Canadian Fertility Consulting is an Ontario-based full-service surrogacy agency dedicated to helping couples and individuals build a family. Faced with compliance issues, the consulting firm was forced to move their data and workflows to a new software system within a matter of weeks due to HIPAA regulations. And while data, including records and files, can be moved between systems, the custom workflows that Canadian Fertility Consulting relied on would need to be recreated to maintain their normal business functions and ensure no application was disrupted.

This would be far from an easy or typical transition for the agency. To start, Canadian Fertility Consulting had complex processes and workflows on their existing platform. These steps needed to be perfectly emulated on a new platform in order to meet their business needs. Equally important was the actual workflow of the transfer itself. Canadian Fertility Consulting needed a seamless transition, one that would allow them to migrate to a new platform while maintaining existing business operations. Any failures here would not just impact internal operations, but the client experience as well.

Canadian Fertility Consulting knew Salesforce would not only give them the ability to replicate their existing set up, but also give them the opportunity to expand and streamline their business. Salesforce provided the foundation required, and with Silverline, they transformed Salesforce into exactly what they needed.

The issue

Canadian Fertility Consulting built their business processes around their current platform. Making this situation even more unique was that within this platform were 167 workflows and over 700 custom fields that would need to be reconstructed in Salesforce.

Part of the work Canadian Fertility Consulting does is monitoring several different customer journeys at once, depending on if the customer is an egg donor, parent or surrogate. The process of matching parents, donors, and surrogates also creates another branching customer journey from the initial interaction with the agency. 

This is a delicate process that involves managing and nurturing each contact through multiple stages until they are ready to be paired. On their previous platform, Canadian Fertility Consulting used a series of custom workflows to control company messaging—everything from explaining their services to parent/donor qualification to medical requirements and finishing with pregnancy and birth. This system ensures a clear and consistent experience for all of their clients.

The action

Silverline began the project by taking the time needed to fully understand the workflows that Canadian Fertility Consulting had in place. This was important not only to recreate what they had on their original platform, but target opportunities for greater efficiency as well.

With a full understanding of the problem, Silverline began to take the existing processes and translate them to Salesforce and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The Silverline team configured Salesforce to hold customer information and stage it in the appropriate pipeline from the interest stage (donor, parent, surrogate). From there, Salesforce Marketing Cloud helped match candidates from the three main customer categories with each other. It also was used to establish triggers for custom emails, task creation, and booking meetings as the surrogacy process moves along.

When the customization was complete, end-user/administrator training was implemented by Silverline in order to get the staff up to speed with the system. In addition, long- term support is essential for a project of this scale, not just for regular operations, but to help the company accomplish its long-term goals. As a result, Silverline had an additional project stabilization phase where they worked with Canadian Fertility Consulting to make sure the system was functioning properly after implementation was complete. Part of Silverline’s work is making sure that their clients have the tools for prolonged success with Silverline Managed Services. Now a long term partner, Canadian Fertility Consulting continues to have ongoing comprehensive support from the Silverline team.

The impact

Canadian Fertility Consulting knew they made the right decision in choosing a company that not only had a full mastery of Salesforce, but also was understanding of their delicate situation and privacy concerns.

Partnering with Silverline on such an important, time-sensitive project was incredibly rewarding for Canadian Fertility Consulting.

Key Success Factors:

• Despite the time constraints and complexity of the project, by working with Silverline, Canadian Fertility Consulting was able to preserve their old workflow while meeting new challenges and maintaining customer service.
• Receiving continuous support and communication from Silverline allowed for a seamless transition to the Salesforce Platform.
• Including Canadian Fertility Consulting staff into the process at such a large degree, combined with the comprehensive onboarding training from Silverline, allowed for their teams to spend less time learning a new system and more time serving their clients.

We were incredibly grateful for Silverline’s commitment to filling in any knowledge gaps we had with Salesforce. They went above and beyond in every way, and even sent us videos and tips, all of which were amazingly helpful. – Sara Fehrman, Corporate Trainer and Clinical Liaison