How GDI Automated Mobilise’s CRM Workflows to Accelerate their Operations
- GDI Team
- Oct 7
- 3 min read
By Kane Lo (GDI Fellow)
Who are Mobilise?
We Are Mobilise is a charity working to prove that homelessness is solvable. They use direct giving to provide people in need with the right support at the right time, by distributing funding to people facing homelessness, and connecting them with jobs through 35+ charity partners throughout Australia.
Recently, Mobilise have launched Project 10,000 - a goal to be able to impact the lives of 10,000 individuals by 2030. In order to achieve this, they had to scale up their internal operations, reducing manual processes and ensuring that their data and information would reach the right people at the right time - both within their organisation and externally to their charity partners and clients.
Collaboration with GDI
Mobilise partnered with Good Data Institute to undertake a CRM audit - to identify bottlenecks in information flow and identify whether certain processes could be improved upon and further automated. The primary goal was to reduce costs on an external automation solution and to bring these processes in-house into their CRM.
The GDI team on this project consisted of Kane Lo (fellow), Olga Shabalina, Tania Sadhani, and Samuel Lee.
The Project
As a project team we were able to successfully migrate critical workflow and automation tooling from their existing workflow automation platform into Mobilise’s CRM, as well as build two critical inbound integrations form their accounting and document generation platforms, closing the loop on interactions that occurred in those systems and ensuring that the CRM would be effective as the centralised system of record for their clients and charity partners.
By removing the workflow automation tool outside of the CRM platform, we were able to reduce operational running costs of up to $6 per client interaction, as well as improve on the robustness of the solution by eliminating some technical debt held on the old workflow platform. Centralising the automation within their CRM also unlocked new possibilities for Mobilise, including the removal of even more manual touchpoints in the future.
Additional support provided by the team:
Optimised the CRM data model by migrating fields between objects to improve data quality and reliability.
Uplifted UI/UX within the CRM to promote progressive disclosure, avoid information overload, and reduce page load times.
Built a secure custom integration leveraging external APIs to stop swivel-chairing between systems.
Automated outbound emails to clients and case managers, removing manual steps.
Impact
As a Data and IT professional, it is often easy to get lost in the detail and become too technically focused without taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. During our final handover, Jake Hamilton, We Are Mobilise’s Head of Operations was quick to remind us that our project was able to save enough in budget that it would result in an extra night of accommodation for someone in need every 7 workflow automations. The project was also well timed: since go live, Mobilise have gone from 40 participants a month into secure housing to over 100 in September, distributing over $250,000 of funding along the way.
Throughout the project, he would often relay stories of people they have helped, such as a mother and her child escaping domestic violence, or a school they spoke at where one of the student’s families were previously participants of their programs. For the team, it was amazing to hear the impacts firsthand, and is one of the main reasons why we continue to volunteer at GDI!
If you are a charity interested in partnering with GDI, please do not hesitate to get in contact through our website: https://www.gooddatainstitute.com/notforprofits
About GDI:
The Good Data Institute (established 2019) is a registered not-for-profit organisation (ABN: 6664087941) that aims to give not-for-profits access to data analytics (D&A) support & tools. Our mission is to be the bridge between the not-for-profit world and the world of data analytics practitioners wishing to do social good. Using D&A, we identify, share, and help implement the most effective means for growing NFP people, organisations, and their impact.
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