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This year 15,600 women and 145 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer.

Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) is constantly and consistently in pursuit of ways to support the growing number of people diagnosed each year. We found one way in the upgrade of our own technology platform - here’s the mechanics of how introducing a cloud Customer Relationship Management (CRM) took us one step closer to making a positive impact on the lives of Australians affected by breast cancer.

For more than 15 years, BCNA has been helping Australians affected by breast cancer access the very best support, information, treatment and care. We now support a national network of 100,000 members and 300 member groups.

Salesforce, or ‘Pinkforce’ as it’s known amongst staff, was first introduced seven years ago. It has supported BCNA’s transformation from traditional physical distribution of information to a more empowering digital ‘self-service’ model.

Last year, BCNA redeveloped its website to improve operational efficiency and data quality and it did this in Salesforce’s development tool Visualforce. Visualforce is a framework that allows developers to build sophisticated, custom user interfaces that can be hosted natively on the Salesforce1 platform. Our website now includes more than 13 Visualforce forms supporting a wide range of online transactions including a ‘one-stop-shop’ for health professionals ordering information kits and resources. It’s astonishing how quickly a strategic approach to remodeling the back office can yield value.

Breast care nurses and GPs now order all print resources in one place - it’s as simple as that. BCNA’s Salesforce system checks the transaction history for previous orders and blocks duplicate orders, effectively managing valuable inventory.

The information forum online registration process is another good example of new efficiency. Previously a manual process, a new forum event is registered in Salesforce and automatically released to the website. This means that individuals just need to register to attend a forum via the website for those registrations to be automatically recorded and numbers tracked. When fully subscribed, the forum can be pulled down from the website via a simple status change in Salesforce. And, it’s all happening in real time.

"We estimated that automating a seemingly simple registration process like this has cut down our staff efforts by approximately 2-3 hours per event. I don’t need to tell you what 2-3 hours can mean to a non profit organisation!"

Before the redevelopment, profile data for 13,500 online network members was stored in the Content Management System (CMS) database rather than Salesforce. However, the efficiencies we were looking for only existed with ‘one source of truth’ for all of member data. Salesforce partner PRM Cloud and digital agency Deepend made it all happen for us, collaborating on a Web Service API to pass all data captured via the website through to Salesforce.

Other data quality measures were more simple, like adding an address validation tool (Sensis Totalcheck) to all Visualforce forms. Along with validating the correct address, the tool allocates a DPID code required by Australia Post. This means we can access distribution cost savings of up to 10 cents per package and reduced staff efforts by approximately one hour per day.

BCNA runs a lean organisation, we are constantly looking for ways ‘Pinkforce’ can improve our operational efficiency, so that funds are directed to where they are needed most – supporting our members. Salesforce is how we have achieved exactly that with a cloud platform.

Keen to discover how the Salesforce1 Platform works and how it could enable your business? Check out the free demo below to discover the power of the Salesforce1 Platform.