Ashoka, a global nonprofit serving social entrepreneurs, found itself in a familiar dilemma for growing companies: It had outgrown Excel. 

In Ashoka's case, Excel was used as an HCM system—along with physical files—leading to inaccurate tracking of core HR. Employees had trouble finding their own HR data and employee onboard was a paper-intensive, slow process. Compounding these issues: Ashoka's global network of offices, each of which had developed their own homegrown approach to recording HR data. 

Ashoka had already been using Salesforce CRM and decided to implement Salesforce-backed FinancialForce for HCM. This allowed Ashoka to do away with its Excel-based system and has provided many benefits and efficiencies.

It's now possible for Ashoka's executive team to manage more than 400 workers in less time than had previously taken to manage just 20. There have also been gains in employee engagement—97 percent of workers finished their self-reviews in less than three months, and decisions on performance reviews now take on average 60 hours, compared to up to a year under the old system. FinancialForce also provided native integration with Salesforce CRM, as it is built on the same underlying platform.

Read more about Ashoka's award-winning project here.