How the Parkinson’s Foundation Scales Salesforce and FormAssembly with Managed Services

The Parkinson’s Foundation (the Foundation) is known for its work and mission of making life better for people with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) by improving care, advancing research towards a cure for PD, and building on the energy, experience, and passion of the global Parkinson’s community. The Parkinson’s Foundation has had an ongoing, long-time partnership with Cloud for Good and was one of Cloud for Good’s first clients. The Parkinson’s Foundation began using Salesforce NPSP for its helpline in 2010, but connected with Tal Frankfurt, Cloud for Good’s CEO and founder, shortly after for further customizations.

Adolfo Diaz, Vice President, Information & Resources at the Foundation, shared about the beginnings of the partnership: “We had a different implementation partner in terms of our initial customization of getting the platform ready for our service agents who answer calls on a 1-800 number. That partner helped us with the basic NPSP setup. Shortly after starting, within about a year or two, we had the need to make this small customization. Our partner at the time, who originally deployed Salesforce and helped us get started, said, ‘You know what, we’re going to connect you directly with the developer that can help you and you can just work directly with him.’ That developer was Tal Frankfurt, and that was the beginning of Parkinson’s relationship with Cloud for Good.

“After, we had miscellaneous needs here and there. As time went on over those first few years, we kept reaching back to Tal on a sort of one-off basis for smaller projects. That has been one of the reasons that helped cement our relationship with Cloud for Good.”

The Opportunity: Implementation Partnership Leads to Managed Services Partnership

Since then, the Foundation’s Salesforce and technology needs have evolved from basic setups to more complex customizations. In the process, the Foundation transitioned from ad-hoc projects with Cloud for Good to eventually Managed Services. The introduction of Managed Services provided a structured approach for the Foundation through regular meetings and ongoing support from Cloud for Good.

“When it comes to updates, user experience, any new functionalities or tweaks that maybe we can do to improve user experience, it’s something I don’t always have the time to do myself,” explained Diaz. “When Cloud for Good rolled out Managed Services, we were one of its first Managed Services clients. The concept of having a set number of hours and setting weekly or bi-weekly meetings has been a particularly good thing for us, because it has helped us keep up with Salesforce updates and make enhancements. So now, if there is anything new from Salesforce, I no longer have to worry about that because I know that Managed Services is going to tell me what I need to pay attention to.”

This partnership with Cloud for Good Managed Services has helped the Foundation stay on top of Salesforce updates and continuously improve its processes over the years. “We’ve done a number of things with Cloud for Good over time,” shared Diaz. “Managed Services helped us with our transition from Classic Salesforce to Salesforce Lightning. One other important thing Managed Services did was implement Experience Cloud to build a user community for individuals with Parkinson’s using a Salesforce Experience site. The rollout of our community experience was right as the pandemic was breaking out. Despite some initial challenges, Cloud for Good made things right and helped ensure a successful launch.”

The Challenge: Program Sponsor Information Tracking on Salesforce

One of the key projects that Cloud for Good Managed Services delivered for the Parkinson’s Foundation was setting up FormAssembly integrations for the Foundation’s Salesforce org.

The Foundation offers program sessions across the country by regional chapters that are aimed at providing support, services, classes, physical activities, and more for people with Parkinson’s Disease. At the time, the process that program sponsors followed to send the Foundation information about their program offerings was by submitting the information via individual online forms powered by Luminate. These forms were links on individual chapter pages on the Parkinson’s Foundation website.

Diaz explained the pain points of that process and of using Luminate forms. “The limitation and shortcoming of the Luminate forms was that we could not connect them with anything. We would export, copy, and paste information into an individual Word document for each Chapter. The existing form itself was also wonky because Luminate forms do not have conditional logic— technology that has been available for 25 years—and that logic still is not available on Luminate. So, then a team member would add the submitted program information to the Word document, which then gets converted to a PDF, containing a lengthy list that is not searchable and then this static document gets uploaded to the chapter web page.”

This manual, cumbersome process was inefficient and created poor user experience for internal staff. As a result, the Foundation sought to streamline the way program sponsors submit information about their programs online and leaned on their Managed Services contract with Cloud for Good for a solution.

The Solution: FormAssembly Integration Support from Managed Services

FormAssembly License Upgrade

The Parkinson’s Foundation wanted to use one central form where sponsors around the country, regardless of region, could submit their program information. That one form’s contents would then be reviewed by Foundation staff, who would subsequently decide whether or not the information received should be sent to their Salesforce org.

At the time, the Parkinson’s Foundation was using FormAssembly and had an active license. However, the Foundation’s legacy license did not allow for the necessary functionality that the Foundation team required for its enhanced program form submission process. It was then determined that the Foundation needed to upgrade its FormAssembly license to gain the functionalities it sought, including the ability to create workflows that would be leveraged to fully build out the Foundation’s form business requirements. FormAssembly’s Team plan was recommended, and after the new license was obtained, Cloud for Good leveraged the FormAssembly workflow capabilities in the upgraded license to build out a form solution for the Foundation staff.

