Cincinnati Works automated Salesforce data management to focus on delivering their mission
Cincinnati Works is a nonprofit organization with a mission to eliminate poverty in the Cincinnati area. It offers a series of programs designed to help people move out of poverty through employment. “Cincinnati Works is there for our members for their entire journey, whether it takes 5 years, 10 years, or a lifetime,” says Salesforce Manager Heath Parks, who spoke with us about the steps he’s taken to safeguard the organization’s data.
Heath joined Cincinnati Works in 2014, as a solo admin. The organization had been using Salesforce since 2009, and needed someone to juggle the responsibilities of being an admin, developer and architect all in one role.
Protecting mission-critical data
Cincinnati Works relies on Salesforce to track program outcomes and make data-driven decisions for the future. “Salesforce is our primary source of record”, explains Heath. The platform holds a wide variety of data sets, including on coaching, soft skills training, sites, teaching partnerships, a social enterprise, donations, volunteers and more.
Coming from a finance background, Heath understood the importance of security and risk management. He quickly identified that backups for Salesforce were needed to protect the valuable data Cincinnati Works held on the platform.
“Losing access to our Salesforce data would be devastating. It’s our single source of truth. Forget the time and effort of restoring — which is extraordinary. I also think we miss the human aspect of data — these records tell people’s story. If we lose that data, we lose their trust.”
Initially, Heath set up Salesforce’s native backup solution, Data Export, but found it could be unreliable: “Sometimes Data Export worked, sometimes it didn’t, and sometimes I didn’t know why it wasn’t working”. Buying a backup solution was initially seen as a luxury — a common challenge for nonprofits struggling to justify spending on infrastructure.
But that all changed after a near miss.
One day Heath and his colleagues couldn’t see their data via a third-party application. Heath describes “three minutes of abject fear” until they confirmed that the data had thankfully not been lost. But this was the wakeup call. “Fortunately the data wasn’t deleted, but it awakened the fear: What if it had been? It’s improbable that Salesforce will disappear tomorrow, but it’s not impossible.” A backup solution was needed.
Heath knew of Gearset as a DevOps solution, but wasn’t aware it offered backup as a standalone product. While researching backup solutions, he saw Gearset recommended on a Reddit thread and was struck by a commenter’s observation that backing up is just half the challenge — you have to know how you’ll restore.
“A lot of tools can back up your data, but what’s it going to look like when you restore it? That was when the lightbulb went on.”
Heath did an ROI analysis on the time he spent on data management versus the investment in Gearset, and discovered that the time savings alone would save the organization $2k worth of his time each year. For example, Heath reverted a colleague’s inadvertent data error in just 2 hours, where previously it would have taken a full day to resolve. So Cincinnati Works implemented Gearset to secure their Salesforce data and help Heath reclaim some of his time.
Avoiding Salesforce’s storage limits
Gearset’s backup dashboard shows how data is changing day to day, mainly to alert users of any significant data loss. But looking at his backup job, Heath noticed something else about Cincinnati Works’ Salesforce org: the data was growing much more quickly than expected.
Heath was able to work out that a third-party app was generating a lot of records in Salesforce. Within a few years, Cincinnati Works would run out of storage in Salesforce. Gearset had just launched its archiving solution, and so Heath worked with Gearset’s product team, giving feedback on the new archiving product. He was struck by the way everyone listened carefully in order to build a product that truly met the needs of customers.
Focusing on the mission
Automating and accelerating data management practices has freed up Heath’s time, so he can focus more attention on architecting Cincinnati Works’ Salesforce org. His advice for others is to consider “where you want your people to be spending their time and effort.”
“If you look at data backup and archiving as a cost item rather than a value-add, you’re looking at it incorrectly. These are value-adds that will enhance your org, give you peace of mind and enable you to focus on delivering the mission without getting bogged down by operational concerns.”
