A custom cloud CRM for a religious network across 41 countries
A custom cloud CRM replaced a legacy Microsoft Access database for a religious network of 1,800+ members across 41 countries — with live data, powerful search, and an OpenAI-assisted layer that cut report generation time in half.
The challenge
- A network of international religious organisations founded in the early 1800s ran on a Microsoft Access database with no relational structure.
- Data was replicated and often stale, search was missing, and a single-source structure made every update cumbersome and risky.
- Historical records dating back to the 1800s — documents, photographs, and media — had to be preserved and made retrievable.
What we did
- We built a cloud CRM with live data updates, standardised records, and a crowd-sourced input model for members, communities, and provinces.
- An intuitive dashboard surfaces dynamic visual statistics, and powerful search and filtering let users pull complex reports from live data.
- The system is accessible globally, supports file uploads, and generates a print-ready index book on demand.
- It is fully serverless on Google Firebase, and an OpenAI API layer assists with querying and organising the archive.
Results
- 1,800+members across 41 countries
- 50%reduction in report generation time
- 30%increase in search efficiency
- 99.9%uptime guarantee
The context
The client is a network of Catholic religious organisations founded in the early 1800s, with more than 1,800 members across 41 countries. Their work spans education, counselling, pastoral care, community development, healthcare, and support for vulnerable children, much of it centred on the education of girls and women.
They came to us with a records problem. Their whole membership and community history ran on an ageing Microsoft Access database. It had no relational structure, so data was duplicated, often out of date, and hard to search. Every update was cumbersome and put data integrity at risk. On top of that, historical records going back to the 1800s had to be preserved and made retrievable.
What we built
We replaced the legacy database with a cloud CRM built for live data, standardised records, and a crowd-sourced input model, so people across the network can keep their own information current.
- An intuitive dashboard with dynamic visual statistics and a clear overview of members, communities, and provinces.
- Powerful search and filtering, so complex reports can be pulled from live data instead of rebuilt by hand.
- Global access from any device, with file uploads and an on-demand, print-ready index book.
- An OpenAI API layer that assists with querying and organising the archive.
How it works in production
The system runs fully serverless on Google Firebase. A member or coordinator anywhere in the network can update a record, and everyone sees the current version. Reports that used to mean manual extraction, updating, and formatting are now generated from live data, including the printable index book that gives a complete organisational picture.
The outcome
Report generation time dropped by half, search efficiency rose by about 30%, and data redundancy fell sharply. The platform holds a 99.9% uptime guarantee, so records stay reachable. Just as important, it gave a stable home to centuries of documents, photographs, and media, digitised and organised so the network's heritage is both preserved and usable.
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