Camfed Transforms Education for Females in Africa With FinancialForce and Salesforce Technology

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - May 19, 2016) - Salesforce World Tour London -- FinancialForce today announced that Camfed, the campaign for female education in Africa, has transformed its operations through the use of FinancialForce and Salesforce technology, enhancing how it serves its clients (girls in rural Africa), their communities and donor partners, as the non-profit undergoes a period of rapid growth.

The non-profit organisation's mission is to support girls in rural Africa to go to school, and empower young women to become change-makers in their communities. Girls' education has been recognised globally as the best investment nations can make to break the cycle of poverty, improve health, increase economic growth, as well as mitigate climate change. Camfed has seen a rapid expansion of its community-led programmes over the past three years, and in 2014 pledged to support 1 million girls to go to secondary school within just five years.

To manage this scaling, Camfed has expanded the use of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform as a single, organisation-wide system. The expansion helped increase organisational efficiency, transparency and accountability by providing accurate, often real-time data to teams across seven countries with the objective of having "a single screen per girl." This means that all information pertaining to each student is now held on one system, on a single record, providing accurate information. The system tracks a client's circumstances, entitlements, financial transactions, school attendance, retention and progression, as well as her 'give-back' activities as she joins Camfed's formidable CAMA alumnae network, now 55,358 strong across Zimbabwe, Ghana, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania.

Camfed also has switched its finance processes to run on FinancialForce Financial Management applications built natively on the Salesforce platform to gain a holistic programme overview with the ability to report to existing and potential donors. This has made Salesforce the backbone of the organisation, managing nearly all critical processes in a context where the number of records handled per year across all programmes went from 30,000 to 130,000, making certain manual financial processes unfeasible.

Already, Camfed's financial team has reported saving weeks of time through the integration of Salesforce and FinancialForce. This has in turn provided the opportunity to repurpose experienced staff for the benefit of Camfed's programmes.

The provision of accurate information helps Camfed manage its programmes effectively and ensures donors and recipients are receiving the best possible service. Using a cloud-based platform means there is no expensive hardware or software required for data uploaded by teachers from their Android mobile phones at 5,270 government partner schools in Africa. Accuracy is improved as new information is verified against data from community workers, minimising the risk of error and corruption. The system is also easy to use and gives instant acknowledgment so that enumerators know when data submitted has been recorded.

"The ability to host Salesforce CRM data and financial data through FinancialForce applications on one platform is transforming our operations," says Daniel Probert, head of IT innovation at Camfed. "It provides the technological infrastructure that enables our partner communities to respond with urgency and deliver girls' education at scale, while providing the data we need to monitor and evaluate our programmes, and put the innovative ideas of our alumnae -- who are now leading on programmes -- into action."

"Camfed is so successful because it has made technology an intrinsic part of its culture and operation across its entire ecosystem, to connect with its donors, activists and the girls themselves in entirely new ways," said, Charlotte Finn, VP Programmes, EMEA, Salesforce.org.

Adrian Ivanov, chief customer officer at FinancialForce adds, "Scaling quickly is always a difficult process to manage in front office as well as back office. Ensuring donors' funds are tracked, monitored and used in the best possible way is essential for Camfed. Its strategy to provide a 'single screen per girl' is made much easier through adding financials onto the Salesforce platform, already in use to record all data such as donor funding and progress in each individual girl's education. All relevant team members have access to the same real-time information enabling more collaboration and the ability to be more responsive to its cause."

Camfed has made a commitment to change the world through girls' education and women's empowerment, and attracting and maintaining donor partners is key to its mission. Using a one platform strategy provides Camfed with the high standard of reporting needed to prove the effectiveness of its programme, especially as the organisation is now starting to record the investment its alumnae and communities are making in girls' education, providing even greater value for donors' money.

Camfed will continue to look for ways to innovate with technology to scale its impact and improve the way it runs its programmes as it continues its mission to eradicate poverty in Africa.

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About Camfed
Camfed supports marginalised girls to go to school, succeed, and lead change

Camfed is an international non-profit organisation tackling poverty and inequality by supporting girls to go to school and succeed, and empowering young women to step up as leaders of change. Camfed invests in girls and women in the poorest rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, where girls face acute disadvantage, and where their education has transformative potential. Camfed not only supports girls and young women through school, but also on to new lives as entrepreneurs and community leaders. To complete the "virtuous cycle," and create sustainable change, graduating students become CAMA alumnae, many of whom return to school to train and mentor new generations of students. Since 1993, Camfed's innovative community-led education programmes have benefitted over 3.5 million children in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi. In 2014, Camfed was recognised by the OECD for best practice in taking development innovation to scale.

That year, Camfed made an historic commitment to support one million girls in rural Africa through secondary school in just five years -- a truly transformational pledge. Millions more children will benefit as a result.

About FinancialForce
Founded in 2009, FinancialForce is the leading Cloud ERP vendor with apps built entirely on the Salesforce Platform. The company's Financial Management, Professional Services Automation (PSA), and Human Capital Management (HCM) offerings provide services-centric businesses with a platform that organizes sales, services, finance and HR entirely around their customers. Headquartered in San Francisco, FinancialForce is backed by Salesforce Ventures, Technology Crossover Ventures, Advent International and UNIT4. For more information, visit www.financialforce.com.