With the support of OnChange, a Microsoft partner company, WWF was able to carry out an agile, seamless and empowering implementation.
WWF-Brazil’s mission is to help Brazilian society conserve nature, harmonizing human activity with the conservation of biodiversity and the rational use of natural resources, benefiting the citizens of today and tomorrow. Its operations include the Amazon, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Pantanal and marine ecosystems on the Brazilian coast.
WWF-Brazil is a Brazilian non-governmental and non-profit organization that has operated independently in the country since its creation in 1996. It is part of the WWF Network, the largest conservation organization in the world and operates in more than one hundred countries.
Aligned purposes for an empowering partnership
The management of its 90 projects was carried out using an established methodology, but the organization sought more efficiency in the development of its projects, as well as more transparency, trust, greater execution capacity, monitoring information in real time (internally and externally) , in addition to visibility for this structure and the Project Office portfolio.
“We are on a journey to transform ourselves into a more digital organization, with more agile and multidisciplinary teams. To achieve this ambition, it was important to improve the technological part with the implementation of a robust platform with information available in real time for the entire team, contributing to more analytical and assertive decision-making.”, explains Danuzia Lima, IT manager at WWF-Brazil.
To handle this challenging task, the organization chose Microsoft, with support from partner company OnChange throughout the implementation process. Among the differences offered are low code tools and the empowerment that technology brings to users in terms of information, application construction, collaboration and collective construction.
Furthermore, WWF-Brazil was already aware of Microsoft’s support, as it is a member of the global license donation program for non-profit organizations: TechSoup. “This line of action with philanthropy made the implementation of the project viable while contributing to our technological evolution.”, continues Danuzia.
Changing the tire while the car is running: the agility of low code implementation
According to Alisson Scalco, partner at OnChange, low code solutions and the technological framework provided by Microsoft 365 presented an interesting and very practical path for evolution.
“We built a large platform, we have everything from the strategic pillar of the organization, the entire process of strategy planning, execution, monitoring and, based on all these pillars, we have reports”, he says.
The implemented solution uses Microsoft Dataverse as a data repository, Microsoft Power Apps interfaces with users, Microsoft Teams integrates teams and projects, and Microsoft SharePoint stores files. Power Automate is used for alerts and integrations with Project Online and Totvs Protheus, Microsoft Project Online for repository of schedules and Microsoft Power BI consolidates information and delivers strategic reports for the organization.
The project was implemented in nine months, taking into account strategy, planning and execution, and was carried out with the operation running through a rapid delivery model with immersion, development and adjustment meetings. Training has also taken place in real circumstances.
“Low code provided this speed for implementation, with a lower investment cost than conventional software. We changed the tire while the car was running, the tool is intuitive, and user interaction with the tool was quick”, adds Alisson.
Transparency, costs, performance and relationships with donors and society as a whole
To begin with, Project Management had an immediate return with the optimization of its costs, going from 5% of the budget to 4% and currently reaching 3.5% – which generated savings much greater than the investment already in the 2 first years.
In terms of the project, the organization built an integrated vision of the strategy linked to transparency via customized dashboards for donors, which brought more trust in relationships and consequently an increase in unrestricted resources. These, in turn, were key to leveraging 4 times the amount received. Furthermore, the execution of projects monitored in real time has allowed agile changes along the way, which generates excellent annual financial performance of around 100%. The recorded lessons learned are fundamental to the efficiency of new projects.
“One of the great benefits of this tool is that it provides all the information necessary for the organization’s financial planning”, says Alessandra Utiyama, CFO of WWF-Brazil. “With the data from this tool, we are able to estimate the financial income for the month and year, ensuring greater accuracy of results, enabling more assertive decisions to be made and directing necessary actions, such as fundraising, hiring people, reallocating resources between projects “, he adds.
Total transparency of the strategy for the internal team, board and donors comes with increased effectiveness in achieving results, with a pipeline updated in real time, which generates resource predictability over a horizon of at least 5 years, with analysis of gaps.
The budget execution capacity has been growing every year. Since 2020, shortly after completing the first investment in the Project Office, WWF-Brazil has increased its execution capacity by almost 50%.
WWF-Brazil as an international reference in Project Management
“We have become a reference in Project Management, in a network with more than one hundred countries, and we share knowledge with several offices in the WWF network, such as Germany, Chile, Colombia, the Netherlands, Mozambique, Myanmar, and the United Kingdom”, says Cristiano Cegana , manager of the WWF-Brazil project office. “Internally, we also noticed the positive results of the project with adjusted, standardized processes and total transparency, which contributed to the engagement of our team”, he adds.
WWF-Brazil managed to implement a technological solution that increased the potential of its projects, reaching different aspects of its work internally and also bringing it closer to civil society and its donors with a platform that offers constant updates.
“Our objective is to support project teams so that they achieve better results and impacts, efficiently. Transparency, agility, real-time monitoring and intelligent use in resource allocation contributed to this happening.”, explains Cristiano.
The organization now has, with technology, great empowerment for its nature conservation work throughout Brazilian territory.