Pennsylvania Association for the Blind Eliminates Costs, Saves Time, and Streamlines Reporting with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM

CHALLENGES

An Outdated, Cumbersome Legacy Application

Pennsylvania Association for the Blind (PAB) is a private nonprofit organization that provides services for people who are blind or visually impaired. It also provides eye screening and education programs for preschoolers ages 3 through 6. Founded in 1910, PAB has 25 member agencies throughout the state and serves over 4,000 adults and screens/educates over 75,000 preschool children every year.

Tracking and reporting data about services provided and recipients of services across the state is a critical task for PAB. PAB must compile information from all of its member agencies so that it can report results to the state each year to support continued state funding. Then, it distributes the funds to individual agencies based on their services provided. Unfortunately, that process was becoming increasingly difficult. There was no technical support available for their outdated legacy solution. Also, it was nearly impossible to customize the system to meet PAB’s evolving needs.

“The solution was a customized system that did not allow us to transition from one year to the next seamlessly. For example, if we wanted to see what an agency did for a specific client in different fiscal years, we had to go into separate legacy databases. It was cumbersome and difficult to keep track of,”  explained PAB’s interim CEO, John McInerney.

According to McInerney, PAB’s system was locked down at the start of July (the new fiscal year) until the first week of September, as a programmer set up the new database for the current year.

“We and our member agencies had to hold onto data and then manually back fill it into the new program,” he explained. “Manually loading that two months plus worth of info in early September was time-consuming.”

McInerney also shared that if PAB needed any changes or new reports, the organization was wholly dependent on the software programmer who developed the proprietary database. Moreover, PAB’s in-house server, which housed its database for the legacy system, came with a monthly maintenance fee and was becoming obsolete.

“It wouldn’t have been long before we had to replace it and incur the costs for new hardware and a massive amount of programming,” shared McInerney.

SOLUTIONS

“XRM” Solution Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM with Contact Entity and Activity Management

“I’ve dealt with a lot of big software changes throughout my corporate career. Cargas’s process and their team’s knowledge and responsiveness are impressive. We’re very satisfied with the implementation and will continue to work with Cargas as we assess future capabilities.”

~ John McInerney, Interim CEO, Pennsylvania Association for the Blind

BENEFITS

Flexibility and Scalability; No Downtime

“Agencies may log into our account and manually input their data, or they can deploy their own Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM environment and easily export records directly to us,” McInerney said. “That makes it easier for us to collect information—such as the number of children screened, how many required further medical evaluation, etc.—from the 25 agencies that work with us.”

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, PAB now has continuity from one fiscal year to the next. The solution is always on, 24/7, and accessible from any device that’s connected to the internet.

“Now, we always have the information we need so that we can submit our requests for state funding promptly and with confidence,” said McInerney. “When we submit grant applications each year, the funding we request is based on agencies’ needs related to the services they commit to providing. Now, we can much more easily see if they have met those commitments at the end of the year.”

Also, the Dynamics 365 CRM solution is scalable, allowing PAB to add new agencies and users without the help (and cost) of a programmer.

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