Simplifying workflows and enhancing application efficiency

Overview

Our client works with a wide range of partners to create opportunities and mobilize private sector investment to achieve their goal of ending poverty and boosting economies in less developed and developing countries. The mobilization of funds for the various activities is done through a fundraising process that HCLTech helped modernize.

The Challenge

Complex workflow and inefficient process flow

The client’s existing fundraising process had two different applications to gather information from partners on their funding interests, business areas, amount invested and estimated dates for investment creating a complicated workflow between applications to get internal approval for the partner to begin working. In addition, the poor navigation and inefficient user interaction of the applications made the process complex.

The Objective

Seamless fundraising process

The client’s goal was to record the substantive operational, financial and administrative details for a specific fundraising effort with a partner.

Key components of the application include:

Track the entire lifecycle of the fundraising process, from initiation to completion
Maintain the status of the fundraising effort as it progresses through the standard process, beginning with a proposal, creation of a new account for the partner and an administrative agreement or amendment for an existing agreement

Simplifying Workflows and Enhancing Application Efficiency

The Solution

Modernization of the fundraising application

The solution focused on monitoring the process of initiating fundraising to manage the clearances and approvals efficiently while ensuring the policies and controls are applied.

Application functionality

The multiple applications were replaced with an updated fundraising application to support the updated business process.

The fundraising team creates a record for each partner to obtain their information. A partner is introduced in the system after an evaluation based on financial and reputational stability and conflict of interest is complete
The application collects relevant details (geographic scope, business areas, trust fund details, agreement details, projects to be funded) about partners and their areas of interest for funding
The different fundraising instrument types are noted, resulting in the creation of an investment or administrative agreement
A workflow is enabled for the approval process
Email notifications are sent from the application to notify the fundraising team of the current stage and necessary steps to be taken
Upon completion of the fundraising approval process, the record is ready to be taken across the downstream applications to initiate an agreement with the partners and create relevant accounts
The transaction is complete when the partner’s interests are considered, an account is created (when needed), and an agreement is signed between the partner and fundraising team
The partner agrees to fund their account and distribute the funds to various projects across the globe

HCLTech engagement highlights

Worked across sprints while developing the fundraising application. Business requirements from business users were collected at various stages of the fundraising process.
A clear understanding of the downstream applications to show the movement of funds from contribution to disbursement.
The business process involved for the agreement between our partner and the fundraising team for Investment and Advisory services were analyzed.
Completed end-to-end user acceptance testing with the inbuilt validations between the applications around the pipeline entry.
Created the user guide and presented the user on the application's usability.

The Impact

An efficient and enhanced process to support the fundraising team

Enables the team to monitor the data and the downstream processes associated with it
Keeps track of the amount that is obtained from donors
Adds more value to the downstream processes
Effective in determining the number of donors providing the funds for the projects

The fundraisers now have an efficient system built to raise funds and track their lifecycle from contribution to end utilization for a particular cause, which in turn helps reduce poverty and boost the economy of a country.