Sick kids charity boosts data control

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A charity supporting a London hospital is looking to boost its data quality - and in turn, the donations it receives - with a new data management system.

Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity rolled out DataFlux's dfPower Studio in September in order to improve data quality and integration for it's 3.5 million financial records, relating to half a million individual and corporate donors. In 2006, the charity raised £26 million in funds for the hospital.

The new database will not replace their current customer relationship management (CRM) system, but be used to fine-tune and monitor the data, said Laura Shobiye.

"For us, this was a really strategic decision. Our CRM is beginning to get used more and more rapidly... but if you want to make the best use of CRM, it's about the information you get back out of that," she said, adding that knowing what money was raised in what area, along with other specific details and patterns, can help the charity more accurately target donors.

The tool offers data profiling and real-time analysis tools, which will let the charity take better control of its information to help improve and target its fundraising by geography and socio-economic categories. "It's been absolutely critical for us. It's a benefit that's almost immeasurable," she said.

The new implementation isn't about squeezing more out of existing donors, she said, but improving data quality. "We're always trying to get more out of our donors for the hospital, but it's about data quality," Shobiye said. "It's about understanding more about our data and knowing it's clean."

Indeed, at the moment, the charity isn't even tracking the impact of the software on their donations, so they're not sure how much of an immediate boost it's given their fundraising. "But we have the ability to do more, more quickly, so we can turn everything around faster," she explained. "We can ask more people for more money, faster... and check to see what's working and try to that more."

"It takes time to see if any change is working - we couldn't say it's brought in 'x' amount more, but it has saved us a lot of money," she added.

The system will also boost security, Shobiye said - a key issue for financial records in the fallout of last year's data breach at HM Revenue and Customs. "Data quality and data security go together...this software helps us monitor that, and see who accesses what," she said.

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