October 17, 2017 | Andrew Lawlor

For the 9th time since since 2008, Aptaria will present a case study at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual conference in San Francisco.

This year, Senior Cloud Consultant Jenn Dwyer and I will discuss a recent project for Maryland Coalition of Families (MCF). We solved MCF’s data problems with an elegant and unusual Salesforce implementation that we’re excited to unveil at Dreamforce.

We’re honored that Lisa Firnberg, Director of Information Management at MCF, will join us as a co-presenter.

Maryland Coalition of Families is one of many nonprofits that Aptaria has worked with. The organization assists young people with mental health and substance use issues. MCF’s Family Peer Support Specialists help families cope on a day-to-day basis and connect them with resources.

To track information about families and their needs, MCF used a time-consuming system of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. More than 30 Family Peer Support Specialists regularly recorded data about services, interactions, and progress in multiple spreadsheets on separate computers.

The Excel system created high administrative overhead. Once Specialists submitted their spreadsheets, their supervisors had to compile the data in a laborious quarterly process.

Real-time reporting was impossible with the old system. Many of MCF’s grants apply only to specific tasks and categories. However, the spreadsheets made it challenging to break down how funds were allocated, even after hours of calculations.

Once MCF contacted Aptaria, our team built a new Salesforce system that captures more valuable data, saves time, and improves reporting.

In our presentation, Jenn, Lisa, and I will:

• Offer advice for organizations struggling with spreadsheets and low-tech data management tactics. We’ll explain how to transition to a more efficient system.
• Recount how Aptaria identified MCF’s key processes for tracking information, then replicated those processes with a custom Salesforce system.
• Show how Salesforce can enable nonprofits to provide life-changing services while collecting and organizing data about complex cases.
• Demonstrate the benefits of Salesforce Lightning, the new user interface that made MCF’s system easier to navigate.

We’ll give our talk on Tuesday, November 7 at 10:30 a.m. in the Creekside Theater of The Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. See more details on Salesforce’s official session listing. We hope to see you at Dreamforce!

Do the problems faced by Maryland Coalition of Families sound familiar? If you’re dealing with similar obstacles, contact us today. We can devise a custom Salesforce implementation that will help you achieve your mission or business goals more effectively.