CASE STUDY
Largest Museum in Michigan Leverages Data Hub to Achieve 25% Growth
To build strong relationships with constituents, you must know them—not as a group, but as individuals. But, how do you do this when your knowledge of each one is spread across different systems throughout your institution?
The Client
The Henry Ford
Founded by Henry Ford, the institution comprises of multiple cultural venues, including the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, Greenfield Village, the Ford Rouge Factory, and the 4k Giant Screen Experience. The Henry Ford is one of the most popular attractions in the Detroit area, hosting one-of-a-kind events, educational tours, and demonstrations, as well as private events and facility rentals.
The Henry Ford is one of the most popular attractions in the Detroit area, with 1.8 million visitors each year.
The Problem
Overwhelmed with Data
Like most museums, The Henry Ford collects and stores constituent information in various systems: events, ticketing, membership management, donor management, point of sales, facility rental, customer relationship management (CRM), and even spreadsheets. Each system comes from a different vendor, including Siriusware, Microsoft, Blackbaud, and others.
Yet, with all this data, The Henry Ford’s staff couldn’t use it effectively. The information on an individual stored in one system was not connected to their information in another. This made it impossible to see how constituents interacted with the museum across different touchpoints.
The situation became painfully obvious when a large donor filed two complaints through the organization’s call center. Each complaint was logged, but there was no way for staff outside of the call center to see this information. Lacking this knowledge, a development team member contacted the individual about new gifts before their complaints had been addressed.
It was impossible to see how an individual interacted with the museum across multiple touchpoints. This led to communications issues and hampered the effectiveness of outreach.
The Henry Ford prides itself on exceptional customer service, and while the incident was an outlier, it highlighted the significant gap between collecting constituent data and leveraging that data for institutional improvement. To address the problem, museum administrators needed to connect all the data they had on each constituent and make it accessible to everyone within the organization. Commonly known as a unified view or 360-degree view of an individual, The Henry Ford considered multiple options for achieving it, including a new CRM. But packaged solutions left much to be desired: they were expensive, required data migration and retraining, and often resulted in the loss of valuable features.
The Solution
A Unified Data Hub
The Henry Ford reached out to Ben Taub, CEO of Dataspace, for help developing a solution. After meeting with vendors, it was clear that a change in systems would not be a good option, whether it was replacing all of their systems with a single unified platform or using a new CRM as a hub. The Henry Ford wanted more than just unified data; they wanted to use that data to better understand and engage with their constituents. They wanted to improve how the museum operated, without replacing the mission-critical systems the staff relied on.
The solution Dataspace developed for The Henry Ford involves 3 key components:
The Results
Increased Growth and Engagement
After a year of design and development, Ben and The Henry Ford’s data team launched the cloud-based hub that feeds the CRM and other institutional systems with accurate, unified data. That data also supported in-depth analysis and engagement tracking.
Since the hub launched, The Henry Ford has experienced:
- Nearly 25% membership growth
- Increased donations
- Increased success of outreach efforts
- More highly-engaged constituents
The project’s success created demand for more hub services. As a result, the hub is being expanded to incorporate operational data to address institutional effciency, effectiveness, and profitability.
“Since implementing the hub, we’ve grown our membership from 42,000 to 52,000. Donations have grown as well. Most of the emails we send get opened. We have a very engaged community who have opted in and are really involved with the institution.”
Pooja Budhraja
Enterprise Data Management, The Henry Ford
Leverage your data to increase customer engagement.
If you’re interested in how your company can benefit from a combination of better data management and advanced analytics, please reach out. We’re happy to schedule a zero-pressure consultation to discuss your situation and offer some options. Book a free consultation today.
