Changing the organisation’s whole approach to information management is at the heart of a new business direction for the Eden Project.

Since it opened in 2001, Cornwall’s environmental complex based in a former china clay pit has captured the public imagination to become the UK’s fifth largest paying visitor attraction. But public awareness that the Eden Project is a charity is relatively low, which has had an impact on its fundraising ability.

That is all about to change through more powerful data manipulation, says Eden Project head of IT Jon Curry.

“We have established ourselves as a viable, sustainable business, but now we have new business initiatives that require new levels of data. We are serious about reaching out and maintaining a relationship with our members and visitors beyond the Bodelva Pit and them having a nice day with us,” says Curry.

“It is great that we have a membership of about 400,000 people and 1.2 million visitors each year, but we haven’t been great at holding these people’s attention and talking about the issues that were brought to their attention by visiting us. We have high-level recognition, in the upper 70 per cent of the population, but a lot of people think of us as a well-meaning commercial organisation and we need to promote our charitable status.”

An integrated contacts management and fundraising database, Care from CS Group, was bought to help communicate the Eden Project’s message more effectively, and promote the fact it is a research foundation backing educational and social projects such as Gardens for Life (www.edennet.org).

“IT is a tool that will help us get where we want to go, and the Care software is a big enabler for helping us get value out of data and find new routes to fundraise,” says Curry. “We want to use the database for a range of objectives which include increasing donations, expanding the web shop and using the brand and customer experience, so people want to engage further.”

The database initiative involved consolidating 18 silos of data around the organisation into one system to solve the problem of having no centralised data management. The aim was to be able to segment, profile and understand data, bring business processes in line and remove the duplication of tasks, while improving the quality of information.

On the operational side, the Eden Project has three big databases – a Gift Aid database for donations, another for advanced ticket sales and a third for membership information. A Sage PayPoint electronic point of sale system is used for capturing customer sale and payment transaction data at the front end, while Pegasus Opera accounting software is used at the back end.

Pegasus Opera runs on Microsoft’s relational database FoxPro 4.0, but it is being upgraded to version 7.0 to improve the scope of information management. “In the past, when we wanted to do things that we couldn’t do with PayPoint, we bolted on bespoke software that we developed in-house for specialised functions,” says Curry.

The team of in-house developers has created several specialised databases over the years using Microsoft’s data management applications, Access and MySQL, as well as open source software.

Examples include a friends database and a schools booking system. “They have outgrown their function in terms of data volumes and our aim to get beyond just being able to process people. For example, with the friends database we could only action renewals and do basic mailing, we couldn’t explore the needs of friends,” says Curry.

“A lot of databases have been created for one-off events, for example a ‘bulb mania’ database was created to record the details of people who took part in planting bulbs for our annual spring flower display.”

The core membership and ticketing databases will remain with transactions fed into Care, while mushrooming bespoke databases with limited functionality, locked-in data and support issues can now be replaced by the integrated database. If the Eden Project wants to create an ad hoc database, it can be set up directly onto Care.

“One of the things we hoped to achieve with the new database is not having to support lots of different platforms and technology, which creates a problem around governance. When developers that have created bespoke databases move on, we lose skills sets. It is easier to find support for applications when you buy a package as you reap the benefits of an upgrade,” he says.

“As a charity we do not have a huge budget, so we have to be pragmatic and look for quick and tangible returns. The catalyst for the database was our aspiration to develop fundraising.”

Curry says Care has a good track record for supporting fundraising and has a lot of inbuilt functionality, with metrics to show returns on campaigns. “For example, we can analyse the cost of a campaign for recruiting new members by looking at advertising expenditure against numbers recruited,” he says.

The new system went live in June and Curry says the IT team is ironing out the wrinkles. It will be put through its paces for “Pledge for the Edge” – a drive to garner public votes to win £50m for a new building project in a competition run by the Big Lottery Fund’s Living Landmarks programme.

“We want people to give us their mobile phone number or email address so we can remind them to vote in the competition in December. We will get the information from our existing database of contacts and persuade as many new people as possible to register their full contact details. Care will co-ordinate the process,” says Curry.

The Eden Project is also using data extraction services from Neutralize to analyse the number of emails delivered against the number read, which is fed back into the Care system. Curry says the organisation will use other functions within the software, including a business intelligence feature that allows cube building for analysis and a web page designer tool to create an interface permitting Eden Project members to change their contact information.

“To members it will look as if they are on the Eden Project web site, but from a system’s point of view, the supporter section will be moved from basic HTML to a space where they must log into a secure environment to amend personal details,” says Curry.

Getting timely information to operational managers will be another focus as the Eden Project engages further with its public.

“We use Crystal Reports Server from Business Objects, which creates, manages and delivers reports over the web. We use it for structuring and scheduling information which we can deliver on the intranet,” says Curry. “We aim to deliver those reports before 10am, as that is when a lot of operational managers do their thinking and make decisions based on the information they have covering issues such as stock and attendance levels.”