Offploy, the UK-based social enterprise that supports people with criminal convictions into meaningful, mentored and sustainable employment, has deployed several Conga solutions. Like many charities, Offploy began operations with manual processes and a lot of spreadsheets. However, the demand of its mission to support rehabilitation puts a compliance load on the organisation, which required automation across several areas of the charity.
The organisation must meet the requirements of all stakeholders within the business with a clear, accurate and detailed record of every engagement. Stakeholders include employers, ex-offenders, the government, the charities commissioners, donors and employees. Keeping track of these records across such a varied list of stakeholders was problematic as the organisation grew.
Stage 1 Conga Grid
It looked on the market for a solution to deliver a single view of those interactions in a single location. It selected Conga Grid with the intent that it would visualise all of its Salesforce data in a single screen. This allows the team to quickly view and analyse grant data and perform large-scale contract reviews without exporting the data from Salesforce into Excel.
Jacob Hill, managing director and founder at Offploy, commented, “Prior to implementing Conga, we were wasting precious time on mundane tasks, including writing case reports, retyping handwritten notes, formulating emails and collating data. It was a nightmare, not just for our team, but for the people we were trying to help put their lives back together. We wanted a solution that integrated seamlessly into Salesforce – and Conga was the perfect fit.”
Hill recalls his initial view of Conga Grid, “At that stage, I thought Conga was just an Excel solution for Salesforce. Then I discovered the other products in the suite, and we had a complete business transformation on our hands!
“We’d explored other solutions such as DocuSign and Dropbox and they simply didn’t compare with Conga’s integration into Salesforce and their understanding of the Salesforce architecture. Once you’re wedded to a product you love, you want to take all the other versions of it too because of the great relationships with the account managers and the support team that we’ve built over the years.”
Stage 2 – electronic signature
Much of the paperwork that Offploy needed to produce required a wet signature. With Covid and the cost of sending documents by post for both the organisation and candidates increasing, another solution was needed, Conga Sign. Implementing an electronic signature solution was not without its challenges. Offploy had to demonstrate that digital signatures were often more secure than traditional signatures to the commissioners.
Conga Sign is a modern and secure eSignature solution that uses identity verification and encryption to ensure that signatures are secure and compliant. Conga Sign complies with global regulations, including UETA, the ESIGN Act and eIDAS. The commissioners were convinced that the eSignature solution, integrated into Salesforce with its open AIs, is now used by all stakeholders.
Stage 3
Offploy has also implemented Conga Composer, allowing them to quickly generate error-free, on-brand documents. Offploy uses the solution to generate project summaries, reports and action plans drawing data from Salesforce to quickly complete the tasks.
It has allowed the organisation to quickly create the reports required for the programme funders, including, The Probation Service, The Police Service, the National Health Service (NHS), the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and local councils. This allows it to efficiently and effectively share information about the candidate’s journey and progress.
Enabling scale and growth
Offploy estimates that the Conga solutions have reduced the administration work by around 80%. The result is that Offploy has scaled its candidate support operations by 300%. The time saving per candidate is even more impressive, with the administrative burden reduced from 16 hours to 30 minutes for each candidate, around a 96% reduction!
Conga Grid has also helped with its internal processes. Offploy has built an HR system that manages staff contracts and policies. It has eliminated much of the previously used paperwork and reduced the documents from 35 to just 7. This has had a knock-on effect of saving money on hiring costs. It is estimated that it has saved the organisation around £50,000 on administration costs of that alone.
Offploy works in an unusual market. It needs to build trust with the different agencies to scale. With the help of Conga solutions, it has increased its appeal to the agencies it works with and become a preferred partner and recruitment source. It is expanding its operations, recently initiating a project to support the homeless in West London. It would have been impossible without the scalability and trust built with Conga. The solutions have also helped improve employee morale with less time spent on manual paperwork and more time spent communicating with candidates.
Noel Goggin, CEO at Conga, commented, “Offploy serves as an excellent example of how we can empower business transformation through Conga solutions, no matter the industry. It is particularly satisfying to see the power of Conga’s technology helping a social enterprise such as Offploy to focus on its mission at hand, rather than the operational complexities that come with running a business at scale.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
Offploy is not a large organisation, but leveraging the Conga suite has shown that the solutions can significantly deliver value to such small organisations. While the savings are not as big as seen in an enterprise organisation, in charities, every penny counts. In a larger organisation, the savings would be much larger.
