Santa Clara University and salesforce.com team up to provide Clinic with new database

With the support of an innovative academic-corporate partnership, the Clinic successfully transitioned to Salesforce CRM, a cutting-edge customer relationship management system (CRM) which will improve the Clinic’s efficiency.

In 2007, the Clinic received a generous grant of Salesforce CRM licenses from the Salesforce.com Foundation; however, we did not have the resources to hire professional consultants to transition us to the new system. Leaning on the Clinic’s loyal network of supporters, we reached out to friends at the salesforce.com corporation and recruited ten employees to volunteer on the project.

“The opportunity to assist an organization who is actually helping people live their lives with dignity and pride gives me tremendous delight,” said Elliot Moore, Corporate Sales Effectiveness Program Manager at salesforce.com. “This was an awesome opportunity that I feel we can all be very proud of.”

Together, with his colleagues Amanda Bradford, Donald Hammonds, Andrea Leszek, Erik Lue, Iman Maghroori, Eduardo Parra, Abe Pursell, Julie Screbant and Keith Torluemke, Moore volunteered to provide the Clinic with high-level support. Mike Genovesi, a community member, also volunteered his time.

During this time, a group of graduate students from Santa Clara University’s MS in Information Systems program volunteered to devote their senior capstone group project to the Clinic’s CRM implementation project.

The students, Benjamin Bayani, Vijaya Garg, Samira Habibian, Paolo Posadas and Melissa Wijaya, became the first capstone group to partner with a nonprofit organization.

“I’m extremely proud of the work our capstone group accomplished,” said Posadas. “We were able to take our academic lessons and apply them to something tangible and rewarding: helping the Clinic continue the good work in its community.”

This corporate-academic partnership donated over 2000 hours to transition the Clinic to Salesforce CRM. The new system significantly reduces staff administrative time by improving the Clinic’s ability to manage volunteers and supporters. The estimated cost savings to the Clinic is over $150,000.

“Volunteering at the Clinic did me much good,” said Wijaya. “I met incredible people at the Clinic, learned about Salesforce CRM and got a very rewarding and valuable experience.”

Read more Clinic news