Coeliac UK: Finding a fully customized CRM solution

• To combine different aspects of the organization on a single platform to manage relationships with members, customers and suppliers 
• To link the website and a CRM to better manage customers 
• Track fundraising activities against donations 
• Track donations, if they qualify for Gift Aid, and submit accurate tax returns 
• Create one clear database of key contacts for effective campaign management 
• Find a way to easily manage and send event invitations and marketing comms 
• To allow online and mobile access to its database of 10,000+ gluten-free certified products from manufacturers across the world 

The CRM system the team were using lacked the flexibility required to store information on its rapidly evolving membership. Brendan Harris, Director of ICT at Coeliac UK explains:  

“We could not reconfigure the fields within the membership system which, as a result, had not been changed in over seven years. This was stifling the growth of the organisation and was constraining our ability to introduce new services.”  

As part of their ICT overhaul, Harris and his team reviewed 26 CRM systems, and after inviting ten to tender for the project, they selected Workbooks based on this criteria: 

“Firstly, we needed a system that we could customize and develop ourselves to suit our specific needs. Not all solutions were as easy to use as Workbooks. We ran tests across different departments, and it became clear that Workbooks was the one that our people preferred.” 

Harris recognized that good user adoption is key to success, and was keen to reduce the cost of ownership by becoming self-sufficient.  

Secondly, “our solution needed to be flexible and rich in features. We needed to be able to report, filter and so on in different ways. We wanted to be able to use the same tool for both reporting and analyzing the data to gain insight.”  

Coeliac UK liked the fact that Workbooks is headquartered in the UK, so its data would sit in the UK. And, finally, the price was right. 

Harris concludes: “Introducing Workbooks and evolving the solution over the past four years has allowed Coeliac UK to completely overhaul and improve the vast majority of its day-to-day processes and offer a significantly better experience to its members.

Inspired by this experience, the charity is energized about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead and expects Workbooks to remain central to its operation as it moves towards that future.” 

Helping the volunteering team manage their website and events 

More than 500 active volunteers run 76 local groups across the country. They organize local activities and support their local community; they also support the charity’s work around campaigning to lobby for awareness and understanding of gluten-free choices. Local groups each have their own microsite, managed through Workbooks, where they have local pages offering information on local activities and events. 

Tracking fundraising activities and effectively managing finances 

“We use Workbooks to log donors and potential donors. We know which fundraising activities led to which donations, whether it is a challenge event or any of the many other activities organized by our local groups to raise funds and boost our profile. This allows us to focus future efforts on the methods we know will be most successful. Workbooks also helps us track how donations were made and whether or not they qualify for Gift Aid, so we can accurately submit returns to HMRC.” 

Enabling the campaign team to maintain a database of contacts 

The team uses Workbooks to maintain a database of politicians, NHS Trusts, government departments, professional standard authorities, and so on that it actively lobbies, and tracks all its interactions on Workbooks. Workbooks is being used to track the lobbying of Clinical Commissioning Groups consulting on the future of gluten-free prescribing and other policies. Another campaign allows researchers to submit their funding applications online, and the documents are stored in Workbooks where a review process helps the organization to decide how to allocate funds. 

Tracking memberships with a link from the website to Workbooks 

With 65,000 members, this is a major focus for the organization. Members can sign up online, pay for membership and renew; they can view previous purchases and donations, and access relevant information based on their membership type. 

 “Workbooks’ controlled permissions are used to determine the information and services provided to each member on the website. We’re sending specific information and metrics about what the person does on the website into Workbooks so that we can get smarter about the differences between the demographics of our membership. For example, the charity tracks and records how many times a document has been downloaded and which part of the website a member visits.” 

Transforming marketing communications 

With improved campaign management through Workbooks, the team can now effectively manage marketing communications. 

“Every week we send communications to one group or another. We send a newsletter to all our members every month, then there are bulk renewals, invitations to events, product recalls and much more.  It’s a complex and large-scale set-up, which would not work without Workbooks’ campaign management functionality underpinning it all.” 

 Having complete confidence in data accuracy 

“Workbooks has made us far more efficient in what we do. It ensures we keep our data super clean – a single point of truth that we know is absolutely accurate – and this allows us to get through a considerable amount of work with a fairly small team and to deliver an outstanding, self-service experience for our members. Workbooks allows Coeliac UK to punch far above its weight.” 

A CRM solution the team can rely on 

“Workbooks is the first system switched on every morning and the last one switched off each night.  It is used all the time by Coeliac UK’s staff, irrespective of role.”