The Client

rightsnet is the operating name of Lasa Charity UK Limited. Every year, their social welfare law and tech services help thousands of not for profit organisations, people across the public sector, and local and national governments throughout the UK, to do more good. Established in 1984, they're dedicated to using technology to support the delivery of social welfare law advice and information to disadvantaged communities across the UK, and they've been providing online advice support since 1998, through their website https://www.rightsnet.org.uk.

The Challenge

Their ground-breaking online service has been upgraded extensively over time, offering a clean, modern interface for subscribers. However, the in house Client Relationship Management (CRM) to manage the subscribing clients was showing its age, and although a new accounting service had been established with Xero, its connection to the CRM was limited. This meant that annual subscription renewals were essentially a manual process. Over time, three versions of client data had grown up, needing much manual work any time a single view of the business was required. 

The Solution

The client had a clear vision of a system that had a new CRM at its heart, running renewals automatically for the bulk of clients and synchronising each client's invoice and subscription status across Xero, a new CRM and the existing website. 

Supl's solution introduced Zoho CRM. Zoho's CRM offers full reporting, automatic workflow and in-built invoicing. Its ability to talk to other systems is well-established, especially with Xero. Thus Xero and the website could be left to do their core tasks of being the golden copy of the financial records and an engaging website respectively, with the CRM drawing all the threads together and keeping them in sync. An invoice raised automatically from the CRM is pushed to Xero and to the client's page on the website, with a personalised email announcing it. A payment booked in Xero is pushed to the CRM and to the website, showing a paid invoice to the client. An unpaid invoice is automatically chased from the CRM, with ability for staff to widen the conversation to others at the client account. Ultimately subscriptions can be suspended on non-payment in the CRM, updating and closing down the subscription in the website. In place of an old-fashioned card machine for credit card payments, a slick interface was built inside rightsnet using a stripe gateway, offering clients a pre-filled payment form.

Besides the specialist functions we built for rightsnet's thriving subscription business, Zoho CRM also offers the other benefits of a first-class CRM. Being cloud-based, it is accessible anywhere with an internet connection and the right credentials. It is available on smartphone and tablet, making mobile working easier when the team gets back on the road. All emails from the rightsnet team to and from clients with records in the CRM are automatically copied into that client's record, helping to maintain deep and multi-faceted relationships. It can handle all the other elements of rightsnet business, so giving the team a true single view of clients who might have multiple relationships with them. Its flexibility means that the CRM can now grow with rightsnet, adding deeper workflow and web analytics, surveys and marketing reach, and can adapt as rightsnet's business strategy evolves.

The Build

With three overlapping data sets, the first task was to normalise them into a single, coherent whole. This took time, as it required Supl and the rightsnet team to analyse each record individually. Concurrent to the normalisation, an interface was built into the backend of Xero and to the rightsnet website. This was handled by a team of Zoho specialists from Ascent (http://ascentbusiness.co.uk) and by Morgan Internet Design (https://mid.co.uk), designer of the rightsnet website. 

Supl managed the project, built the underlying structure of Zoho and designed the various processes needed to manage the business. Although the total elapsed time was longer than envisaged, each delivery was available to use in production as it was complete, allowing the staff to acclimatise themselves with each stage and able to provide feedback on the next stages. 

The Outcome

The rightsnet staff now have a single web-based view of their business: whether it is a report on bounced emails, a breakdown of their business by product, a deep dive into a client or an alert on unpaid invoices, there is a huge variety of views available. Given Supl's continued involvement with rightsnet as a consultant, there is plenty of scope to expand and configure new perspectives. 

The project was delivered on budget, with annual ongoing expense that is below that of their legacy setup.