Gift-In-Kind Organization – Gains Donor Insight and Inventory Control

Industry

Non-Profit

Company

Gift-In-Kind Organization

Solution

Inventory Management, Cost Management, Customer Experience Analysis, Performance Management Dashboards, Data Warehousing

Bottom-Line Results

Estimated $10M in ROI benefits after one year and $30M over three years through new controls and combined insights into key operational and financial trends.

Technology

• Oracle Database
• Open Source Extract
• Qlikview Analytics

International Non-Profit Gains Donor Insight and Inventory Control with Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW)

During the organization’s 30 year history, it has grown into one of the world’s largest private organizations dedicated to helping hungry and hurting people. In 2008 alone, the organization shipped 135 million pounds of food and other essentials to children and families in all 50 states and in 32 countries, supplementing almost 800,000 meals a day worldwide. Since its founding in 1979, the organization has reached out to help children and families in 118 countries around the globe.

Goal:

The organization oversees a vast global network that supplies critical aid to the world’s most in-need people. To ensure the hungry receive vital food and supplies, the organization required better insight into its own operations. Up-to-date information on the perishable inventory stored in disparate warehouses around the world was a necessity. Additionally, the venerable charity required better management of its legacy donors, gifts-in-kind and financial systems worldwide to optimize fundraising campaigns and better understand resource needs.

Building even a simple management report consumed too much time and effort. Instead, the charity relied on instinct and past success to make key decisions.

The organization’s executives turned to Clear Peak to solve their biggest problems with an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) that consolidated data, and offered the critical information needed to make key decisions quickly. Clear Peak was responsible for all aspects of the project including strategy, approach, scheduling, client communication, resource management, technical design, architecture, development and testing.

Obstacles:

For distributors of perishable food and plant products, spoilage and expiration pose a constant threat to the bottom line. Disjointed data from legacy RPG and other historical systems hindered fundraising efforts. Additionally, executives lacked the data they needed to make real-time decisions about inventory management and distribution.

Solution:

The Enterprise Data Warehouse allowed the organization to focus on its mission of helping hungry and hurting people. It removed concerns about the severe consequences of ill-informed decisions made using poor or incomplete information. Clear Peak led the entire Business Intelligence effort, which included the development and deployment of an Enterprise Data Warehouse platform.

Clear Peak’s solution uses Oracle DBMS, Open Source Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) and Qlikview analytics. It integrated historical enterprise information from all legacy donor management, gift-in-kind, and financial systems across the globe. The organization’s solution provides fully integrated self-service reporting as well as integrated enterprise level knowledge management services. With Clear Peak, the organization reduced costs by gaining control of its day-to-day operations, improving financial controls and leveraging its data to make informed decisions.

Bottom-Line Results:

Estimated $10M in ROI benefits after one year and $30M over three years through new controls and combined with insights into key operational and financial trends.