Hours saved per year
Time saved on approving requisitions
Shipments processed each year
Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) is a non-profit organization focused on reducing malnutrition and starvation across the globe. Their Department of International Programs works with various partner organizations to send food to children in need across the world.
Messy data prevented updates and maintenance
The Department of International Programs at FMSC began using Airtable in August of 2023 before working with XRay, but the implementation set up by a different consultant failed to meet their needs.
Their Airtable system included unnecessary complexity that made it difficult for FMSC to build new features, troubleshoot bugs, and maintain critical parts of the systems themselves.
As such, one of their primary goals was to reduce the complexity of their Airtable system. By doing so, they aimed to empower their team’s key stakeholders, like Kelsey Deusterman (team lead of the FMSC Partner Portal) to manage their Airtable operations on their own.
No structure for collaboration with partners
Additionally, FMSC needed a better way to collaborate with their many partners who help to distribute food.
Prior to working with XRay, FMSC had no structured processes or tools to facilitate communication with partner organizations. For each shipment, they would discuss relevant topics over email, leading to redundant conversations and missing or obscured data that got lost in long threads.
To replace their ad hoc communication processes, FMSC wanted a structured system that would centralize crucial conversations and shared data. They also wanted to be able to batch certain workflows, so that their partners could accept, reference, or provide compliance information for multiple shipments in one place.
Building a streamlined and scalable Airtable system
To clean up FMSC’s Airtable system and create a more reliable, scalable setup, XRay migrated all of their data to a new base.
FMSC uses their updated Airtable base to manage and coordinate shipments with their partners, keeping track of crucial logistics and compliance data for every package. XRay-built automations send notifications directly to FMSC’s partners whenever there’s a relevant update for their shipments, ensuring that everyone stays in the loop.
Creating Partner Portals for easy collaboration
To enable better communication and collaboration with FMSC’s partners, XRay built a dedicated partner portal in Softr that uses Airtable as a backend database.
This allowed FMSC to continue managing and automating their partners directly in Airtable as they were accustomed to doing, while also allowing partners to view and submit data to FMSC’s Airtable system through Softr.
The portal includes pages that allow partners to:
1. Accept or decline upcoming shipments
2. View information on all previous shipments
3. View outstanding shipments which require extra form submissions to meet FMSC’s compliance requirements
XRay migrated FMSC’s database into a new Airtable system without any interruptions. The new system maintains all of the automations that FMSC had previously built and integrated into their daily workflows.
Throughout the migration, FMSC played an active role in crafting the system that worked best for their team. The ultimate goal of our engagement with FMSC was to leave them with an Airtable database that they could update themselves, and they successfully built multiple automations after we completed the migration.
The new Airtable setup and its associated partner portal in Softr are projected to save over 600 hours each year for FMSC and their partners. The bulk of these time savings come from the streamlined partner portal, with key processes for submitting, reviewing, and accepting requisitions or status forms reduced from 5 minutes per form to just 30 seconds.
FMSC’s partners are thrilled with the new portal, and have shared extensive feedback praising the design choices that acknowledge their earlier criticisms of the messy communication system.
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“This project has been a huge win for both FMSC and our partners! Partners now have ownership of their information, reducing their confusion and the number of emails they send us with questions. Multiple departments at FMSC are now able to focus on other projects because the Portal has automated tasks that used to be manual.”
Hop on a 15-minute call with an XRay automation consultant to discuss your options and learn more about how we can help your team to get more done.
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