FormAssembly Workflows with Salesforce Connectors Build

With FormAssembly, its prefill and conditional logic functionalities, and Salesforce Connectors, Cloud for Good built an improved form for program sponsors to submit program information and an enhanced workflow for staff to review, send, and track program information on Salesforce. The new form was built with a set of required questions for vetting new programs or updating an existing program. These vetting questions were necessary to minimize creating records for unverifiable sponsors or duplicate records for existing programs or sponsors, which would have taken up space in the Foundation’s Salesforce. “I didn’t want to clog our Salesforce records with shady contacts or potential duplicates,” explained Diaz, “but this vetting process sort of allows us to keep submitted information in a temporary holding pen, and it has eliminated a lot of manual cutting, pasting, and unnecessary updating for us.”

Next, Cloud for Good built out a series of notifications: a first notification for newly received program sponsor submissions in the Parkinson’s Foundation’s Helpline, and a second notification for Foundation Helpline staff to be able to review these submissions. The final step was building a second form prefilled with a sponsor’s originally submitted information, which can then be sent into Salesforce through a FormAssembly Salesforce Connector.

The Results

Streamlined, Scalable Processes with Program Submission Notifications

Cloud for Good Managed Services’ work integrating FormAssembly with Salesforce replaced cumbersome, manual processes with automated workflows, which has improved program efficiency and customer service experiences.

Under the new, streamlined process:

Foundation staff now receive notifications when program information is submitted with the FormAssembly-powered form
Next, staff review the information submitted and determine if the program needs to be tracked in Salesforce
Once a program is approved, the information and data is sent into Salesforce.

In addition, by using one central form exposed with a single link on its website, the Parkinson’s Foundation has the ability, if needed in the future, to easily make updates to its program submission process or to its process for requesting information from program sponsors.

The Foundation was able to streamline processes, such as managing its referral database and handling publication orders.

A Revamped Instance of FormAssembly with Additional and Future Use Cases

Not only did Cloud for Good’s integration of FormAssembly streamline how sponsors submit program information to the Parkinson’s Foundation, but it also resulted in a completely revamped instance of the Foundation’s FormAssembly that can be leveraged for additional use cases. “We’ve leveraged and incorporated FormAssembly into some use cases, and we’ve done all that with the guidance and brainstorming of various members of the Cloud for Good Managed Services team,” shared Diaz.

In fact, FormAssembly is also now used for the Foundation’s online publication store, which had been previously on a legacy e-commerce platform. “We’re very well-known for our educational materials, and our online store used to be on a legacy e-commerce platform. But this platform was horrible for people to order our publications with,” explained Diaz. “They had to place an order that was in a different system, and then they would call our Helpline and ask, ‘Where’s my order? I ordered two months ago,’ or ‘I don’t know if I ordered anything, do you know?’ Our staff would then go and log into the system and try to find their order.

“Last year, I was able to convince my team that we needed to have a solution for this online store issue. Long story short, we created a FormAssembly form that has now eliminated the use of our legacy e-commerce platform on the Parkinson’s Foundation website. Now, when you go to order publications, it looks like you’re on a parkinsons.org page, but you’re actually inside in an iFrame within a FormAssembly form that is pinging our database, seeing if there’s an existing contact, making a case, creating a publication order all in one fell swoop, and then that together with the orders becomes a basis of a phone call. It’s all in one place.”

Diaz shared some of the future plans the Foundation has for its FormAssembly instance: “This coming year, we’re looking forward to building a workflow or automation that can allow us to push a populated form back to a program sponsor via their contact information on Salesforce, and it is an opportunity for us to ask them every few months, ‘Hey, is the information about your program we have on record still current or not?’ Then we will allow sponsors to send their form right back to us with any updates. We currently only do that for program records that we already have in Salesforce, but we’re excited about rolling this out for more people.”

Highlights and Value of the Managed Services Partnership

As one of Cloud for Good’s longest clients and ongoing Managed Services customers, Diaz expressed great praise for Cloud for Good’s partnership and experience with Managed Services. “The level of business integrity at Cloud for Good has always impressed me so much. The other thing that has always been remarkable and that I have also been impressed with over the years is the quality, the expertise, and the knowledge of the people at Cloud for Good. Everybody at Cloud for Good has just been great to work with, open and accessible. If they do not have the answer, they are quick to find it, and that is why we continue with Managed Services. It has been valuable for us over the years. I have had zero complaints with every Cloud for Good Managed Services consultant who Parkinson’s has worked with.”

Being one of Cloud for Good’s longest Managed Services customers, Diaz also shared, “It has been very comforting to know that we have this extra set of eyes and structure on our account over the years. I never have to constantly think, ‘Okay, what’s next?’, ‘What can we improve?’, ‘What can we do better?’ It has been an incredibly good process and a very good investment to have Managed Services hours.”

To learn more about the Parkinson’s Foundation and its work, visit www.parkinson.org.

To learn more about FormAssembly and its solutions, visit www.formassembly.com.

To learn more about how Cloud for Good Managed Services can provide strategic, ongoing support for Salesforce following an implementation, download and read our eBook.