It goes without saying but becoming more digitally focused cannot be overlooked by charities and not-for-profits. This is because money can be saved, resources planned, security improved and remote working through Cloud-based tech such as Dynamics 365 can help to guide charities towards becoming more digitally orientated. This is why in our latest blog article; we provide you with 6 of the best reasons why charities should focus on becoming more digitally focused with Microsoft technology.
Improve the way your team collaborates across your business
The use of online collaboration tools helps to provide more opportunities for remote working where teams can work without being there in person. Better still, these tools aren’t limited to being used internally. Through this technology, you are also able to set up external meetings or events that can be organised and delivered online with no extra time or cost involved. As well as this, the use of cloud-based tech can help your internal teams to stay connected and have access to key data and services on the go.
Deliver better marketing and communications
It is not surprising to learn that charities need money to be able to deliver their mission. The use of digital marketing platforms can be enabled to bring about a positive return on investment via highly targeted and content rich marketing campaigns with personalised emails, notifications and much, much more. As well as this, the capability to be able to have a birds eye view over donations following a campaign can help guide marketers on what works best and what could be improved going forwards.
Better security, compliance and accessibility
With the environment in which we operate changing on a regular basis, it is of the utmost importance that data stored by organisations is fully secured. Now is not the time to continue to be working off Excel spreadsheets as you run the risk of your data being lost or stolen. This is where a cloud hosting platform such as Microsoft Azure can help keep your security on track and reduce the ever-present risk of cyberattacks.
As well as this, most of these platforms provide detailed security models with role-based access, keeping data locked away on a need-to-know basis in addition to allowing auditing of information updates as well as ensuring the accuracy of your data.
The best modern platforms should have game-changing features and content that help to improve the productivity of all users.
Bring automation in for manual processes and innovate
Automating business processes can positively impact on your charity or not-for-profit. Having some form of automation software in place will reduce the need for manual data input and repetitive admin tasks, freeing up your employees to add value in other ways. In addition to this, automation allows your organisation to respond quickly even if it falls outside of your working hours. Taking this one step further, automation can help you to prioritise work and tasks and move them to the most appropriate person which will help you to improve the overall efficiency of your workforce.
If you choose to bring AI into your charity, you can even have chatbots giving answers and support to frequently asked questions or issues via the website, meaning that a member of your team doesn’t need to speak to them and can be used for other tasks instead.
Improve efficiency and provide better insights
By having a central system in place will help charities to gather the right info at the right time and furthermore gain a comprehensive understanding of donors, volunteers and benefit recipients. Rather than wasting time trawling through multiple systems, spreadsheets or emails, users can dedicate more time to tasks that can help the charity/not for profit to deliver on its mission.
It can often be the case that charities/not-for-profits are concerned about becoming more digitally focused because it takes away the personal touch, however having all your data in one place with better views over your activities, engagements and donations will help to build and maintain better relationships. Thus, enabling your charity/not-for-profit to prove the best personalised experience.
Reviewing & plotting mission impact
As many of us already know, particularly in the not-for-profit sector being able to effectively review performance is vital to instilling confidence and maintaining continued support from your donors and funders. Being able to see what success looks like and monitoring performance is vital.
Gathering data within a single online platform helps to reduce the reporting process and provides extra tools such as charts and graphs showcasing a visual of how your organisation is performing.
This will help your charity/not-for-profit to have more accurate reports and to gain better insights into how to ramp up the overall mission impact.
Next Steps?
If you are a charity/not-for-profit that is looking to become more digitally focused through the use of Dynamics 365 / CRM as well as the Microsoft Power Platform and are keen to get started quickly through one of our Quick Start CRM packages or a tailored Microsoft Dynamics solution for charities/not-for-profits that will seamlessly integrate with Azure then talk to our team of experts now to learn more.
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