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hello@creative-computing.co.uk
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Stronger Support: Empowering Samaritans with Smarter Solutions
Samaritans provides emotional support to those in distress, with thousands of volunteers answering 10,000 calls daily. However, challenges with their previous software provider and limited understanding of Microsoft Dynamics 365 led to inefficiencies and slow project turnarounds, hindering their ability to deliver this vital service effectively.
Charity
Overview
Stronger Support: Empowering Samaritans with Smarter Solutions
About Samaritans
Samaritans is a registered charity providing emotional support to anyone experiencing emotional distress, who might be struggling to cope, or who are at risk of suicide.
Every day, their volunteers respond to around 10,000 calls for help. During 2020, more than 20,000 people volunteered their time for Samaritans:
- Over 16,200 trained listening volunteers responded to calls for help.
- Over 3,200 volunteers supported the running of their 201 branches.
- Over 1,000 prisoners volunteered as trained Listeners.
Their incredible volunteers run 201 branches throughout the UK and Republic of Ireland. They selflessly offer their time to help deliver a 24-hour emotional support service to people in many ways, from answering telephones and emails, to fundraising, generating publicity, administration and finance.
The infrastructure required to deliver this vital service is huge, and it’s vital that their software and processes provide a strong backbone from which to deliver this life-saving service.
The Challenge
Samaritans’ perception of the challenges faced at the time of contacting Creative stemmed from difficulties with a previous software provider.
The Samaritans project team further felt that they weren’t equipped to fully understand their core software, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. They were far from using it to its full potential, especially as there were so many areas of the system to set up before they could go-live.
All of this resulted in inefficient processes, slow turnarounds for important projects, and a feeling that their needs were neither met nor fully understood by their current software provider.
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The Solution
In the case of Samaritans, and their approach with Creative, they operated with an ‘out-of-the-box’ approach first and bespoke customisation second – something that wasn’t reflected with their previous provider. So, we flexed our approach to be in line with what was important to Samaritans, their goals, and what they wanted from our partnership.
When Samaritans first engaged Creative in January of 2021 they had set an ambitious go-live date of 1st April 2021. We discussed early on in the project whether this was achievable or whether pushing this date back slightly might result in a more successful outcome.
Together, Creative and Samaritans identified that the best course of action was to:
- Push back the go-live of the main project phase to 1st July 2021.
- Focus on the core software and standardisation where possible.
- Address core processes where necessary to ensure the best use of the system.
- Provide comprehensive training for the core software to extract as much value as possible.
- Bring forward the implementation of Continia Document Capture.
- Customise around the pain points further down the line if need be.
The Outcome
Strong project closure is essential to the success of any project. After a two week parallel run with the previous system to make sure everything was working as planned, the old system was fully phased out and Samaritans was able to use the new one exclusively.
By starting fresh and committing to a fully out of the box approach, we avoided transferring broken processes to the new system. Samaritans are now not only using a sensible and efficient way of working, but are future-proofing their software.
We’re delighted to have done all of this within the specified budget. This is so important to Charities – imperative, in fact – especially when the trustees are committing funds for this type of extensive project.
“From the very beginning, Creative was a partner rather than a software provider. It was about collaborating to improve the end result. The focus was on addressing our concerns, learning about our processes and ultimately doing what was right for us as an organisation.”
Kevin Edwards
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