Partnering to boost an entrepreneurial mindset

Young Enterprise is a charity with a vision to inspire students and unleash leaders with the ultimate goal of raising the prosperity of New Zealand. Young Enterprise works with 85% of secondary schools in New Zealand to enable them to connect with close to 50,000 students each year. Young Enterprise alumni have founded 160 active businesses, 46% of which are social enterprises, and created between 2,700 and 4,600 jobs.

For many years, Fujitsu has been providing pro bono services and support to Young Enterprise in a community partnership built on purposeful social impact. This partnership facilitated the award-winning deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to establish, track and effectively manage relationships by providing a 360-degree view of interactions.

“We have tens of thousands of stakeholders across the country including hundreds of teachers, donors and sponsors, and thousands of students and alumni. However, we need a personal touch with each of them,” explains Terry Shubkin, CEO, Young Enterprise. “There is no way to manage it without a robust, flexible CRM platform in place. Fujitsu and Microsoft have enabled us to grow significantly in the last 10 years, doubling the number of students in our flagship programme and launching a successful alumni programme.”

Fujitsu solved the problem of interfacing between Dynamics and its online presence, enabling the secure access of critical data remotely. Since the original project in 2016, Fujitsu has also upgraded to the latest version of Dynamics, giving Young Enterprise additional functionality. This allows tailored experiences such as the Rangatahi Business Challenge, which sees over 400 students develop work-ready skills and connect with local Māori entrepreneurs.

Fujitsu managed the integration of Young Enterprise’s new website and CRM to enable automated enrolment, membership and registration for events. The organisation also uses CRM to help manage stakeholder communication, service requests, feedback, sponsorship contracts, donations, events and courses.

The platform enables the efficient management of hundreds of organisations and tens of thousands of individuals using only limited resources. Every communication is targeted at stakeholder groups and individual constituents. This means more effective, personalised communications, which in turn leads to higher donations, providing more funds for students.

“We operate in an incremental fashion – never looking to make huge changes and constantly building on what we have to become more data-driven,” continues Shubkin. “Fujitsu gives us the small improvements which actually make a big difference, such as cleaning up our data fields so we can tailor our alumni communications more effectively and raise more donations.”

For Young Enterprise, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online facilitates school, teacher and student registration and relationship management, including recording exam results/NZQA qualifications obtained and award/competition entries and finalists.

The integrated platform also allows Young Enterprise staff, who travel extensively, to have access to data when they need it, and collaborate effectively regardless of location. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when homeworking became the norm, this became hugely important.

Most importantly, this pro bono support offered by Fujitsu reflects the company’s purpose of building trust in society through innovation. With a significant percentage of businesses founded by Young Enterprise alumni focussing on social good, the partnership is enabling the next generation of change makers to discover how they can incorporate their passions for the environment and equality into growing a vibrant, prosperous New Zealand.

“Although Fujitsu provides services on a pro bono basis, we have never felt inferior to paying customers; the team always gives us the attention and resources we need,” concludes Shubkin. “The longer we have spent in partnership, the more Fujitsu understands us and can deliver what we need, when we need it.”