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With over 150,000 members and established in 1921, CSSC is one of the UK's oldest and largest Membership organisations. Part-funded by The Cabinet Office, CSSC provides affordable sports and leisure experiences and health & wellbeing benefits for its members in the public sector and NHS.

The Challenge

A change programme to transform CSSC's digital experience was initiated in 2018 and focused on three key areas:

• Replacing the organisation's existing website
• Modernising its events booking system
• Introducing a new CRM and Marketing Automation platform

C2 worked closely with CSSC, their appointed Programme Manager, EntecSI, the events booking system providers, Nutickets, and 18a, the website supplier, to plan and execute a complex implementation of best-of-breed interconnected systems with:

• Full integration with a new website and event ticket system to ensure Dynamics 365 is a single source of truth
• Complex data migration from bespoke SQL server and high volume of data
• Tight project timeline with a fixed go-live date
• Minimal downtime during the go-live process
• Fully automated direct debit collection process
• Finance and membership management reports to be available for self-service usage
• Staff skills transfer/change management programme to be designed and delivered
• Requirement for high volume marketing automation

"As well as seeing an uptick in positive member feedback, improved online accessibility allows members to take advantage of a wider range of services, which is having a positive impact on our bottom line." 

-Mark Harris, Commercial Director, CSSC

The Approach

Central to this was the programme governance, which enabled CSSC to focus on strategic planning, quality assurance and stakeholder management. Phase One comprised of a number of key areas, including:

• Customer insights captured on the current website user journey
• Improved user experience on the existing website
• Requirements gathering and procurement of a new online events management solution
• Specifying the CRM requirements

The need to streamline the online journey required a bold approach, which included switching from an inefficient paper-based events registration process to an online booking system to save members, staff, and volunteers valuable time.

Regular focus groups and the creation of communication plans enabled the team to keep members updated on the progress of digital developments. A fully joined-up digital strategy allowed members to begin reaping the rewards of the change almost immediately. This approach helped guard against any potential domino effects of transformation on the organisation's people, processes, systems and infrastructure.

Customer insight work enabled a detailed picture of CSSC's web audiences and fed into the CRM requirements, management reporting and key performance indicators. Similarly, 'quick wins' were implemented on the current site, improving user experience.

The methodology established

• Close working team established between C2, EntecSi, NuTickets and 18a to deliver a complete project on time
• An agile approach to development ensuring an ongoing handover to CSSC of completed work, with immediate feedback on the ongoing development programme

Key challenges and issues encountered included:

• Data migration scripts developed so that the migration can be repeated and polished. This was also crucial to minimising downtime
• PTX API is used to automate direct debit setup and collection fully
• Restful API was developed to create a simple interface for website integration
• Scheduled scripts developed to synchronise data between Dynamics 365 and NuTickets
• Training/skills transfer programme developed to ensure staff were fully onboarded for system launch
• ClickDimensions was implemented for full marketing automation
• Deduction at Source processing for over 150 separate Civil Service payroll feeds, each requiring a different template and processing scripts

Outcomes

This selection of metrics illustrates the impact of the digital experience programme:

• Website usage: +34%
• Website duration: +100%
• Time saved per transaction: Five minutes
• New members: +5.5K
• Online orders: +30%