San Francisco-based BRIDGE Housing has a mission to strengthen communities and improve the lives of its residents “beginning – but not ending – with affordable housing.” They recently launched a survey to understand the impact of their work on residents’ quality of life. Their residents reported the following:
- Reduced stress and anxiety
- Increased sense of safety
- Better access to healthy, affordable food
- Overall improved quality of life
In an effort to track compliance of services and program obligations stipulated by their funders, they chose to move to the Salesforce platform eight years ago. Through the last several years, they consistently refined and enhanced the system to adapt to their evolving priorities. They partnered with Provisio as they transitioned towards a heightened emphasis on measuring the impact of their services. “Provisio has assisted us in seamlessly aligning our current system with this shift,” says Kim Sierra, BRIDGE’s Programs Coordinator and Salesforce Administrator.
Shifting from Basic Compliance to Impact Focus
With BRIDGE’s strategic trajectory evolving from mere compliance to a greater focus on impact, their intentions were to address the following:
- Improving their impact measurement and data tracking
- Creating operational efficiencies in their business processes
- Improving the user experience for their partners that report on the important work they are doing at BRIDGE properties.
They also identified specific challenges within their Scholarship Program that they wanted to address:
- Streamlining the application process by going digital
- Mitigating the need for extensive manual data entry
- Improving scholar management and relationship building
Selecting Provisio for Managed Services Partnership
Sierra noted several reasons for collaborating with Provisio, including Provisio’s deep expertise, responsive communication, and rapid project execution.
With the Managed Services model, we've been able to focus directly on our specific goals and priorities, bypassing time-consuming discovery sessions. Provisio has been flexible and committed to meeting our needs; one clear example is their willingness to hold weekly status meetings, ensuring projects stay on course and address challenges promptly. This dynamic partnership positions us for continued success.
Reaping Benefits from Managed Services Collaboration
As BRIDGE works towards enhancing their impact measurement capabilities, they anticipate that these improvements will provide them with a more nuanced understanding of their residents’ needs and the resources their providers bring to their communities. These improvements will also enable BRIDGE to closely monitor provider engagement within their resident community and shed light on the strategies they employ to build relationships and invest in getting to know their residents on a deeper level.
In their efforts to streamline business processes, Provisio created a custom tool that enabled their service providers to create and edit their own schedules through the Experience Cloud Portal. This has resulted in significant time savings for their internal team and, beyond that, has elevated the user experience for their valued partners.
Regarding their scholarship project, they were initially unsure how their transition to an online application process would be received by residents. However, they were pleasantly surprised to find that their decision to go digital resulted in a 62% increase in application numbers for the year.
Reduction in Data Entry Time
Not only did they observe a significant increase in applications, but they also experienced a remarkable reduction in data entry time required to track these applications. “What we initially feared might create a barrier for potential applicants turned out to be a breakthrough, as the online platform made the application process more accessible to a wider audience,” says Sierra.
One of their major concerns was the potential burden of handling a higher volume of applications, but the system efficiently processed every submission. Notably, this automation did not increase the time their staff spent on application processing, ensuring a smooth and seamless experience for both applicants and their team.
Marjorie lives in Saint Louis, Missouri. She received her Master’s degree in English from Truman State University. Her responsibilities at Provisio Partners include content creation and technical writing.