Digitisation for Social Services

We wanted to improve a volunteer management system, currently used by 30 social services organisations, and make it sustainable. This system was created 5 years ago and it’s free for social sector. It’s maintained by a non-profit startup, in terms of cost and effort.

We started by sending email to all our current users to tell them our plan and ask them for feedback. We got to know that most users rely on the system, but only use several features. They need the system but are not happy with it due to its performance and limitations.

We looked at the market, the competitors, and feedback from our users. With limited resources, we trimmed down the features and prioritised on the frequently used ones. We looked at the common complaints and ideate on how to tackle them.

With performance being one of the top issues, we discussed and evaluated that the effort to enhance existing backend versus building from scratch with refreshed backend stack, is about the same.

We scheduled sessions to demo the new system to existing users, at the same time, present the new charging structure. We’ve got good buy-in and received revenue.

We conducted training session to existing users to prepare them for the move. Migration are staggered to minimise potential issues and to fix any bugs in parallel. Enhancements in the roadmap are continuously built, tested, and deployed. It’s still on-going but we already gotten positive feedback about the changes.