Here’s how Child Matters uses FormAssembly to optimize data quality for event registrations, training enrollment, and reporting.

Child Matters, a New Zealand charitable trust dedicated to raising understanding and awareness of child abuse has been educating organizations, businesses, and communities on child protection for more than 20 years.

 

The challenges: an incomplete picture and time consuming processes

One of the key reasons for implementing FormAssembly and Salesforce was to be able to “answer questions about the type of people and organizations who had been trained and which training they had undertaken.” Before FormAssembly and Salesforce, Child Matters continually worked with inaccurate and incomplete data. It was difficult to capture the desired information without having overcomplicated forms. Many people enrolled in multiple courses over several years and it was time-consuming and process intensive to keep profile information up to date. To avoid these hurdles Child Matters had forms that collected less data, but the pared-down forms produced an incomplete picture of training enrollment.

“It was too hard to capture and then process the right information,” said Greg Devine, Consultant and Principal at Manukau Road Consulting, the primary consulting group working with Child Matters.

Consequently, the nonprofit was unable to attain the depth of information they desired to report to their stakeholders and support funding and grant applications. Stakeholder engagement and funds are critical to Child Matters operations, so the staff needed a solution that would allow them to easily collect a precise and complex amount of information — and cut the time they spent corralling messy data in Salesforce.

When the Child Matters staff consulted Greg, he recommended FormAssembly as the key. “I told them, ‘You need to get FormAssembly. It’s essential for you.’”

 

Use case: training program enrollment forms

Recent New Zealand legislation requires every organization involved in early childhood education to undertake training in child abuse awareness and prevention. Accordingly, Child Matters offers a growing number of child protection training courses.

FormAssembly has accelerated data accuracy and quality in course enrollment and funding, which has been a monumental boost for Child Matters operations.

Child Matters facilitates and hosts several types of training courses. Organizations and individuals can choose from 1 year diplomas, 5-day programs, 1-day or 2-day workshops, or morning/afternoon seminars. “Previously, they had different forms for each of these categories as well as versions for courses specific to individual organizations,” said Greg. “The staff had to recreate another form each time they ran an organization-specific course.”

To streamline form maintenance, Greg consolidated the four main forms into one robust form. The unified enrollment form covers all categories of training, incorporating the different requirements of each type of training and eliminates the many manual processes conducted within Salesforce. By using FormAssembly’s pre-fill functionality the one off forms for organisation specific courses have also been eliminated. Variables and calculations are used on the form so that new courses are easily added in the build area and the users never need to go near the connectors. Each form field connects to an object in Salesforce, so the data’s sent exactly where it needs to go — automatically. “No human intervention needed. It’s all done by FormAssembly,” said Greg. “Identifying people (and accounts) who have previously enrolled and then seamlessly comparing and, if appropriate, updating their profile data is done using DataTrim’s Entry Check. This is the icing on the cake!”

 

Use case: event registration forms

FormAssembly is now one of the tools driving Buddy Day, an annual New Zealand event organized by Child Matters which has gained international recognition at a presentation to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Schools sign up through a FormAssembly form to create “Buddies,” life-size cardboard children which the students decorate and give a name, a personality, and a story.

Meanwhile, individuals and organizations register as Buddy Carers. On Buddy Day, Carers take their Buddies around to promote awareness and educate their communities on how to identify and prevent child abuse. Notable participants have included the Prime Minister of New Zealand and cricket player Kane Williamson.

Both Buddy Creators and Carers use the same online registration form thanks to FormAssembly’s conditional logic, which shows only the relevant fields for the respondent. The smart form makes it easy for respondents to quickly complete the registrations and for the staff to efficiently manage the registrations that roll in. The data funnels directly into Salesforce, ready for review as soon as the respondent clicks the submit button.

 

An immense lift in data wuality and accuracy

Prior to FormAssembly, the biggest issue for Child Matters was incomplete data. Stakeholders wanted metrics from past training sessions, while funding applications required comprehensive demographics, but the information was unavailable because there were significant gaps in the records. The staff was unable to obtain or provide accurate answers.

Now, FormAssembly immediately builds a full picture of each trainee and their organisation in relation to the training course. Not only is the database consistently and efficiently updated, but Child Matters can now capture a record of all the information at the time of enrollment. The benefit is substantial: for example, even if a person’s job profile changes over the next three years, the staff can easily refer to the snapshot and pull the historical data for reporting. Detailed metrics and demographics are completely accessible, due to the rich level of accurate data.

Capturing exact data for ethnicity was another crucial issue for Child Matters. For those of Mäori descent, the New Zealand government defines standardized classifications of Iwi tribe affiliation, which the enrollment data must match. Government-funded programs are required to report these classifications. However, the hundreds of Iwi categories and the countless variations in spelling made it impossible for the staff to capture that information effectively. Allowing enrollees to type into a text input (as in the government supplied forms) led to inconsistent answers, which necessitated too many hours of painstaking scrutiny and correction. “It was a real hassle, which often led to 999 (Iwi unknown) being selected by the administrator” said Greg.

The combination of FormAssembly’s data import for picklist options and menu dependencies was a transformative discovery. Greg said the data import made it very easy to copy all the standardized categories from the government’s statistics department website and into the menu choices.

The day Child Matters rolled out the new enrollment form with ability to specify up to three Iwi, 50% of the submissions specified three Iwi affiliations, compared to very few previously. And with the FormAssembly workflow in place, the data is far more rigorous, accurate, and formatted to the government-mandated standards.

 

A tool of productivity, with “stellar support”

As a CRM consultant, one of Greg’s aims is to help people be as self-sufficient as possible. FormAssembly is instrumental to that aim, said Greg. “FormAssembly has streamlined the processes. It’s just fantastic.”

Additionally, Greg is a fan of FormAssembly’s customer support. He praises the team’s responsiveness and valuable assistance. “The support team is really amazing. Support is tremendous.”

With FormAssembly in the Child Matters toolkit, Greg looks forward to what’s next for the organization. “We’re building up a really powerful database, and we’ll be able to do some pretty powerful marketing going forward.”