could support cases to provide a better and more cohesive experience
- provide a seamless flow of information between departments to prevent duplication of effort
Results
Legion Scotland has identified that using Coefficient’s Solution CRM and Finance has facilitated their organisation in various ways.
The results were as follows:
- Efficiency and Effectiveness have increased
- Have access to accurate information about members
- The information flow within departments has improved and become smoother
- No duplication of data and a reduced number of errors
- Able to respond better to cases as information is in a single place
Alastair commented, “Since we now have a database of our members that is more accurate, we are in a better position to respond to questions and concerns in a timely and effective manner. As a result of having so much data in one place, we’ve noticed a considerable reduction in processing times for cases and an increase in the efficiency with which we’ve responded to direct inquiries. Cofficient has been very supportive in walking us through the whole process from beginning to end and supporting the challenges and changes we have required once the system went live at the beginning of the year.”
The statistics exhibited that Legion Scotland was able to save more than £25,000 per year by selecting Cofficient as Access Group, the previous company they were working with, quoted £50,000 and Cofficient cost £22,000.
“The team at Cofficient were very easy to work with, they had great ideas about streamlining our business process. We were very apprehensive on changing our system but the team’s ability to think forward and provide customisable solutions transformed our perception. The solutions offered by Cofficient have promised us great results and we would highly recommend it to others”, said Alastair Duff.