The British Columbia Dental Association (BCDA) has been a longstanding Catapult client. In 2019 we worked with them to deploy a Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM solution and portal integration that allowed for a seamless flow of data between their CRM database and branded, member-facing and public-facing portals. These integrated portals allowed BCDA’s members to easily access resources and share information about their practices through a public facing customer search tool.

With the success of these portals, the BCDA continued to grow and evolve their member experiences. In 2021 they began looking for a new way to manage a mentorship program that would further enhance their overall membership experience. This mentorship program allowed for members to be matched as mentor and mentee, giving them the opportunity to share advice and guidance on various career and dental related topics.

As an existing client, our CRM implementation team already had an in-depth understanding of BCDA’s business processes and requirements. We approach all our CRM implementations with the understanding that, over time, businesses will need a system that can scale with their evolving needs, and we tailor their implementations accordingly. Our work with BCDA was no exception. Because BCDA’s existing implementation was created with a Dynamics 365 CRM solution acting as an umbrella platform, we were able to easily integrate a new portal with Power Apps specifically for this mentorship program solution.

The BCDA felt the program should be a self-serve experience where mentors and mentees could manage their own profiles and mentorship opportunities, making a new branded Power Apps Portal integration the perfect solution. By storing profiles and tracking mentorship sessions, hours, and credits, the portal would provide members with an organized view of their mentorship experience.

Power Apps portals allow for the easy creation of external-facing websites where users outside of an organization can sign in and create, view, and interact with Dynamics 365 Data. These portals are fully customizable with a variety of tools and components that help build seamless fully branded user experiences.

The newly created mentorship portal allows BCDA members to sign in and access a wide range of features including the ability to search mentorship profiles and select a mentor that best suits their needs.

During the registration process members are prompted to create a mentor profile in addition to their member profile. Much like a LinkedIn profile, members can highlight credentials and add photos, web links, and other important mentor related information for potential mentees to base their decisions on.

This streamlined approach allows members to contribute to a detailed database and utilize a built-in search feature to select members and request a mentorship. These requests are automatically sent for vetting by the BCDA and, once mentorships are activated, mentees can schedule sessions with their newly acquired mentors to discuss and shadow on topics such as “how to buy a practice” or “planning for retirement”.

The portal automatically tracks mentorship interactions and allows for the generation of a BCDA report that summarizes sessions, topics, and hours. This allows members to easily access and track their member credits without having to rely on time consuming communications with various service teams.

By signing into the portal, members have full control of their mentorship profiles allowing for more meaningful engagements with the mentorship program and a better overall membership experience. On top of that, the portal’s self-serve nature removes the need for manual entries or updates to member data by the BCDA and allows for much more efficient management processes. Data is regularly updated and flows seamlessly into the BCDA CRM all through one neatly bundled solution.

The evolving needs of the BCDA underscore the importance of a truly scalable CRM implementation. At Catapult, we know from experience that the going-live with a new solution is only the beginning. Over time, as expectations for the member or customer experiences change, organizations need to be able to evolve their business processes to meet those changing expectations with updated experiences. Our implementation process relies on building an understanding of an organization’s current needs and structuring solutions that can scale and grow with them in the future. With this approach, building new integrations that raise the bar for your stakeholder experiences can easily be integrated into your existing solutions and processes.

If your organization is interested in learning more about implementing a CRM solution that will grow with you check out our recent eBook Transforming Your Business with CRM: A Success Framework for SMBs or schedule a demo today.