F5 Works - Software and Web Development

ABOUT

Chiswell Associates Limited is a professional investment management practice which acts for pension funds, charities, financial institutions and families with substantial assets to invest. The existing Charities Database was constructed in 1998 and its main purpose was not only to record key information on all charities of interest to Chiswell, but also offer the facility to carry out various levels of analyses.

REQUIREMENTS

Although the existing database had proved to be very reliable and had played a major part in the enhancement and maintenance of the Chiswell name by allowing the company to contact the vast majority of charities investing over £1 million, a few shortcomings had become apparent. It was therefore decided that a redevelopment take place in the form of a fully interactive web based CRM intranet.

Prior to the redevelopment, the database contained over 6,000 entries of which some 3,500 made up the active addressee list.

SOLUTION

• Increased communications and investment information to over 10,000 records with multiple system users.
• Design the user interface as web pages and forms to be viewed through a web browser.
• An intranet eCRM methodology and system were adopted and developed.
• Improved speed of movement around the database.
• Advanced search facilities.
• Refined and designed various reporting modules to view data for charities, marketing information and application statistics.
• User security and access level control
• Allows for future expansion and exponential growth – capable of future integration with other in-house or external systems.
• Migration of existing data to New Charity Database.
• Installation of web and Database components onto the Chiswell In-house Server.
• The Charities Database is now being used by Chiswell Investments to successfully manage funds in access of £1bn. The entire application now has the facility to produce various reports and includes all existing reports in a clear, concise and more informative format.
• Future plans for the reporting module are to integrate the application with Crystal reports and allow management to create personalised reports. The directors believe that their IT and eCRM functions play a critical role in their business model.