Industry Common Components in Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

Benefits for Streamlined Human Services Intake and Assessments

Nonprofit Cloud: What it means to human services organizations

Now that the new next generation Nonprofit Cloud has been announced, Exponent Partners is looking ahead to the benefits that this innovation provides to human services organizations and nonprofits that aspire to manage programs, cases, outcomes, and fundraising on the world’s #1 CRM platform. With the move away from managed packages to core functionality, the Nonprofit Cloud benefits from a host of industry common components that will effectively change the way organizations manage services and benefits, not to mention the enhanced experience that clients receive. With this in mind, let’s take a look at how some of these powerful components will provide benefits to nonprofits, beginning with the intake assessment process.

Expertise with nonprofits on Salesforce

Since 2005, Exponent Partners has helped human services nonprofits optimize their programs and case management. Our wealth of expertise around best practices helps organizations provide the right services in the most efficient way possible by leveraging a well-designed information systems platform – in this case, Salesforce. We understand how critical it is to connect recipients with the programs and services they need in a timely manner. And we know how important it is to consider all the data gathered during the intake and assessment process to ensure that recipients are on the right path to the best outcomes. The new innovative vision for nonprofits that Salesforce and partners are realizing includes the use of industry common components in the new Nonprofit Cloud to enable more intelligent and streamlined intake that provides benefits to the recipient, the power users doing the critical work of managing cases and programs, and the admins who support these processes.

Powerful tools to enhance the client experience

Using new tools like OmniStudio and Business Rules Engine (BRE), the path from first touchpoint to first service delivery becomes smarter. In the past, assessments were rather linear, and dependencies with conditional logic were more cumbersome to configure. With the interface options provided by Omnistudio and the dynamic options that BRE affords, assessments become more flexible and intelligent, driving recommendations based on recipient input. This frees counselors or case managers to focus more on the people at the heart of the process rather than the process itself. For example, in the past, a “dynamic” intake may have required screen flows or Dynamic Forms for Lightning record pages, and it relied on a lot of validation rules to ensure the right conditions were met in order to move to the next step in the assessment process. With Omnistudio’s OmniScripts and BRE’s powerful engine driving conditional logic, we see the future of intake assessments being methodical and relevant throughout every step of the process. This gives the recipient a better experience, and if intake is self-service (e.g. on a tablet or kiosk in a community center), it also provides an attractive user interface that enhances the experience that recipients have right from the first moment they begin to seek services.

A future of streamlined service delivery

The result is a dynamic assessment that drives recommendations based on input and effectively hides irrelevant or unnecessary questions to streamline the steps that case managers use to connect people with the services they need. The industry common components are able to process the information collected in the intake and automatically create action plans, care plans, or benefit recommendations. This can reduce potential bias in service delivery and also streamline the delivery of services that would most benefit the client while still allowing the case manager to make additional decisions based on their experience. This reduces the time to service for the recipient, and provides a more efficient workflow for the power user at the heart of the system. After all, people are who create impact, not software. So why not let the software do the work of parsing data, allowing the people providing services and receiving services to focus on their next steps with clarity and ease?

Templates to speed up innovation

Omnistudio also provides a host of benefits to admins and partners configuring the platform for organizations. Salesforce has announced that alongside Omnistudio, there will also be a library of Omniscript templates that can be leveraged to quickly configure assessments appropriately and without the need to reinvent the wheel every time. These scripts can be leveraged both internally for admins and power users and externally, enhancing the recipient experience as well as making the day to day work of tracking program participants, services, service providers, and referrals easier. These templates and the power of Omnistudio, combined with the flexibility and dynamic nature of Business Rules Engine, give the Salesforce admin more options, and more powerful ones at that, to create and sustain a business process that works for their organization and provides a scalable path to future innovation.

Notice we did not say that this part will be easier! Rather, it will be more important than ever for organizations to prioritize the admin role, and for the system administrators themselves to stay on top of enhanced functionality, change management, and new releases.

The important role of implementation partners

And of course that is where Exponent Partners can help! In addition to our advisory and implementation services for standing up the new Nonprofit Cloud, Exponent Partners has expert and managed services offerings to handle these ongoing critical functions and plan for future innovation while incorporating best practices. We can also provide or extend your admin capabilities with Virtual Administration (VA) services that replace or augment internal resources and keep everything running smoothly. As one of the longest-tenured Salesforce partners dedicated to human services nonprofits, we are excited to provide these services to help forward-thinking organizations create lasting social change through their use of technology.

Trailhead modules to get you started

• Nonprofit Cloud for Programs Case Management: Quick Look
• Manage Programs with Nonprofit Cloud
• Nonprofit Cloud for Programs: Quick Look

If you are interested in learning more about the new Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, please reach out to chat about how tools like Omnistudio and Business Rules Engine can help your organization more efficiently and effectively fulfill its mission.