New CRM Solution

Background

Venture Taranaki Trust is the Regional Development Agency for Taranaki. The organisation is a Council Controlled Entity, wholly owned by New Plymouth District Council, with partnerships and service contracts across South Taranaki District Council, Stratford District Council, and central government agencies.

With multiple stakeholder groups, different client audiences, and a range of reporting obligations, Venture Taranaki needed a CRM that could support day-to-day client management while giving the organisation reliable information for reporting and audit purposes.

Business need

Venture Taranaki’s CRM was separate from Outlook, complex to use, unreliable for remote access, and limited in reporting. Staff had to export data to Excel and clean it before analysis, making stakeholder reporting slow, complex, and inconsistent. Interactions were often missed, staff had to spend significant time catching up each quarter, and Business Advisors working remotely could not record client activity in real time.

Venture Taranaki needed a CRM to support three core business requirements:

• Provide staff with a shared place to manage contacts, client information, and client histories.
• Produce data on client interactions and activity by district for stakeholder reporting.
• Provide verifiable interaction records for external audits.

The solution

Venture Taranaki selected Dynamics CRM for its balance of price, flexibility, and compatibility. OA Systems was chosen for clear pricing, a practical implementation approach, inventive solutions, and consistent availability throughout the project.

OA Systems built a separate Project module so activities could be grouped not only by contact and organisation, but also by project.

New modules were created for Startup Clinics and the Mentor Matching process, making these areas more intuitive for coordinators and administration staff.

Data import processes were also built to connect data from an external portal into the new CRM, allowing funding information to appear against relevant client records.