Heritage Experts: Pathway to CRM Adoption by Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway Society

In 2012 Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway Society decided to move from its legacy members database, which was stored on an old computer in the corner of an office, to a more modern Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. This was partly to protect the data already held, and partly to enable easier edits and analysis for the membership team. Here, Trustee Graeme Wrigglesworth explains their process for adopting the new solution.

Phase 1: Identifying our needs and establishing a solution

The initial project was to investigate different options for holding our data. An investigation was held into all of the possible providers at the time. We had certain key requirements:

• Must be expandable

• Must be able to hold not just members, but clubs and different membership levels

• Must be online

• Must be affordable

This initial phase took about 2 years from start to finish. One of the biggest issues was that the existing membership lists were not in a single format, so the data had to be manually keyed and/or checked.

Several workshops were held and a parade of the vendors arranged. Based on this the best vendor at the time was selected. We then had to investigate and resolve the other issues - hosting the server, and getting the best value we could find.

This resulted in the selection of the leading CRM vendor for charities at the time; several members of the project team had used this supplier in the past as well so were familiar with its interface and capabilities.

After Phase 1 was completed we started to utilise functionality we had not imagined. From sending reminders via email, through to being able to email people local to any railway our locomotives were visiting. This also meant that we were able to investigate bulk emailing options, saving time and becoming more efficient.