New Application Portal for Kinderhulp (Children's Aid)
You may not be able to imagine it, but in the Netherlands, 1 in 12 children live in poverty. The National Fund for Children's Aid helps these children by providing them with a bike, a day out, or education.
Parents who struggle to provide their children with basic needs such as food, drink, or clothing may find it impossible to afford memberships for sports clubs or school trips. Unfortunately, in the Netherlands, too many children live in poverty. The National Fund for Children's Aid assists children and youth aged 0 to 21 who grow up in situations where there are insufficient financial resources available.
National Fund for Children's Aid
Marieke Dufour, Relationship Manager of Expenditures at the National Fund for Children's Aid, explains: "We help children and young people between the ages of 0 and 21 who grow up in poverty with small and large things they need, but cannot be purchased because there is not enough money and there are no other provisions available. This can range from a bike to a day out, and from clothing to a gift for Sinterklaas."
Less Overhead Costs
Social organizations can submit an application for a child through Kinderhulp's online portal. Together with our partner Verito, we created this new application portal. "Previously, applications came to us in Dynamics NAV, but we still handled the rest of the process very traditionally," Marieke says. "As an applicant, you couldn't communicate through the portal. You could submit an application and view the status, and that was it. As a result, we received many phone calls and emails about the applications. We realized that this could be more efficient. We want to help as many children as possible, and we want to do it as efficiently as possible. The less money that goes towards overhead, the more money can go towards helping the children. If a portal could help us with that, it's a pure win."
We chose Verito's portal that we developed together and use for various clients. This portal is a generic environment in which you can manage content, news, and blogs, but which also supports data exchange with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. This meets the growing need of companies and organizations to strengthen the connection with the customer's relationships (members, donors, applicants, students). And to simultaneously provide savings by offering more self-service options.
Below is a preview of the portal. Texts have been modified for privacy reasons.
The same .NET 'language'
The content and portal are accessed by users through Umbraco CMS. Which, similar to Business Central, is built on Microsoft technology. Because both systems have the same .NET 'language', data can be exchanged easily between them.
Once again, the Verito portal proved to be the perfect solution for this challenge. According to Marieke from Kinderhulp, the project was "quite challenging" because when you want to achieve so much with one application, every detail has to be right. And even the moment of going live was quite nerve-wracking. It involved a primary process where hundreds of requests are received daily. However, with a well-prepared and coordinated deployment strategy, almost everything went smoothly.
With the new portal, applicants can submit their requests, view their submitted requests, and export different requests. Additionally, they can now submit requests for multiple children (sometimes even dozens!) at once by uploading Excel documents.
User research
Nationaal Fonds Kinderhulp (National Fund for Children's Aid) is pleased with the progress they have made. They are still receiving as many requests as last year, but the processing time is much less. A survey among users showed that 91% are satisfied or very satisfied with the way a request is submitted through the portal. Additionally, 98% are satisfied or very satisfied with the user experience of the application portal. Respondents found that the portal looks neat, well-maintained, clear, organized, and visually appealing.
Marieke from Nationaal Fonds Kinderhulp is very pleased: "I dare say we have made a big leap forward."
