Enterprise Community Partners

Across the United States, 19 million low-income families are housing insecure, paying more than half their income on housing and often one paycheck away from losing their homes – with thousands already living on the streets. Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise) is a national organization committed to creating opportunity for low- and moderate-income people through affordable housing and connections to good schools, jobs, transit and health care.

One key piece to both understanding and tackling the housing crisis involves tremendous amounts of data collection. The IT landscape at Enterprise consisted of over 80 separate databases ranging from Excel spreadsheets to Access databases. With limited integration, these silos of information, alongside several custom-built applications, were providing unnecessary challenges for the Enterprise team. “We needed systems that would enhance workflow, bridge communication gaps and empower our business teams with accurate data and reliable information,” says Pradip Sitaram, Senior Vice President and CIO at Enterprise.

To address this disconnect between pools of scattered data, Enterprise started using the Salesforce Sales Cloud and the App Cloud Platform. Not only was information immediately shared across the organization but various business processes were consequently streamlined. One business group, for example, was able to automate 90% of the 25,000 questions they receive quarterly after the team had access to all pertinent data in one place.

Another important piece of Enterprise’s work entails collaborating with a vast network of partners. When Hurricane Sandy struck the New York region in 2012, large numbers of partners started asking how they could help communities recover after Sandy. To organize this response, Enterprise created a “Sandy Helpdesk” initiative and deployed teams of volunteer architects and designers as well as regulatory agencies to provide communities with information and guidance on building codes, zoning and design. After receiving Sandy victims’ information, Enterprise and its partners were able to manage the associated workflow and ultimately provide timely answers at a critical time.