Surf Life Saving NSW: How implementing Salesforce helps them save more lives

To keep their mission alive, SLSNSW runs Surf Life Saving Services, a fee-for-service commercial operation offering safety equipment and training courses to individuals, communities and organisations. Choosing Surf Life Saving Services for first aid products and training means directly supporting the amazing work of SLSNSW.

Holly Chave, a business manager with SLS Services, has watched the organisation grow over the years. In their first year, one salesperson and one trainer successfully organised and trained 90 Australians in life saving skills. As they grew, they discovered the need for better systems and processes to help them scale.

Chave says, “Our processes meant we were losing precious time and traction, and we couldn’t continue to operate that way.”

The brief 

When SLS Services approached us, they were completing most of their transactions manually, costing them valuable time and money.

How could SLS Services introduce technology and automation to help them streamline their processes and extend their reach? After all, delivering more first aid training to more people would save lives.

They came to us with a vision to automate business processes and consolidate their operations and data into a single source of truth.

For Holly and her team, Salesforce ticked all the right boxes as the platform to help them achieve this.

Our approach 

First we worked with SLS Services to clarify and prioritise their operational pain points. Their biggest problem was disconnectivity between the various systems they used to accept, deliver and manage orders.

Given SLS Services’ online store is where most customer transactions start, integrating it with Salesforce was critical. Any orders created via their ecommerce site would synchronise with Salesforce, giving them confidence in their accounts, orders and order lines. Any changes made to pricing in Salesforce would update automatically on their ecommerce site.

For managing their training schedule and bookings, SLS Services would continue to use their Learning Management System (LMS) Axcelerate. And by integrating it with Salesforce through custom development, all training history and purchases would be tracked against contacts and accounts in Salesforce.

But SLS Services doesn’t just deal with one-off transactions via its website. To support SLS Services with its corporate and government clients, we configured opportunity management and CPQ. Whether responding to a competitive tender, renegotiating contracts or adjusting pricing, having a clear process enhanced with automations to save time and effort made sense.

Last but not least, SLS Services chose Market Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), Salesforce’s end-to-end marketing automation product to engage with prospects to promote their equipment and training.

The result

SLSNSW uses Salesforce to work smarter, not harder, to quickly process quotes and payments. Before, quotes, invoices, and purchase orders took weeks to pass between sales, management and accounting. Now, SLS Services can perform this entire workflow online within 1 hour.

Chave says, “we can move from quoting to invoicing to receiving payment within an hour, which is amazing for a charity. The streamlined process is important when clients need something like a defibrillator.”

“Our salespeople are no longer worried about paperwork; they can just keep selling and continue that momentum of saving lives,” said Chave.

As SLS Services looks to the future, they now have the right tools to achieve sustainable growth and efficiency. This implementation means SLSNSW can continue to save lives, create great Australians, and build better communities for many generations to come.