CUSTOMER STORY
From Manual Entry to Mission Focus: Scaling Impact at Collaborative Classroom
NONPROFIT
Center for the Collaborative Classroom is a nonprofit organization dedicated to student literacy and social-emotional learning. They serve over 10 million students by providing evidence-based programs for educators. Alyssa Moylan, the Business Services Manager, leads the operational infrastructure that supports Professional Learning nationwide. She oversees the systems, contractor coordination, and cross-functional processes that ensure districts receive the right expertise at the right time.
TECHNOLOGIES INVOLVED
Navigating The Landscape Of Rapid Growth
In 2020, Collaborative Classroom experienced substantial growth. While this allowed them to reach more educators, it also revealed that their homegrown technology could not scale with them. The organization’s growth was hindered by two systems that operated in total isolation.
They utilized MemberLeap(custom built) for contractor data alongside Salesforce. Because these platforms did not talk to each other, the team faced a “manual tax.” Data had to be moved from Salesforce to MemberLeap by hand. This consumed hours of administrative time and increased the risk of human error. For Alyssa, this meant fragmented visibility across Professional Learning operations. Getting a clear picture of contractor capacity for upcoming events was a slow, multi-step process.
The Plative Partnership: A Unified Vision
Alyssa needed a way to make life easier for her team. Plative joined the project as a thought partner to help turn that vision into a reality. We focused on understanding the use cases of their daily work to ensure the Salesforce solution truly supported their mission and continue to work through specific nuances with the team now that they are live. The new system includes:
- Automated Workflows: We replaced manual outreach with automated email templates and triggers.
- Custom Modules: These were built to manage the specific post-sale lifecycle of professional learning events.
- Integrated Intake: We configured FormAssembly to feed data directly into Salesforce.
“Plative’s ability to be thought leaders and work through every problem, especially the nuanced ones, was invaluable.”
— Alyssa Moylan, Business Services Manager, Collaborative Classroom
A Transformed Future: Immediate Gains In Quality And Time
Within just two weeks of going live, the organization saw a dramatic shift in operational health. The “manual tax” has been eliminated, allowing the team to focus on mission-driven strategy rather than data entry.
The impact includes:
- Total Data Transparency: Alyssa no longer hunts for information. She can pull up a district profile in Salesforce and see all the information without manual input.
- Improved Data Integrity: With manual entry removed, data quality has reached a new high. This provides a reliable foundation for decision-making.
Looking Ahead: The Roadmap To Success
With a clean data foundation in place, Collaborative Classroom is preparing for future enhancements. They plan to build executive dashboards to visualize real-time KPIs and their impact on the educational community. They also envision a self-service portal where contractors can view their own schedules directly.
Alyssa suggests that other leaders focus on the details of their daily workflows. She recommends documenting the tricky, real-world scenarios your team handles every day. This ensures your technology is resilient enough to keep up with the actual complexities of your work.
“The quality of our data has gone up and the time saved is incredible. Now, I just pull up an account and everything is right there.”
— Alyssa Moylan, Business Services Manager
Technical Breakdown
To replace the unscalable legacy environment, Plative architected and deployed a native Salesforce Trainer Management CRM specifically tailored to Collaborative Classroom’s post-sale lifecycle. The core of the solution involved developing a custom Professional Learning Delivery application that consolidated fragmented customer and contractor data into a single source of truth, effectively bridging the gap between their disparate legacy tools.
On the front end, Plative configured FormAssembly to automate the contractor call-out process, mapping submission data directly to custom Salesforce objects to eliminate the burden of manual data entry. To drive operational health, the team implemented a series of sophisticated automated workflows and email triggers designed to manage outreach and confirmations based on real-time project milestones.
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