Working​
Magic for Clients

How a community engagement consulting firm on Australia’s Sunshine Coast is delivering nearly magical insights and results to their clients to help them secure development approvals for their projects.

“People matter most” is no cliché at CPR Group. As community engagement specialists, the core focus of the Group’s multi-disciplinary team has always been people. For over 20 years, CPR has been helping local and state government, private enterprises, extractive industries, universities, and not-for-profit community and sporting groups across Australia secure development approvals for their projects.

Results

  • Consultants can now enter details of interactions into the mobile app and have them automatically entered in the system.
  • Data is now centralized and easy to search, saving valuable time.
  • Highly customized and meaningful reports can now be created and sent to clients in a few clicks.
  • Less time in front of computers and more time in front of stakeholders means faster approvals for client projects.
  • Borealis grievance management module the solution you’ve been looking for

Saying so long to limitations

From large-scale infrastructure developments to local community consultation initiatives, the CPR team has seen and done it all over the years – which is why clients from such a wide range of industry sectors rely on its expert knowhow. But it’s only more recently that the CPR team has been astonishing their clients with powerful reporting. In early 2018, the team was extremely frustrated by the limitations of the CRM software and other systems it was using to handle stakeholder engagement and management activities for clients. The biggest frustration? Reporting.

Trying to adapt other systems to meet the unique needs of managing stakeholder engagement was creating endless headaches. Among other things, it made it hard for the team to:

  • Search for specific information.
  • Create customized and meaningful reports on activities.
  • Forward emails without having to do a clunky copy/paste.
  • Record communications quickly and easily.

About CPR Group

Connelly Project Resources Group is a consulting firm that helps clients across Australia improve all facets of their community engagement

 

I have been waiting for this kind of software for 20 years.”

Created

1997

Industry

Consulting Services

Consultants

11

Headquarters

Maroochydore, Australia

Specialities

Stakeholder Engagement and Sport & Community Development

Primary clientele

Quarries

CPR Group in numbers

$100 million

in grant funding

500

happy volunteers supported

150 000

Stakeholders engaged

11

specialist consultants

Main challenge

Improving the reporting of stakeholder engagement and community consultation efforts to effectively demonstrate performance and results to clients.

Exploring their stakeholder engagement software options

Like other community relations teams before them, the CPR folks initially considered adapting its existing CRM system. It didn’t take long for them to see that the amount of development needed to create the necessary tools and functionalities to effectively manage and report on stakeholder engagement would be too extensive – not to mention a huge drain on resources. Nor would there be any guarantee of results or future upgrades.

A good fit - Even as the firm and its projects evolve

As a consultancy company providing hands-on public relations and stakeholder engagement services to clients, the CPR team often finds itself juggling multiple projects simultaneously. Each individual project might require its consultants to engage with thousands of stakeholders – be it city councils to retired community groups. Such efforts entail a wide variety of interactions: mailers, flyers on the street, door knocking, phone calls. And increasingly, social media.

CPR’s clients naturally want to be kept in the loop throughout these activities so that they can assess outcomes in a timely manner. For the CPR team, this means lots and lots of reporting.

About Boréalis stakeholder software

Boréalis stakeholder software is an integrated information management system used by companies around the globe to manage various aspects of their stakeholder engagement activities:

  • Assets & land access management
  • Community engagement

  • Grievances management
  • Environmental monitoring
  • Regulatory & compliance management
  • Social investment
  • Public affairs & goverment relationships
  • Boréalis Stakeholder Engagement Software

Reports that wow

The CPR team says Boréalis software transformed its reporting as if by magic. Now, it only takes a few clicks to send off highly professional reports that are tailored to the client’s specific needs.

Among other things, with Boréalis the team
can now:

  • Produce standard reports for clients and easily adapt them when needed.
  • Provide clients with visually compelling reports complete with graphs, maps, calendars, tables, etc.
  • Modify reports to include value-added information like completion dates, duration and thresholds to help clients evaluate the team’s performance.
  • Schedule reports to deliver accurate and timely information automatically.
  • Export reports in a variety of formats.
Boréalis’ reporting functionalities have saved the CPR team endless hours of hands-on data analysis and report building. The high-quality of the reports it generates has also increased the firm’s notoriety and credibility. Best of all, CPR’s clients now always have a clear view of their projects’ stakeholder landscape and its progress toward securing social acceptance.

Our clients are very impressed by the reports we provide; they have never seen anything like this before.”

All-around better efficiency

It’s no secret that when it comes to data management systems, if you’re not fully committed to using them, you can’t expect to get rewarding results.

Above and beyond Boréalis’ powerful reporting capabilities, the CPR team says the software has basically streamlined their work processes. With Boréalis software, the team is able to:

  • Use the engagement plan functionality to plan all engagement activities for key stakeholders.
  • Centralize all stakeholder data and interactions in one application to monitor the progress of multiple projects, with no limitations on the number of records or projects that can be put in the system.
  • Use the mobile app to enter the details of comments, grievances, commitments, etc. while engaging with stakeholders in the field so that this information is automatically in the system when the consultant gets back to the office.
  • Automatically log communications through
    emails.
  • And more.

On-site -training and ongoing support

The CPR team also appreciates the fact that the Boréalis team was happy to come to its offices on the Sunshine Coast to provide its consultants with personalized hands-on training on the software. Even the importation of the firm’s existing data, mapping of processes, change management and configuration of custom dashboards was handled on-site by the Boréalis team.

Boréalis’ mobile app allows me to type in information while speaking with stakeholders and at the end of the meeting, it is already in the system. It’s so fast and convenient.

Reports that wow

The CPR team says that the efficiency gains it has been able to achieve with Boréalis software has freed its consultants to spend more time engaging directly with stakeholders rather than crunching data in the office. In turn, this has translated into smoother and faster approvals for its clients’ projects. With this magical weapon in its pocket, CPR group has a sunny future indeed.

cpr-group-case-study
Download the CPR Group case study.

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