Chemists’ Community Fund - providing a flexible, end to end solution for benevolent funds
“Case Manager is really flexible and agile, we know it will evolve easily with our services. We are able to more effectively support the growing number of people who need our help, with less effort and more insight than our old system allowed us.”
Maggie Houghton, Support Manager, Chemists’ Community Fund
The Chemists’ Community Fund (CCF) is the Royal Society of Chemistry’s benevolent fund and provides a wide range of support to its members and their families.
They support people with hardship grants and access to counselling, debt and legal advice. Since the pandemic, they’ve seen requests for support increase by more than 20% per year, so they needed a proven Case Management system to support their work.
IIZUKA’s Case Manager was recommended by a member of staff who had used the system in a previous role. After a demo, it was clear that Case Manager offered what the CCF needed from a digital system.
Requirements
The service had grown to the extent that the existing systems and processes were not effective in managing the workload. The team at the CCF were keen that the solution improved data security, integrated with other systems, provided a better experience for the customer and fit around their existing processes, particularly as the project was to be delivered in a time of transition.
The CCF required a flexible system that was able to grow with them and adapt easily to any future developments. They were also aware that there were inefficiencies in their existing processes, which they hoped implementing Case Manager would highlight, allowing them to pinpoint and effect necessary changes.
Integration with other systems
This was a key issue for the CCF - they needed a system that would integrate with other key processes via an open API.
Referral: Most people looking for support from the CCF complete a form on their website to begin their journey. Case Manager has saved the CCF significant admin time at the start of the process by ensuring that the data from the forms is transposed directly into Case Manager to create a new case. The system is also being configured to talk to their Membership Database, allowing them to handle data more safely and efficiently and ensuring that they comply with GDPR and other data protection standards.
Payments: The CCF offers financial support, with payments made directly to bank accounts. They were keen that their case management solution could work across the entire process, from referral through the support process to approval and finally to payment. IIZUKA configured Case Manager to provide the accurate data required to make the payments process more secure and efficient. The CCF were reassured by Case Manager’s security credentials, knowing that clients’ data would be safe and protected all the way through their journey.
Management information
One huge benefit of implementing Case Manager was the ability to see and report data quickly and easily. The team can now prepare key reports in a few minutes - the same reports would have taken a couple of hours before. Maggie Houghton, CCF’s Support Manager commented:
‘We’ve gone from manually stored and unstructured data, to being able to report on every metric we need to. We will be able to see key trends much more easily, which will help us to assess and develop our services. We can also pass aggregated and anonymised information to other areas of the organisation, such as the marketing team, to really understand where our clients are coming from and which channels are most effective in reaching them.’
‘As the support manager, I’m also able to see where we’re performing well and where things can be improved and we’re making a number of improvements thanks to information that Case Manager has made clear.’
Implementation and support
IIZUKA’s business analysts worked with the CCF to analyse their processes and ensure that Case Manager was configured to suit the way they wanted to work. The teams collaborated via workshops and online project management tools. This meant that the CCF retained visibility of the project at all times, which they really valued.
Maggie Houghton, Support Manager for the Chemists’ Community Fund said:
“‘Working with IIZUKA has been a great experience. We feel very well looked after. Customer service is very, very good; the helpdesk is brilliant, generally any queries are responded to the same day. One key benefit for us has been the collaborative approach to analysing our processes to make sure that the system does everything we need it to. Even when new, previously unforeseen requirements arose, IIZUKA turned things around really quickly. Case Manager is really flexible and agile, we know it will evolve easily with our services. We are able to more effectively support the growing number of people who need our help, with less effort and more insight than our old system allowed us.”
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