European Social Network
www.esn-eu.org

Organisation Location:

Brighton
East Sussex

Kind of Organisation:

Non Governmental
Non Profit

The European Social Network (ESN) brings together people who are key to the design and delivery of local public social services across Europe to learn from each other and contribute their experience and expertise to building effective social policy and practice.
Member organisations are national or regional associations of directors of social services, individual regions, provinces, counties and cities and research, development and regulatory bodies working alongside directors of social services in shaping services for the local community. Together with it’s Members ESN is focused on providing quality public social services to all and especially to help improve the lives of the most vulnerable in societies across Europe.

What issues does the organisation focus on

Public Health
Political
Social Service
Features Deployed:
Membership Management
Constituent Contact Management
e-Communications
Events

What was the initial promise of this project?:

To provide a system capable of managing events (initiated with ESN’s flagship annual international conference), membership and sending out newsletters to different organisations and individuals.

What was the biggest challenge facing this project?

There was a key requirement to move away from an access database and various spreadsheets towards having one system capable of handling all of ESN’s CRM requirements. There were very challenging timescales to implement the solution quickly and effectively for ESN’s annual conference (in Barcelona). The system was configured to accommodate substantial functionality that is key for their operation –

for example communicating in 5+ different languages (automatically from the system/depending on individual preferences) to members/delegates in most European countries and incorporating seminars, workshops, hotel bookings, speaker information. The website was also re-designed (using Drupal) at the same time.

Why was CiviCRM chosen as the solution? Were other CRMs evaluated?

ESN were very keen on the fact that CiviCRM was designed for NfP Organisations from the outset and were impressed with the flexibility of the Events component in particular (very important for them and in particular with their Annual Conference being hosted in a different European country each year). CiviCRM and our services has subsequently enabled ESN to effectively manage other annual conferences in Prague, Warsaw and currently there is current planning for the next main event in Copenhagen. This flagship event (plus other regular events throughout the year) has a very high profile and therefore it is essential that the solution works as effectively as possible. ESN had the opportunity to view several other CRM solutions over time but CiviCRM, backed up with our relevant experience, was the natural choice.

What modifications and modules were deployed?

We developed an invoicing module and added a great deal of functionality to the Events component.

What were the server & hosting requirements?:

Hosted on servers – managed through NfP Services

To find out how we can help your organisation please contact Richard Slade on 020 7843 4400 or email: richard@millertech.co.uk .