Member Article

Coeliac UK improves membership services with fully integrated CRM system from Workbooks.com

Coeliac UK, the oldest and largest coeliac disease charity in the world, has replaced its Membership Management system with Workbooks CRM to better meet the needs of its 60,000 Members.

The Workbooks CRM solution enables the Charity to effectively manage all its data about existing and new Members together with its database of over 10,000 gluten-free products from manufacturers across the world. Workbooks also enables the Charity to better manage its unique directory of eating establishments across the UK and beyond that serve gluten-free dishes.

The implementation of Workbooks CRM is part of the Charity’s larger ICT initiative. This includes a complete overhaul of the Coeliac UK website to improve the online experience of its Members, upgrades to Outlook 2013 which can be built into Workbooks and the introduction of VoIP, with ‘quick to call’ that is also enabled within Workbooks.

Brendan Harris, IT Director at Coeliac UK, explains, “Knowing and understanding the profile of our rapidly growing Membership is really important to ensure we can continue to evolve the information, products and services we provide. With raised awareness of coeliac disease resulting in better diagnosis and a growing number of people making a lifestyle choice to adopt a gluten-free diet, we needed to completely overhaul our IT systems to better meet the diverse requirements of all our Members.”

Harris continues, “Working closely alongside our website agency NetXtra, Workbooks is fully integrated into the website enabling Members to sign up and pay online, purchase merchandise, submit recipes and access details of gluten-free foods together with venues selling suitable foods. This would have been impossible with our previous Membership Management system. Having surveyed the market, Workbooks CRM was the only system that had the depth of functionality required to manage our complex environment.”

Harris continues, “Members are gaining huge benefits from the range of online services now available – from tracking donations to checking Membership fees and viewing previous transactions from the Charity’s shop. By implementing Workbooks, we have now made it far easier for Members to browse and search through the venue guide and with the launch of our mobile App coming soon, Members are now able to quickly use location based services to find the closest venue offering gluten-free food.”

In total, the records of over 250,000 individuals, 25,000 organisations, 10,000 products and over 240,000 transactions have been migrated across to Workbooks. Critically, while the old system required the Charity to employ dedicated SQL administrators to undertake even minor field changes, using Workbooks, the whole system is far easier to manage, providing an immediate cost reduction. In addition, the Software as a Service (SaaS) model has also enabled the Charity to reduce its internal IT estate.

Harris concludes, “It was critical for us to have a system which we could configure and maintain ourselves on an ongoing basis, at the right price and with the right implementation support. Working with Workbooks, we are confident that we can improve our Membership experience, boost fundraising and drive more focused sponsorship and advertising activity to reach our ROI target. With the depth of Member information now captured, Coeliac UK will be able to continually enhance the services it offers and improve the overall quality of Member experience.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Workbooks .