Growing Together: Leveraging Power Platform for Sustainable Reforestation Success at the Arbor Day Foundation
The Arbor Day Foundation is the world’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to tree planting. Established in 1972, the Arbor Day Foundation has championed the cause of global reforestation, aligning with local and international partners to replant millions of trees lost to fire, insects, disease, and weather. Rejuvenated forests help to protect watersheds, stabilize soil, restore wildlife habitats, improve air quality, and create jobs.
To optimize their mission, the Arbor Day Foundation has forged a strategic partnership with Stoneridge Software for business technology consulting and support, particularly for their CRM solution, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. In this project, we embark on a journey through the collaborative efforts between the Arbor Day Foundation and Stoneridge Software, unraveling the challenges faced in managing the Arbor Day Foundation’s Reforestation initiatives and the innovative solutions devised to overcome them.
Business Challenges: The Struggle for Streamlined Data
Through the global reforestation program, the Arbor Day Foundation has aligned with local and international partners to replant more than 230 million trees in forests around the world. These collaborations are vital for providing funding for the reforestation planting projects. The Arbor Day Foundation’s Reforestation team works to identify and prioritize projects, while the Corporate Partnerships team sources and matches funding for the initiatives.
However, the Reforestation and Corporate Partnerships teams found themselves grappling with outdated manual and spreadsheet-driven tracking processes. Recognizing the inefficiencies hindering their operations, they realized the pressing need for a transformative shift towards a more efficient, automated, and real-time approach. This initiative arose from the desire to enhance the overall user experience and streamline the management of reforestation initiatives for both teams.
Challenges addressed:
- Manual and Excel-based processes for proposal, planting project, and reservation data maintenance.
- Corporate partners managing reservations outside of Dynamics 365 CE, resulting in cumbersome updates and confirmations.
- Lack of integration between external forms and CE, leading to disjointed data handling.
- Limited visibility into project funding and resource allocation due to fragmented data management.
- Inefficiencies in tracking and analyzing reforestation efforts, hindering strategic decision-making.
Solution: Reforestation Team’s Journey Towards Automation
In response to the longstanding goal of integrating Reforestation initiatives into Dynamics 365 CE, Stoneridge Software collaborated closely with the Arbor Day Foundation Reforestation and Corporate Partnerships teams to overhaul their manual and Excel-based processes. The aim was to streamline the maintenance of proposal, planting project, and reservation data, paving the way for a more efficient and effective approach to forest restoration efforts.
One of the key solutions implemented was the automation of proposal and accomplishment report data, which were previously submitted through external surveys. By leveraging Microsoft Dataverse, this automation streamlined the collection, tracking, and analysis of data, eliminating the need for laborious manual input. Bye, bye Excel spreadsheets!
Stoneridge Software recommended harnessing the capabilities of the Microsoft Power Platform to address the Reforestation team’s manual challenges, transitioning their processes into Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. This involved the development of a Model-Driven App specifically tailored for Reforestation, providing a centralized platform for managing all aspects of their initiatives.
- Developed a Model-Driven App for incorporating Reforestation data within Dynamics 365 CE, enabling real-time data entry and streamlined processes.
- Implemented Power Automate to retrieve and transport proposed planting and accomplishment report data from ArcGIS surveys into Microsoft Dataverse.
- Facilitated seamless integration of funding reservations for planting trees by the Corporate Partnerships team within the same platform.
- Modernized and unified approach to collaboration between Reforestation and Corporate Partnerships teams, eliminating reliance on disparate systems and Excel spreadsheets.
By leveraging the existing partnership, this solution not only modernized and unified processes for the Arbor Day Foundation but also provided a scalable foundation for future growth and innovation in their reforestation efforts.
Microsoft Technologies Used:
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement:
- Data Management: Centralizes proposal, planting project, and reservation data for easy access and updates.
- Integration: Connects various data sources and systems, improving overall operational efficiency and effectiveness.
Power Platform Model-Driven App:
- Significant enhancement in overall user experience.
- Empowers users to effectively accumulate comprehensive lists of proposals, planting projects, planting reservations, and accomplishment planting reports which manage the entirety of the processes and its reporting elements.
- Permits navigation between custom tables and ensures that data is not repeated unnecessarily.
- Transactions take seconds instead of minutes making users more productive.
Microsoft Power Automate:
- Collection of proposal and accomplishment report data from ArcGIS surveys and transferring it into Microsoft Dataverse.
- Automatic rubric scoring capabilities that represent the performance expectations for proposals.
- Creation of planting project records from the approval of proposals.
- Updating the planting project’s tree percentage totals, unmatched tree totals, and reservation totals.
- Integrated data from Dynamic 365 CE to other systems like ArcGIS, Monday.com, and internal systems.
Accurate Data Integration:
- Eliminated manual calculation errors from multiple access points.
- Immediate precise number of trees available for Corporate Partnership reservations.
- Seamless planting project approval process, reducing operational complexity.
- Diminished reliance on manual processes for improved proficiency.
Results Rooted in Success
Stoneridge Software’s intimate knowledge of the Arbor Day Foundation’s processes and successful teamwork between the two companies facilitated the development and implementation of a transformational solution for managing forest restoration initiatives. By centralizing historical data within Microsoft Dataverse, a foundation for future reporting and analysis was established, enabling the Arbor Day Foundation to make informed decisions and drive operational efficiency.
The streamlined interface and automated processes have eliminated manual data entry and tracking via spreadsheets, significantly improving productivity. With increased user engagement, the system now offers extensive reporting and analysis capabilities, showcasing the transformative impact of the collaboration between the Arbor Day Foundation and Stoneridge Software.
