“With the Intelligenthive®, we have a solid data foundation. This gives us the space to really use data to engage people more and better in our mission: every child should be able to be a child, anytime, anywhere.”
UNICEF Netherlands is taking the next step in digital transformation and data maturity. With the Intelligenthive®, Beeminds’ data platform based on Microsoft Fabric, the organization now has one central place for all its data. This forms the basis for AI applications, high-quality reporting and personalizing the customer journey of UNICEF donors and supporters.
From fast in production to making an impact
Within weeks the Intelligenthive® was rolled out and within six months the first use case was in production and the production environment was live. The team can now build their own dashboards, unlock data and even launch AI and machine learning models. This allows UNICEF to use data
to engage people more and better in their mission: every child should be able to be a child, anytime and anywhere. Pascal Blom is Director Tech & Data at UNICEF Netherlands and tells more about the cooperation with Beeminds and the results.
About UNICEF Netherlands
UNICEF Netherlands is committed to children’s rights worldwide and raises funds to help as many children as possible. From its office in The Hague, UNICEF Netherlands works on campaigns, donor recruitment, lobbying and programs.
Industry: charity / NGO
Staff in the Netherlands: 120 employees and 1,700 volunteers
Number of countries active: 190
Location: The Hague
Beeminds solution: Intelligenthive® and Project Services
The challenge
When Pascal Blom started as Director of Tech & Data in 2023, he encountered an organization that had already invested heavily in digital transformation. With growing ambitions in data, online and AI, it became clear that a new data foundation was needed to take the next step.
- The existing data warehouse ran entirely on SQL Server and experienced frequent failures.
- There were ambitions in the areas of machine learning and personalization of donor communications, but the data base for that was still insufficient.
- Reports were scattered across Excel sheets and Power BI reports, often with their own business logic for each department.
- BI analysts and engineers spent a lot of time dealing with failures and outages.
- Data governance was not yet in place.
“We had already invested heavily in the digital transformation of our base systems with SaaS solutions like Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure. But because of our big ambitions on data, the number of links and data pipelines grew so much that a new data foundation became inevitable,” Pascal said.
The solution
After seeing the Intelligenthive® demo, UNICEF was immediately convinced. Instead of a large one-off project, Beeminds and UNICEF opted for a value-driven approach: starting small, applied learning and building out based on concrete use cases that have great value for UNICEF.
- Starting point: An MVP with monthly financial reporting, previously entirely in Excel.
- Approach: Deploy Intelligenthive® as a data foundation with a central data model and automated data flows.
- Collaboration: Beeminds works closely with the Tech & Data team, Finance and Marketing. Especially the deployment of Beeminds consultants who think along with the Finance team in terms of content is mentioned as a success factor.
- Short timeline: Within six months, the production environment was live, including the first unlocked resources such as Dynamics 365 Sales (CRM) and the Dynamics 365 F&O.
Pascal: “What convinced me was that Beeminds not only builds a platform, but also helps to have the right conversations, tactically, strategically and operationally. That aligns with what our organization needs.”
The result
The foundation is in place: UNICEF Netherlands now has a stable test and production environment, in which millions of data rows are processed daily.
- Fully automated financial reporting ready for use by finance and the MT.
- A robust data foundation with one central data model, instead of separate Excel sheets and reports.
- The main Microsoft Dynamics 365 data sources containing all customer and donation data are accessed through Microsoft Fabric and the Intelligenthive®.
- The data foundation is monitored by Beeminds’ DataOps team that takes immediate action on data quality issues.
- UNICEF data scientists are independently building new AI & machine learning data products and have started work on a
propensity model looking at donation behavior. Of course, all based on data from the foundation.
“We are still at the beginning, but the foundation is already providing us with value. Our Data Engineers are already independently building the first MVPs of machine learning use cases. That was unthinkable one year ago,” said Pascal.
“The partnership with UNICEF feels like a perfect match. They focus on impact for children and transparency towards donors. We make sure the technology is not a burden but simply works. That is exactly what the Intelligenthive® stands for.”
All customer data centralized as next step
The next step is to migrate all existing Power BI reports, Pascal said, and deploy data for marketing and campaign purposes. All online channels will soon be fed from this foundation as well. Our new Customer Data Platform (based on the Optimizely suite), Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and the linked activation channels will receive data directly from Microsoft Fabric. At the same time, online interactions are anonymized and AVG compliantly written back to the data platform. This creates one version of the truth and UNICEF Netherlands continues to grow into a data-driven organization that can communicate with current and future donors in a personal and transparent manner.
Pascal: “We are going to work more efficiently because of this and can help more children with the same resources.” Pascal offers another practical tip to organizations looking to take a similar step.
“Start small and choose a simple and current use case within your organization. If that runs, you can expand step by step and really make it a success.”
“The cooperation with Beeminds is pleasant and professional. Their engineers interface directly with our teams. When working with our finance colleagues, that really made the difference.”
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