Norlandia’s early childhood education processes harmonized with Salesforce

Due to these challenges, Norlandia decided to digitize the daycare application process. The digitization might not be noticeable to the end customer except through improvements in service quality and consistency, but the change had a significant impact on internal process management, making operations more efficient and standardized. In addition, it is much easier for the manager of an individual daycare center to manage his/her own work when he/she can clearly see the situation of each daycare center.

How did the project progress in practice?

The project was carried out in close collaboration, involving Norlandia’s Country Director Miia Kollin and Marketing Manager Tii-Marika Mäkinen. During the project, daycare center managers were also consulted. From Ceili’s side, Milla Hämäläinen was the project manager of the team.

The cooperation began with workshops where Norlandia’s needs for building the Salesforce architecture were defined. In these workshops, Norlandia’s existing processes were reviewed: how these processes currently functioned, how they wanted to change them, and how they would ideally work.

After the workshops practical implementation, testing, and production deployment followed. The project involved the implementation of Salesforce Sales Cloud utilizing both standard and custom features to create the desired solution. Since Norlandia’s customer base typically consists of families a connection between the child, and the guardian was created. This ensured a clear relationship between related items. In addition, the data anonymization process was automated so that the data is removed from the system within the statutory time frame.

The overall setup in Salesforce terminology was structured as follows:

1. Daycare application process: Opportunity
2. Child: Account
3. Guardian: Custom Object
4. Child’s guardian: Junction Object (i.e., the connection between the child and the guardian)

With this solution the functionalities that Norlandia needed for early childhood education processes could be built in a way that served their specific requirements.

Norlandia was highly committed throughout the entire project, and there was a clear determination to implement the system. They also had a good understanding of what their organization needed and how it would ideally operate.

The project started in November, and the system was ready for Norlandia’s use by February meaning the project duration was 4 months. Despite the holiday season the project was efficiently executed thanks to good planning and a dedicated project team on both sides.

Practical benefits of the change for different roles and needs

Country Director and regional management:

1. Freed up time, as early childhood education spot applications no longer need to be forwarded manually.
2. Gained better visibility into the situation across all Norlandia daycare centers in Finland, such as:
   1. The occupancy rates of different early childhood education centers
   2. The number of applicants on waiting lists
   3. The efficiency of process progression (e.g., how quickly applicants are contacted by the early childhood education center).
3. Can now manage operations more easily with clear dashboards that display reliable data on the current situation in different daycare centers.

Daycare Center Manager:

1. Receives daycare applications related to their daycare center in real-time immediately after the form is filled out, reducing waiting time.
2. Can view all applications related to their daycare centers in one place.
3. Can easily record any notes related to the process in one system, which can also be seen by the country director and regional manager.
4. Sees a clear overview of the daycare application process stages and next steps.
   1. For example, whether the process is at the “Introduction Visit” or “Agreement” stage.
5. Saves time, as automated messages are sent from Salesforce based on the different stages of the early childhood education spot application process.
   1. For example, when an introduction visit is scheduled, an automatic message is sent containing the daycare’s contact information, arrival instructions, and the agreed time.

Marketing Manager:

1. Can segment customer data clearly and securely.
2. Can send targeted communications to a specific audience.

General benefits:

1. Improved transparency, efficiency, and reliability of data in operations.
2. The formation of consistent and systematic operating methods.

For further development: integrations and automation related to the signing and invoicing of early childhood education contracts are being considered. These would contribute to even better transparency in the processes and the management of the entire life cycle from applying for early childhood education spot to the contract, invoicing and maintaining the relationship.

How was the cooperation with Ceili?