It’s our favourite time of year again! No, not the drizzle-fest that passes for a British summer. The time when we get to meet the fantastic winners of the Digital Revolution Awards and find out how they’re making a positive impact on our world through cloud technology.
In this Meet the Winners blog, we’re getting to know the winners of our UK Digital Transformation Project of the Year award, Conga and Offploy.
Digital transformation is central to creating a more efficient, productive, and healthy world. By implementing cloud solutions, we can manage our resources more effectively, deliver information and services to those who need them faster, and use data to improve outcomes.
Our Digital Transformation Project of the Year award celebrates those who are shaping the future using the power of cloud technology; those who are delivering true digital transformation that makes things better.
When searching for our winner, we were on the lookout for a truly revolutionary and highly effective transformation project delivered by a partner or consultancy for a customer—one that’s had a profound impact on the efficiency of their operations or their ability to deliver great products or services.
And this year, it was the powerful partnership between Offploy and Conga that took home the prize.
Offploy is a social enterprise that helps ex-offenders and those at risk of becoming repeat offenders to obtain meaningful, mentored and sustainable employment. Like many social enterprises, Offploy’s valuable work was often slowed down by its paperwork-heavy environments and rigorous external assessment processes. The task of keeping detailed records was especially large for Offploy, who must be accountable to funders and government entities throughout their interactions with individuals using their services.
To give you an idea of the scale of this paperwork, picture the 16-page application form that EU-funded organisations must complete to support a candidate and draw down their funding. Before funding can be granted, candidates must be made to read through and sign voluminous data-sharing agreements – often under duress – to access vital support or be turned away. Once funding materialises, funding officials need detailed documentation about every meeting with each candidate, every decision taken, and every outcome reached.
Producing the documentation required by funders meant Offploy had to spend their limited resources on repetitive manual, administrative work.
Every quarter, staff spent 15 to 16 hours meeting with each candidate—in the early days of the business, each of these hours resulted in a further hour spent writing up case reports, retyping handwritten notes, formulating emails and collating data. This was causing a headache for staff and for the people who were trying to put their lives back together.
Offploy wanted to reduce paperwork and the chaos of separate Excel spreadsheets, handwritten application forms, emails, Word documents and wet signatures. Its primary concern was finding a solution that integrated seamlessly with Salesforce.
That’s where Conga came in.
Offploy implemented Conga Grid, and for the first time, its entire database was visible on a single screen. Conga Grid offers Excel-like functionality within Salesforce, meaning staff can analyse its grant data and perform large-scale contract reviews without exporting the information from Salesforce, as well as enabling them to perform quick and convenient real-time inline editing and mass updates.
To resolve problems with wet signatures, Offploy implemented Conga Sign, an easy-to-execute eSignature solution initiated from Salesforce, meaning candidates can now read and sign documents in their own time. Conga Sign tracks the status of signature activity and uses analytics to uncover contract roadblocks, meaning employees can ensure that all signatures are correctly acquired and create an audit trail for each contract.
Although government agencies are often hesitant to use digital signatures, due to legal and security concerns, after demoing Conga Sign to the commissioners, Offploy proved that it was more secure than traditional signatures. Offploy was able to undertake a trial project where offenders could avoid a conviction entirely by signing up for an Offploy programme on the spot. A member of Offploy’s service delivery team would complete the paperwork electronically with offenders on-site at their local police station with an iPad. With successful completion of the programme, the offender avoids a permanent stain on their criminal record.
Offploy mentors are responsible for supporting candidates one-on-one and documenting the job search process to satisfy funder requirements. To help with this task, Offploy also added Conga Composer, a document generation tool that automatically generates personalised project summaries, reports and action plans at the touch of a button.
Before implementing Conga solutions, when reporting back on candidate interactions, the Offploy mentors had to execute the time-intensive task of cutting and pasting the information from Salesforce into pre-prepared spreadsheets. With Conga, mentors can now quickly create personalised project summaries, reports and action plans at the click of a button. Being freed from manual administrative tasks was a morale boost for staff, as they could give job seekers their full attention and better mentorship.
With the hours saved by using these new tools, Offploy could have tripled each mentor’s caseload. But rather than doing that, the team decided to keep case numbers to manageable levels, providing each candidate with additional attention.
While larger organisations may allocate 15 to 20 minutes to candidates per week, Offploy mentors spend a minimum of an hour per week with anyone attending a programme.
They can do this because they don’t have to type up case notes and copy and paste information into Excel spreadsheets or other documents. Automated reporting provides both candidates and programme funders the tangible proof of their candidates’ progress.
With Salesforce and Conga, Offploy has recently built an entire HR system to administer and house all staff contracts and policies. This saves time, reduces complexity and eliminates a major portion of paperwork—slashing the latter to just seven documents from 35. This enabled Offploy to save on hiring costs; it would have taken two full-time admin staff to do the work that Conga automates, saving the organisation between £22,000-£28,000 per administrator annually.
“This award is really recognition of a joint project that we did with a customer who’s a very cherished customer of ours,” said Miriam Seibold, Marketing Manager DACH at Conga.
“Offploy use our tech to reduce their workload, serve more people, and give more back to the community, which is super important. They’re going to be absolutely delighted, especially for such a good cause that we’re supporting with our tech.
“It gives people time back so that they can give back to the community, they can innovate, and they can drive positive change. Tech is a team sport, right? It takes the village to get these projects over the line. Our partners are really important to us. So it’s not just recognition of a project and a customer, but that whole community spirit and community win. It just proves that we’re going in the right direction and the tech is working.
“We have a huge product team who are constantly improving our technology and making it work together better. So wins like this are that validation that we’re going in the right direction.”
