1. Gaining Competitive Advantage:
Easy and Centralized Data Access
with SaaS
Judi Smith
Director of Strategic Services
Awana Clubs International

2. Agenda
 About Awana
 Business Challenges and Goals
 Our First SaaS Decision
 How SaaS Helps Us Meet Our Goals
 Results
 Lessons Learned

3. About Awana
 International Children & Youth Ministry
 The top independent provider of children’s programs for churches
 Impact kids 2-18 years old
 Over 16,000 churches supported worldwide
 50 states in the U.S. and over 100 countries
 Over 1,000,000 constituents
 Not Your Traditional Non Profit
 75% of revenue from the sales of goods
 Over 2,500 SKUs
 96 field reps
 Sales tax in every state by item
 87 New Competitors in the Last 5 Years

4. Business Challenges
Constituents
• More sophisticated expectations
• Met more quickly
• With more value
Employees
• More employees
• Working from more places
• At more times
Information
• More kinds of information needed
• By more people
• In more ways

5. Business Goals
Growth
More
Ministry
Programs
More
Donation
Programs
More
Marketing
Programs
More
Information
More
Media
More
Products

6. The Goal
Empowering Flexible Efficient Reliable

7. Our Systems
 The Awana IT Ecosystem
 18 IT Staff
 54 physical or virtual servers
 Microsoft
 Custom .NET Apps
 Exchange
 SQL Server
 Oracle
 JD Edwards
 Oracle DBs

8. Our Systems
Information in Silos
 JD Edwards 8.0 (Financials, Inventory, Account Information)
 Trying to use as a CRM
 .NET eCommerce (Web Orders)
 On premise
 Two separate stores – B2B and B2C
 Sends orders to JD Edwards
 Pitney Bowes (Shipping)
 Learning Management – Hosted (Training)
 Ad Hoc User Databases
 Field Staff
 HQ Users

9. The First SaaS Decision
Need a CRM system & Integration to ERP
Process
• Email customer service from Web Store
• Manually create learn.com provisioning
package
Manual
Systems
Process
• Develop and enhance courses
• Gather input from support and customers
Manual
Systems
Process
• Notify field support
• Mail customer information for support
• Call for additional customer information
Manual
Systems
 480 hrs. of data entry
 Error prone
 No central customer
visibility
 Little to no self service
• Customer signs up online
• License agreement signed
• Create customer & order in
JD Edwards
Manual
Systems
Process
• Customer inquiry
• Mail customer info to field
• Field sales follow-up

10. Case Study: Rapidly Integrate Front Office
and Back Office
Business Problem
 Increase field productivity by
providing complete view of customer
 Customer self service not possible
 Awana Web Stores
 On-demand Learning Management
System (LMS) – Learn.com
 MS CRM/BizTalk or
salesforce.com/Cast Iron Systems
 Current data entry process
 Manual
 Time consuming
 Error prone
Customer Master Integration and Sales Order Visibility
CRM  ERP  Web Store  eLearning
International Children & Youth Ministry
Customer
Master
Invoice
Status
Authorization
Order
Shop Online

11. Integration Appliances
Software-Based Integration Solutions
BizTalk
Custom Code
Pervasive
Integration
Appliances
Advantages Disadvantages
 Strong .Net support
 No new tools to buy
 Broad connectivity to older
technologies (FoxPro etc)
 Simplicity (time/cost)
 Maintainability (not resource
intensive)
 No middleware experts required
 Lots of specialist (.Net) programming knowledge
required for development
 Maintenance requires .Net programmers
(time/cost)
 Labor intensive (time/cost)
 Not scalable
 No visibility for errors
 Maintenance very IT intensive
 Older technology
 Labor intensive (time/cost)
 Maintenance resource intensive (requires RIFL
developers)
 Newer technology
 No human workflow
Integration Options
Considered

12. Selection Process
 CRM & JD Edwards Connectivity Out-of-the-Box
 Simple Appliance: Fast to Deploy. Easy to Maintain
 We have minimal in-house IT operational support
 Competition Was 5x Cost (acquisition, implementation and maintenance)
 Cast Iron offered both monthly subscription & purchase options
 Platform Enables Rapid Integration and Fast Change Management
 No Specialist Programming Skills Needed
 Business users can set up workflow rules
 Visibility and Centralized Management Out-of-the-Box

13. Solution
 Selected salesforce.com/Cast Iron
over MS CRM/BizTalk due to
BizTalk complexity
Microsoft offered CRM/BizTalk for
low cost
Only pay for integration services
 Cast Iron Systems integration
platform
Rapid standards based bi-directional
integration
Simple “no coding” approach to
integration
Customer Master salesforce.com ↔
JDE
Order & Invoice Visibility JDE ↔
CRM
Customer Master Integration and Sales Order Visibility
CRM  ERP
International Children & Youth Ministry
Case Study: Rapidly Integrate Front Office
and Back Office
Order &
Invoice
Status
Customer
Master

14. CRM  ERP  Web Store  eLearning
International Children & Youth MinistryResults
 Project completed in 20 days
 Significant increase in field sales
and support productivity
 360º view of customers for
sales/mgmt.
 Real-time access to critical
customer information
 Field notification time reduced - 30
days to real time
 Customer self service enabled
 Eliminated 480 (75%) man
hrs./month in manual entry
Case Study: Rapidly Integrate Front Office
and Back Office
Authorization
Order &
Invoice
Status
Order
Customer
Master
Shop Online

15. The Awana SaaS Ecosystem

16. The Benefits of SaaS
Users get what
they need when
they need it
Users are not
waiting for IT or
other users
System
designed for
configuration
Multiple
Configurations
Not paying for
unused features
Best in class
performance
Small IT
overhead
Expert system
management
Works together
seamlessly
Future proof Designed to
integrate
System works
the way the
user does
Use the right
tool for the job
Work from
anywhere
Use broad array
of technologies
Change users
features as
needed
or
Empowering Flexible Efficient Reliable
User
Configurable
Best of Breed
On-Demand
Standards
Based

17. Results
 75% reduction in man hours for collecting customer
information
 Real-time reporting
 Turned order entry into account management
 Collecting information on all customer interactions
 Consistent information across all departments
 50% reduction in time required for reporting
 Shut down 8 physical servers.
 When complete - 29% reduction in IT Spend

18. Lessons Learned
 Integration Strategy a Key for SaaS
 Rapid SaaS adoption requires rapid integration
 Make sure the integration infrastructure can handle your transaction volume
 Make Simplicity a “Must-Have”
 Simple solutions, not build-it-yourself “developer centric” tools
 Reduce ongoing dependency on IT Staff
 Ask to evaluate “drag and drop” application development only
 Appliances do more than you think
 Application integration: SAP, Oracle family, SaaS (e.g. salesforce.com) etc.
 Automatic escalation based on business rules
 Vendor Partnerships Are Key
 Choose vendors committed to solving your problem; not just selling their tool and
services that never end

19. Thank You!
Judi Smith
Director of Strategic Services
Awana Clubs International