Referral Bonuses or Toilet Paper?

As a non-profit research and development organization creating groundbreaking sanitation solutions in Haiti, SOIL gathers data like it’s our job (it is!). We closely track feedback from familys using EkoLakay’s service and a wide variety of other impact metrics that help us evaluate SOIL’s work such as the quantity of waste treated or the amount of compost sold. Not only does this allow SOIL to stimulate our own learning to assess the success of our efforts and support global replication, but it also helps us continue to innovate and refine our model.

For many non-profits and social enterprises, developing systems that enable data-informed decision making can be an incredible challenge. To highlight this challenge, and share examples of changemakers that use data to inform program management, Salesforce shares a success story from SOIL. Read an excerpt below to learn about how SOIL uses our mobile data management system to make real-time decisions to improve our service delivery model and marketing strategy.

What does it have to do with toilet paper? Read on to find out!

See the original article on Salesforce.org: Using Data for Better Nonprofit Program Management

From Descriptive to Prescriptive: Should We Hand Out Cash…Or Toilet Paper?

Challenge:

SOIL’s field agents first used pen and paper to log sales, toilet installations, weekly servicing and other business activities and then transcribed the information into spreadsheets. As their customer base grew, it became clear their ability to scale operations, link distributed data and make business decisions in real-time was limited by their lack of an integrated, flexible and mobile data management system. Lastly, SOIL needed its mobile field services tool to function in areas where mobile phone data service and internet connections were limited or unreliable and SOIL’s field agents speak Haitian Creole.

Solution:

SOIL uses TaroWorks’ offline mobile CRM capability to provide company payment collectors access to a customer’s payment history and to conduct market research surveys. Salesforce data visualization dashboards give SOIL’s managers powerful business insights into the most effective sales and marketing techniques. Read more from TaroWorks.

These Salesforce reports and dashboards helped SOIL gain new insights about their sales and marketing tactics. For example, SOIL conducted customer research on which offers drive the most toilet sales. In one experiment, SOIL customers in some areas preferred receiving bonuses for referring new customers — in toilet paper rather than cash. SOIL used that insight to identify similar neighborhoods and uses hygiene products as incentives in those areas. SOIL data analysts also discovered that their customer responded more to time-limited discounts, like special weekend sales offers, than monthly promotions.

Follow this link to read the full original article on Salesforce.org.

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