Craftsman took the time (and in quick order) to learn what we were trying to do and fashioned a platform to help us get started based on that quick study. We are using it extensively now for our opportunity tracking and it is helping us manage our pipeline and have great discussion on our business plans. We appreciate Craftsman’s approach with pricing that met our budget, and a timeline that got us up and running quickly.
Montgomery County Green Bank
Accelerating Energy Efficiency w/ Salesforce
The Montgomery County Green Bank accelerates affordable energy efficiency and clean energy investment in Montgomery County, MD. They partner with the private sector to build a more inclusively prosperous, resilient, sustainable, and healthy community. The organization’s work supports Montgomery County’s goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by providing residents and businesses with better loan rates, terms and credit access for clean energy projects. These projects save energy, lower county emissions, create healthy living and working environment and foster a more resilient economy and environment.
Purpose
The Montgomery County Green Bank needed a solution that would streamline key business processes and allow users to manage contacts and deals on a single platform. The Salesforce instance needed to capture their multilayered property-related financial agreements. An investment in technology would improve staff efficiency by enhancing outreach and relationships with stakeholders and volunteers, handling transactions and managing partner compliance obligations.
Project Details
Craftsman’s Community Development team was engaged to assess current conditions and identify an implementation strategy, data migration plan, and structure for a Salesforce platform that met the Green Bank’s needs. Craftsman defined the data migration plan for the Green Bank to clean and import legacy data from multiple sources. The assessment discovered that Sales Cloud was a better fit for the organization’s business model than NPSP. The org was built in Lightning, which allows for streamlining business processes such as sending emails directly from record pages and sharing rich text Notes. Salesforce for Outlook was also enabled to synchronize email communications.
The Salesforce org leverages standard objects to track lending agreements, grants, donations and the process of creating financial products in partnership with other institutions. Custom Account record types and picklists allow the Green Bank to distinguish their different partners including contractors, developers, donors, and real estate properties. This structure allows the Green Bank to report on funds allocated to different types of projects and on uses of different loan products over time. Post-implementation, Craftsman provided training and documentation for Green Bank staff on updating and managing information in Salesforce.
Tools + Technology
Montgomery County Green Bank is using Sales Cloud. Salesforce for Outlook integrates email. Native Salesforce reports are used to track impact.