Technology procurement services for a leading Canadian NPO

Client /

Canadian Hearing Society

Service /

Technology procurement consulting

Industry /

Non-Profit Organizations

Founded in 1940, the Canadian Hearing Society (CHS) is a non-profit organization and the leading provider of services, products, and information that remove barriers to communication, advance hearing health, and promote equity for people who are culturally deaf, oral deaf, deafened and hard of hearing.

Business Challenge

CHS required a CRM that would allow it to better manage a range of disconnected – and often manual – processes., involving contacts, scheduling, purchasing, fundraising, and enquiry. The CRM had to support integration with other systems (both current and future) to maximize data sharing and reporting.

With this implementation, CHS needed to achieve:

Improved service for customers and patients through efficiency and better insight into users’ needs
Re-engineered business processes in several areas and better inter-departmental visibility
Increased overall effectiveness and the ability to expand its service offerings

In addition to the identified technical and business challenges, CHS identified the need to bring in experts to assist with both technical requirements gathering as well as procurement guidance, as time to market was critical.

significant time savings

6-figure cost savings

confidence in decisions

Transformative Vision

In identifying potential solutions, the CHS management team identified challenges around time to market, internal resource and skill availability, along with a lack of industry product knowledge. Demonstrating a level of organizational maturity, CHS issued an RFP to solicit proposals from vendors who could assist in technical requirements gathering around their CRM project, guide in the procurement of a new platform, and identify a highly skilled system integrator.

After a successful bid, CHS selected Enginess as the team to oversee the procurement phase of the CRM project.

Enginess interviewed staff across 6 departments and 10 programs to understand and map the most critical processes, as well as evaluate the various systems and databases to determine a strategic roadmap and budget. From there, we presented findings to the executive team and produced a thorough RFP.

Enginess assisted in identifying capable vendors and facilitated the RFP review process, including the following:

Created the strategy for a phased approach and recommended which legacy systems should be integrated into or replaced
Made technical recommendations for the CRM platform selection
Assisted the organization in developing initial and projected budgets and operational expenses
Authored the RFP

Business Impact Summary CHS benefited tremendously from the initial procurement phase. As result, the organization was able to identify the platform of choice: Microsoft CRM Dynamics. Our engagement reduced the time it took to properly gather both functional and nonfunctional project requirements and to structure a detailed RFP for system integrator vendor selection.

The feedback received from vendors and Microsoft Canada is that this is one of the most detailed and impressive CRM RFPs they've seen.

The process ultimately saved CHS time and money, but, more importantly, reduced risks around the selection of the platform and the chosen system integrator. Through the process, CHS was able to gain insight into the long-term total cost of ownership around the chosen platform, along with cost certainty.

This initiative saved CHS hundreds of thousands of dollars, while also giving the management team and board a true sense of confidence in the decisions made around technology procurement as CHS embarks on this new and exciting transformation.