The Institute of Directors
Empowering the Institute of Directors through digital transformation
The Institute of Directors (IoD) has been a prominent authority on business in the UK for more than a century, fostering strong corporate governance, leadership and education, and empowering directors and business leaders to build successful and responsible businesses. However, reliance on an array of outdated solutions was limiting its capacity to provide seamless, modern support to its network of 20,000 members across the UK and internationally. To streamline operations and enhance member engagement, the Institute of Directors embarked on a digital transformation journey led by their long-standing Microsoft Gold Partner, Prosperity 24/7, to create a more agile, focused and innovative organisation.
Overcoming legacy systems and fragmented processes
Prosperity 24/7’s Business Solutions team began the digital transformation journey by examining the IoD’s internal operations model and central systems. They discovered that many independent processes were governed by a central legacy system, which was hindering the organisation from making essential changes to keep pace with evolving demands. In addition to this, multiple unconnected software solutions were being used, resulting in data duplication and inconsistencies.
Leading-edge integrated solutions
In response, Prosperity 24/7 designed a core platform based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, implementing a range of best-of-breed systems and technology. This included many of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 product family, including Sales, Customer Service and Marketing, integrated with a core membership administration system built on PowerApps. A true 360-view of the IoD’s membership was achieved through integrating the learning management system, examinations system and creating an online member portal using Microsoft PowerPortal. Working alongside the IoD’s finance team, the PowerPlatform was extended and integrated with Stripe to collect all online payments, and further integrated with Dynamics Business Central for automatic transfer of sales data to the finance system. All this was brought together with a Single-Sign-On provided by Azure B2C for identity and access management.
Prosperity 24/7 implemented Dynamics 365 for the IoD, leveraging the relentless pace of progress and investment being made by Microsoft for its business customers, including advancements in process automation, artificial intelligence and data analytics on its cloud platform to deliver timely insights. The Power Platform connects all of the IoD’s critical systems effectively and efficiently, becoming the heart of their operations. Dynamics 365 offered the IoD the perfect balance, leveraging Microsoft’s highly secure technology while designing a system that accommodated the IoD’s unique processes, formulae and data.
In addition to rapid development, the IoD also benefits from Microsoft’s continuous investment in technology, delivering further functionality into the platform such as AI, automated business processes but online and in-house and Power BI insights and analytics. The IoD’s new digital operational platform automatically benefits from Microsoft’s updates and enhanced features, including new marketing and sales tools and updated user interfaces, while staying secure and up-to-date leveraging true, cloud-based platforms.
“Our journey of digital transformation is an essential component of the long-term success of the IoD. We will have the ability to do amazing things – swiftly and effectively – and a strong foundation to build on as we continue to drive innovation.”
Jon Geldart, IoD Director General
The future: a continued journey of innovation
As a technology partner, Prosperity 24/7 remains committed to working alongside the IoD, driving further operational improvements across the organisation using the advanced Power Platform. For the IoD, the platform offers new sales functionality for opportunity management and AI-driven deep relationship insights to optimise the sales and membership team. With the systems replacement complete, the IoD now has a platform that can drive innovation forward. Digital transformation will not only streamline its operations, but also enhance the IoD’s ability to support and lead the UK’s business community in the modern era.
