Tides Center Builds Vendor Management Application on Force.com to Power Social Change

“I couldn’t imagine putting the entirety of Tides Center business processes on any other platform."


Challenge
  • Tides Center—a component of Tides, a national nonprofit that offers an array of services to help philanthropists, foundations, activists, and organizations effect positive social change—required a comprehensive set of applications to manage vendors, streamline client relationship management, and drive efficiencies.
  • The process of managing vendor contacts was cumbersome and relied primarily on emails, faxes, and paperwork.
  • Clients’ financial information was stored on different systems. 
  • As a nonprofit, Tides Center cannot afford to allocate additional resources to procuring and maintaining software.

Solution
  • Tides Center chose salesforce.com’s Force.com platform for its application development capabilities, advanced workflow engine, and integration tools plus the ability for Tides Center to build out its database on-the-fly.
  • The organization was also impressed with the Salesforce.com Foundaton and salesforce.com’s mission to devote one percent of its time, equity, and product toward improving the lives of those in need.
  • With help from CaSa Customer Solutions, Tides Center rolled out Force.com platform seats to 65 internal users, with the growth potential to reach 600 additional client users.
  • Full integration of Tides Center’s accounting system with Force.com provides direct access to real-time financial information; timely, customizable reports can be generated without jumping from system to system. 
  • Force.com’s security and sharing functionality play a critical role in partitioning information.
  • Built-in workflow and approval mechanisms automate processes for managing contract approvals.
  • Day-to-day client information, including tracking grants, contracts, and various client requests are managed on Force.com.
  • Salesforce Ideas, an application for community sharing, allows staff and clients to submit ideas, vote on others, and receive feedback.

Results
  • Force.com improves back-office services to clients so they can focus on benefiting their communities, creating a “waterfall effect” for social good.
  • By centralizing all business processes, Tides Center increases visibility into communications, contracts, and governance checkpoints with projects—vastly improving support and service for these projects.
  • Consolidating all client management on Force.com provides greater visibility into the pipeline and streamlines the process to ensure consistency. 
  • By cutting out paperwork, Tides Center experienced a reduction in data entry errors.
  • Dramatically reduced development time with Force.com equals less reliance on IT resources. 
  • Force.com supports the nonprofit’s plan to unify other Tides components, creating one client services platform.
 
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