Helping Pink Ribbon Girls support more people fighting cancer
The Mission
Like many non-profits, Pink Ribbon Girls (PRG) spent a lot of time manually compiling and segmenting data for program operations, and to identify impact numbers for grant requests, annual reports, and more. The existing resource-planning app delivered more bugs than productivity. Client data could also change on a daily basis—with four different services available, along with multiple variables. Custom reporting did not address business intelligence needs. Many analysis tasks were still manual, time-consuming, or both.
Solving the problem was about more than data. On any given day, nearly 1,000 clients are actively receiving services from PRG. Test Double consultants worked to solve both immediate problems, and set PRG up to better serve clients and report on the impact of these services.
The Fix
By listening to what Pink Ribbon Girls needed most, taking a close look at systems, and triaging underlying problems, Test Double was able to address both short-term and long-term goals. The first step in this business intelligence makeover was stabilizing the foundation and moving infrastructure systems under PRG’s control. This fresh start made it possible to set up a better way to analyze client data and uncover insights with an easy-to-use interface.
After evaluating multiple business intelligence options, Metabase was selected to address the top priority of more manageable and accessible insights. This open source data platform allowed for reliable, immediate access to client data. Test Double further helped PRG set up Metabase to suit their specific data insight needs. For example, a GitHub repository with custom region maps connected to each of the three state’s service areas enabled dashboard views of active client counts by region.
The Results
Mindful of the challenge to ensure reporting serves both immediate and long-term needs, we completed a custom set-up of infrastructure and database tools to help staff get to usable insights faster. Pink Ribbon Girls can now achieve in real time what had previously taken multiple days of work, such as collecting and visualizing metrics across a slew of different variables. This allows PRG to easily access dashboard snapshots of data, while also filtering to reduce the amount of work needed to further analyze and identify trends for use in financial, fundraising and operational decisions.
- Solve for immediate data segmentation needs
- Uncover insights in real-time instead of days
- Stabilize infrastructure under their control
- Evolve to more detailed insights & visualizations
