The Entrepreneur’s Foundation of the Northwest (EFNW.org) is a Non-Profit organization that assists companies with the implementation of a community involvement program that matches their corporate culture and philanthropic interests with the many needs in the local community. EFNW member companies pay for their memberships with a cash donation, stock donation, or a combination of both.

The problem that the EFNW had that Salesforce.com allowed them to solve, according to their President, David Squire, was that they did not have a tool for keeping track of emails, calls, meetings, and all of the relationships of people in their network. Their records consisted of paper notes, paper file folders, and emails in Outlook. Relationships related to leads were especially hard to track. This extended their sales cycle and made closing new sales more time consuming.

Because the EFNW is a nonprofit organization, Salesforce.com gave them a free 10-user license of their Enterprise product. But the EFNW did not know how to take what was given to them by Salesforce and turn it into a solution that would enable them to address the above-mentioned issues. As a Portland-Oregon-based independent Salesforce.com-certified consulting firm, that’s where Fortune Technologies LLC was able to help.

Fortune Technologies LLC engaged with the EFNW to understand what their concerns were. This included reviewing with them what was not working for them and how they wanted Salesforce to work for them, including how it should integrate into the data they already had in Outlook. A key requirement for them was being better able to track and manage all of their relationships. If a contact was the CEO of Company A and also a Board member of Company B, this was something they wanted to know as soon as possible as knowledge of this relationship could shorten their sales cycle.

Now that the EFNW is using Salesforce.com, David Squire says that everything is in one place. He can attach Outlook emails to contacts in Salesforce.com, log calls and meetings and create action items that are associated with key accounts or contacts. He can also create connections so that everyone that is related to a particular account is visible in the account page. This really helps him to keep track of the network.

Not only has Salesforce.com made the work of the EFNW easier but it has also created new possibilities for sharing information with their Board members. Through the use of Salesforce.com’s reporting features and dashboards, from anywhere on the Internet, board members can securely access Salesforce.com so they can track the progress of the EFNW and see opportunities where they can help.

Salesforce.com really is helping David Squire and the EFNW to work more efficiently. Everything is in one place and all users of Salesforce.com can instantly view the history of any account or contact.