Interview with Vin Murria of Advanced Computer Software Group plc
Howard Lake | 6 June 2014 | News
“It’s a great sector” says Vin Murria, commenting about the charity sector and how it is adapting to technology changes and adopting new approaches. The CEO of Advanced Computer Software Group plc (Advanced) has been working with charities and helping them make the most of technology since she formed Advanced almost seven years ago.
She is impressed with what charities have achieved around fundraising in the new digital age, maximising new channels of opportunity such as text giving. “Charities had to get smarter and have stepped up to the challenge,” she said. Many of them are doing so by responding to the rapid and popular move to mobile devices.
She likened charities to retailers who have to remain focused on consumers, or donors, and their expectations and needs. This often puts them at the front end of change.
She is well aware, however, that the function of the technology platforms that her company develops and provides is simply to service. “Charities need to be effective”, she said. “They don’t need to be technologists”.
What do charities require from technology providers?
Murria comments that many charities of course are moving to hosted and managed services, or planning to, and most are aware of the need to incorporate mobile and social functionality. “But the intelligent charities are asking for analytics”, she explains. “And interaction with their data”.
The successful charities, in her view, are those focusing on tackling data duplication and data cleansing. For Murria, this is all about helping charities communicate in a targeted and tailored manner to their respective audiences. This is where the role of technology, and its ability to segment and profile customers from the data held within CRM systems, becomes critical.
Murria explains, “Charities need that single view of their donor, to understand when and how they donate, what their preferences are from a communications perspective –essentially – what will help turn them into loyal and regular donors, so increasing funds..”
Of course, she argues that technology also offers the opportunity to drive cost efficiencies from the integration of services from payroll, HR through to their accounting back office, managed services and hosting.
Personal giving
Murria has also got to know the charity sector as a major donor. Her chosen charities include SmileTrain, CRISIS (to whom she donated shares) and SightSavers. For the latter, she funded a corporate fundraiser to help them assess the value to their charity of this form of fundraising. But she did so on a matched funding basis – SightSavers had to show its commitment by matching her gift. The fundraiser has since been hired permanently.
She is a fan of matched giving, citing the Presidents’ Club at SmileTrain which persuades corporate supporters to offer matched giving for their employees.
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Depth of knowledge
“We’ve got 20,000 customers in the Group, 50% of which are classed as NFP”, said Murria. “As a result, we have a depth of knowledge across the sector. This means we don’t reinvent the wheel each time and customers benefit from our technology capabilities, skills and experience.”
She says that mobile technology and experience from the health sector, for example, transfers well to the charity sector. She argues that this broader knowledge helps keep the company a cost-effective provider.
For example, the Group services 62% of all hospices, 62% of care homes, 70 universities, and it provides ticketing services to arts and heritage organisations.
“We own the IP of everything we do,” she adds, “so we can move quickly”. For example, when Gift Aid Online was announced, they were able to integrate this method of reporting quickly for all charity clients.
CRM
Not surprisingly she argues that a single supplier offers charities both breadth and depth of understanding, with the time to look at how systems need to develop across an organisation.
Equally, she recognises that a generic CRM is not the answer for charities, not least because their needs can be so diverse that too much customisation would be required for each one.
Advanced’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM practice is one of its not-for-profit sector offerings. Murria argues that implementing its CRM solutions allows charities to change their working practices incrementally, rather than have to tackle a whole new system.
Advanced is also introducing a Microsoft Dynamics CRM front-end interface to its charity, fundraising and membership CRM solutions later this year, to deliver the best of both worlds to customers looking for a familiar user interface experience.
When asked about charities that have used Advanced’s services effectively she mentions The Woodland Trust, Medicins Sans Frontieres, National Housing Trust and RSPB, praising in particular how they each champion the effective use of data.
Murria says that she and her team spend their time trying to think ahead to challenges that charities will face and ideas that they will have. “Our job is to make them as successful as possible. After all the charity sector is an important sector for society as a whole.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.