Substance staff have always enjoyed a challenge and few organisations have issued more than the Brentford FC Community Sports Trust. Now in its thirty third year of delivering sport and activity based programmes across west London, the organisation has long had a reputation for adopting new and innovative approaches to their work. It was the Trust and Substance staff who pioneered the idea of using a Social Return on Investment (SROI) approach to measure the impact of football based community work which subsequently helped secure planning permission for their new stadium. The approach developed at Brentford has since helped secure planning permission for similar ground moves and stadia redevelopments at Luton Town, Exeter City, Millwall and Saracens, as well as helping to inform the development of an SROI approach with UEFA which is now being rolled out across Europe.
A more recent challenge was thrown up as a result of Brentford’s increased work in primary schools which required smarter processes to be put in place for deploying coaching staff and recording sessions. While the team responsible for managing this programme had access to both Views and the Dashboard Coach Management System, the systems didn’t communicate with each other. This meant double data entry, time and resources wasted and a frustrated work force.
Over the past year, the Tech Teams at both Substance and Dashboard Technology have been working hard behind the scenes to integrate the two systems and provide a seamless experience for management and administrative staff in community sports organisations. An analysis by Dashboard Technology has suggested that the integrated system will save 3,800 hours of work annually, helping staff to be deployed in other areas of the charity, ensuring it is both more efficient and effective.
Luke Skelhorn, Operations Director at the Brentford FC Community Sports Trust, highlighted the difference that the integration has made to the Trust:
“The Dashboard System is used from project activation right through to our payroll system. It was critical for us that the integration worked and we were able to collect, manage and report different types of data across the organisation. We now feel in complete control of how project information is communicated throughout the Trust, particularly to our front line coaches and volunteers, and confident that we are in a much better place due to the investments made by both Substance and Dashboard. We would advise anybody else managing large numbers of staff and volunteers to take a look at the integration.”
If you would like to know more about the Dashboard and Views integration sign up to our webinar on 27th July, 10.30am – 11.30am for a demonstration by CLICKING HERE
If you want to know more information please email info@substance.net
Please note – the Dashboard System is an additional paid for service and not included as part of the Views license
