Center for Employment Opportunities Customizes Salesforce CRM to Help the Formerly Incarcerated Successfully Enter the Workforce

Challenge

• Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO)--a nonprofit group based in New York City providing the formerly incarcerated and other persons with criminal records with transitional jobs and helping them find long-term employment--needed more accurate reporting and analytics so it could better serve program participants.
• The organization required a total solution for case management, workflow, reporting, and oversight that was customizable and easy to implement.
• Employees needed faster access to data, more accurate reporting, and the ability to design and share reports across the organization.
• Thirteen years of CEO’s data was captured in a homegrown database; information had to be shared between the new system and the old.
• As a nonprofit organization helping approximately 2,500 persons with criminal records each year, CEO wanted a solution from a company that supports nonprofit business models.

Solution

• CEO selected Salesforce CRM for its out-of-the-box customization, short implementation timeframe, ability to integrate with legacy systems, and cost-effectiveness.
• With help from salesforce.com partner NPower, CEO implemented Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition for 70 users, including management, case workers, sales, and marketing.
• CEO’s phased rollout began with job development and recruitment followed by case management functionality for job retention and job coaching six months later.
• CEO automated the creation of records that track key performance indicators using Force.com code.
• S-controls enable CEO to develop custom user interfaces; the organization has also created more than 20 custom objects to manage varied program requirements and enhance case management.
• From AppExchange, CEO installed the Timeline S-Control Mashup, a Simile (MIT) Timeline built into a code S-Control, for an easy-to-use graphical representation of all the participants’ program interactions.
• Crystal Reports, also from the AppExchange marketplace, handles advanced reporting.
• CEO used Force.com code to enforce business logic with cross-object validation rules and streamline workflow by automating field updates and record creation.
• Using Force.com code, CEO is creating a job-matching interface to increase retention and building scheduling functionality into Salesforce CRM to help boost attendance.

Results

• A unified system results in streamlined inter-departmental workflow and more accurate data.
• The ability to follow the progress of individual program participants helps job developers, job coaches and retention specialists provide better support.
• A custom suite of dashboards provides quick access to data within Salesforce CRM; managers can easily create additional custom reports.
• Reports are easily accessible, providing faster response to placement and retention trends.