Calling all Supermums!
Heather Black, Managing Director, our Company CIC
I never imagined I would build databases as my career, but that’s just want I do today – I implement databases for non-profits, to help improve their efficiency and evaluate their impact.
I’m not a techie coder! I’m a mum, business owner and management consultant. I have a team of 10 – and 5 of them are working mums. All with their own specialist skills. We have team days quarterly when we all get together for some team building and fun. At university I found my passion, to support charitable organisations to become sustainable and to help them maximise their impact on society. It’s what I’ve spent my whole career focusing on; starting a business 11 years ago to provide consultancy support. Building databases is now one of our main services. The decision to add databases to our service offer was firstly a great fit for the business, but also for me personally. For business, we chose to use Salesforce CRM, as it’s the leading global CRM solution, and a great product for our clients – its largely customisable by click (not code) and they offer large discounts to non-profits. It can be used to manage delivery of services, project management, HR, sales, fundraising, and marketing. Salesforce had over 150,000 customers in 2015, including 26,000 charities worldwide.
For me personally, I used to deliver a lot of coaching and consultancy in the workplace, and I started to realise that this wasn’t going to be a sustainable career with a baby on the way! I didn’t want to travel out to client sites 5 days a week. With the database development work, I could initially meet up with clients to discuss the design, but then I could work from home to build the database which meant a great work-life balance.
With Salesforce CRM, you can train as an administrator, consultant and developer. The administrator role is a great place to start as you can build databases with clicks, so you don’t need any coding expertise. It’s something you can do during the day or night at home or office. All you need is a good understanding of business or charities, the ability to get to grips with IT, and a desire to get lost in the world of database build and tools. We have many projects on the go at any one time all needing something slightly different, so it’s never boring. It gets surprisingly addictive!
As database creators, I like to think we are ‘tidying up’ an organisation – we clear up their data, streamline everyday processes and help them to evaluate how they are doing against targets real-time.
I’m a solutions person, and I love helping teams and organisations perform better, and more importantly be happier. In the words of Salesforce, we are the Salesforce Superheroes!
I think now is a great time for mum’s to retrain and access flexible roles in the Salesforce eco-system therefore training up other mums seemed like the perfect fit for our mission.
After all, we all know all mums are Supermums.
We have developed the Salesforce Supermums Programme to offer mums a package of support, including training, mentoring and work experience to get them started. After qualifying as a certified Salesforce administrator, they can expect to earn between £20-£40 per hour as a freelancer.
For mums, this programme opens up a whole new career path into the Salesforce ecosystem of administrators, but also business analysts, project managers, trainers or developers! There is currently a Salesforce skills shortage in the UK so employment opportunities are plentiful. We also support #workthatworks, an initiative which calls on businesses and individuals everywhere to show their support for flexible working.
