Accelerating partnership acquisition
Designed a custom CRM for The Transformations Community's outreach team after off-the-shelf platforms failed from poor adoption and rigid workflows—built to streamline partnership building, sharpen targeted communication, and free up staff capacity.
IMPACT
1 week
Faster partnership acquisition
Reduction in time to move partnership opportunities from first contact to close, after replacing scattered tracking with one centralized CRM.
4%
Organizational efficiency
Increase in organizational efficiency following adoption, driven by centralized tracking and less manual busywork across the outreach team.
“This is the kind of structure and functionality I expect from something like a Salesforce CRM.”
— Grady, Product Support Staff
- Mapped existing tools and manual processes end-to-end
- Identified where a centralized platform could integrate
- Assessed fit against real day-to-day outreach workflows
- Removed one database from the traditional CRM framework
- Simplified structure to minimize training requirements
- Built for easier long-term adoption and maintenance
Process
Research
Analysis
Requirements
Workflows
Product demo
Research
Analysis
Requirements
Workflows
Product demo
Research methods
Interviews with outreach team
Gathered insight into current workflows, familiar terminology, and decision-making information needs.
Analysis of previous platforms
Identified that past failures came from technical barriers and workflow disruption, not lack of need.
Key learnings
Adoption depends on minimal disruption. The team favored broad outreach over targeted efforts and lacked a centralized tracking system.
- Proposal submissions
- Speaker opportunities
- Spotlights
- Additional engagement options
- Builds lasting partnerships with aligned organizations
- Fosters funding opportunities
- Supports ongoing engagement
- Opens community opportunities
Reflection
Adoption through alignment
Adoption came down to usability and clear value, not the integration itself. Built the system to feel familiar but stay customizable — that sped up development and made the tool stick with the outreach team.
Foundation for growth
Built for the long term, not launch day alone — simple by design, with documentation covering both the technical setup and day-to-day use. That combination makes it easier to maintain and extend as the organization grows.
Modernizing marketing navigation