Case Study - YWAM Kona

YWAM is an international missionary training organization with over 1,000 locations across the globe. YWAM Kona is YWAM’s largest training location sending thousands of young people each year into short-term missions.

Problem:

YWAM Kona staff had built a custom database system to manage student registrations that was outdated, hard to manage, and difficult to customize.

Solution:

• Salesforce. Data Imagery setup a new instance of Salesforce to create a customized system to manage their student and staff data. We created a custom Salesforce data model and data import script to pull all existing student records into Salesforce.
• Reports and Dashboards. Staff can now create custom reports and view rich dashboards providing real-time information on class sizes. Internal staff now does not need to rely on custom programming to create or modify these reports and dashboards, giving them much more control over the data they collect and how they display this data to users.
• Student Registrations. This system integrates with YWAM Kona’s WordPress website. Students can click to register for a class and submit all necessary details online such as financial data, health data and references.
• Automations. Salesforce tracks which student data is missing and uses automations to remind people what they still need to complete. We utilize custom programmed triggers as well as Salesforce’s declarative tools for creating triggered workflows that perform various actions.
• Payments. Students are reminded when their course tuition is due and they are notified via an email that includes their school invoice. Students can then login to the web portal to pay via ACH or credit card. Once paid, their outstanding balances are then automatically updated in the Salesforce giving staff real-time financial information to follow up directly with students for missing payments instead of waiting for accounting to compile and send this data.
• Financials. Data Imagery created a custom module in Salesforce that automatically batches credit card and ACH payments that cleared the previous day. This automation saves YWAM Kona 10 hours per week in accounting data entry and management. The system creates nightly batch files formatted to be imported into their accounting system — Blackbaud Financial Edge.