Royal Horticultural Society gets new CRM

One of the UK’s largest member organisations looks to strengthen member relationships and meeting strategic objectives with new software and services

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is looking to gain a better understanding of all its members, visitors and supporters with the implementation of a new customer relationship management (CRM) system by software and services firm Blackbaud.

The RHS is dedicated to advancing horticulture and promoting good gardening and runs a number of high profile events, including the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. In order to meet its 2013 strategic objectives, the organisation decided it needed an integrated CRM system.

Unified view of members

“Blackbaud CRM is a scalable and secure database that has the functionality the RHS needs,” said Dan Wolfe, Royal Horticultural Society director of members, art and media. “It provides a complete view of all our members, enabling us to see at a glance whether people have visited gardens, bought at retail [outlets], attended shows or are involved in other activities. We see Blackbaud and Blackbaud CRM as integral to our ongoing growth and development.”

The new implementation follows a thorough review of the RHS’s core applications. The review revealed that the existing CRM systems were preventing it from effective and consistent communication with members.

Following a tender process that included a number of leading CRM providers, the RHS selected Blackbaud CRM for its user base of over 600 staff, as it has been designed for the largest not-for-profit organisations. The provider said that the RHS was also attracted by its sector expertise and the product’s flexibility, functionality and the ability to use it across the organisation.

Supporting more effective interaction

“Our strategic objectives are dependent on us understanding and interacting with our members and visitors more effectively,” added Wolfe. “We needed an enterprise CRM system to support those objectives more successfully and a supplier fully understanding of the specific requirements we have as a membership organisation, visitor attraction and not-for-profit – Blackbaud is the right choice in both regards.” 

Blackbaud CRM combines membership, fundraising, online applications, actionable prospect research and analytics, as well as multichannel direct marketing, to allow the RHS to make better use of the data it holds on its more than 400,000 members.

The RHS also plans to streamline its operations by using Blackbaud CRM and customisations developed and written by Blackbaud to replace a number of other systems as well as the legacy CRM databases.