Aidmatrix SCM: Needs Management Plus+

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SCM - Needs Management

Needs Management Plus+

The Aidmatrix Network® Needs Management Plus+ Module is an online application that manages immediate and ongoing product and transportation needs. This application collects, aggregates and communicates those needs more efficiently so those needs can be met. Simply enter your requests for needed items and then publish those needs so donors can supply against them. It automatically integrates with other modules, particularly the in-kind donations management and transportation donations management modules to provide simple end-to-end processing of in-kind products and services. Includes all standard Needs Management Module features.

View the Plus+ Features

Proactively Identify and Record Needs
Instead of waiting for random donations to arrive, use this application to proactively log specific product, service and transportation needs. Then you can share those needs in a variety of ways to different audiences that can help fulfill those needs. Simple data entry screens walk you through capturing the specifics so partners know exactly what is being requested without additional inquiry. This includes details like priority and respond-by dates to help manage your needs requests. Pre-set templates help save you time when entering multiple needs into the system.

Once your needs are entered, you can choose from three powerful publishing options, all all flexible to serve your processes:
1. Manually match incoming donations to those needs
2. Publish those needs to other partner portals on the Aidmatrix Network® who may be able to help
3. Auto-publish those needs to your portal and other portals.

Streamline Matching of Needs with Donations
You can use the system to track the need internally. Then as donations are received, you can manually match them against the need and mark the need as fulfilled.

Selectively Share Needs with Target Partners
In other cases, you may want to publish your needs to other specific partners on the Aidmatrix Network who can help. These partners can choose to view your needs and either fulfill the need from their existing inventory or publish your needs to their audience— thus increasing the likelihood of fulfilling your need. If they publish the need on their portal and a donor makes an offer against it, the system automatically routes the offer directly back to you for review so that it does not impose additional burden on the partner.

Share Needs with the Outside World
Once you log your needs, you can choose to auto-publish those needs to the outside world through your portal. This enables donors to view them, click on the details of the need and make a matching donation offer. You always retain the ability to review donation offers before accepting them. The system also enables you to receive multiple offers on a single needs request. Once you accept an offer, you can then remove the need from visibility on your portal, thus keeping your needs current.

Email notifications are automatically set up for your subscribing portal administrators to be sent when needs are published to your portal. This enables the "subscribing" portal administrators to become aware of the "published needs" sooner and optimizes the information flow.

Registered donors can choose to customize their view by removing "needs" if they are not interested in them. This streamlines the process of donors reviewing needs by reducing the overall list to display only those that are unviewed or that are of interest to the donor.

Quickly Aggregate Needs On-Demand
This application enables you to quickly and easily report on your overall needs. The real-time reporting aggregates needs so that you can communicate more effectively within your organization and with external audiences. For instance, reporting on “percent of needs met” versus “percent of needs unmet” in particular categories can help educate external audiences on how to make informed donations that really meet the needs of the communities you serve. It can also help you raise awareness and speed up the humanitarian relief donation process.

In addition, needs can be tracked from one portal to another. A referral ID on the donation record enables partnering organizations to track the donations that pass through one partner’s site to another’s so that each can see the original source of the donation.

Overarching Benefits
In the end, the overwhelming benefit of the Aidmatrix Network® and the Needs Management Plus+ Module is that you can form partnerships that enable you to reach a much broader audience than your regular donor base, thus empowering your mission.

Tailor Your User Experience with Flex Fields
These custom fields enable you to capture information that is critical and unique to your organization. You’ll be able to specify the quantity and type of flex fields you need. Determine the way you want to structure responses by designating the field type: text area, date field, numeric field, dropdown list, and more. Then, layout the flex fields to provide a logical flow for your users to follow.

Manage Users with Less Work
To start, users can request a registered user login for your site using a standard form that requires the information you need. This routes the request directly to your admin who then only needs to review and approve it.

You can set up “Terms and Conditions” for registered donors using your portal and require users to read and accept these Ts & Cs as part of their registration process. You can also integrate those Ts & Cs at the point when the user confirms their transaction; for example: “By submitting this donation you agree that __”. This provides clearer communications between you and the user regarding transactions on your portal.

You can also configure users to have multiple roles and to access all of those roles from a single login. For instance, someone may have one of more of the following designations: admin, donor, and/or recipient. If information about a user changes, such as contact information, the admin can access the user record and make the updates directly.

Localize Pages with International Options
Customize the labeling and structure of the data fields to ensure the proper attributes are captured in the local standard, for example: monetary unit and system of weights and measures. In addition, standard pages within the application are also available in French and Spanish.

Enhance Transaction Details
Sometimes, the descriptions needed on a donation/need can be greater than the fields on a data entry screen. In those cases, users can upload common Office® and image file types to provide the full details. Supported file types include .xls, .csv, .doc, .jpg, .gif and more.

In addition, you and your donors can log communications back and forth in a notes section on the record where questions can be asked and answered and the entire communication history is saved for future reference in one place, tied to that specific donation record, not spread out over emails and instant messages.

Honor Donor Intentions with Ease
Portal administrators can set automatic expiration dates on donation offers based on instructions from the donor. This ensure that the donor’s intentions are honored and it reduces the administrative time which would otherwise require manual scheduling and disablement.

In addition, donors are empowered to update their donation offers themselves by extending or withdrawing an item as their situations change. They can even create templates for making donations so that recurring information can be saved and used again, saving them time and providing them with a positive donation experience.

Monitor Feedback and Results
As common on many ecommerce sites, both you and your donors can create a public profile that gives a brief overview of information about yourselves. This information is accessible by simply clicking on the organization’s name beside a donation offer or need. Similarly, once a transaction is completed, both you and your donors can rate each other based on their experience with a transaction. Those ratings are averaged and displayed as “stars” beside the organization’s name so that others on the Aidmatrix Network can benefit from that history.

Powerful reporting enables both you and registered donors to build reports from one’s own transactions. You can use filters to customize the report to your needs. Reports are designed for easy export to other solutions.

Enter Needs with Speed; Flag for Specific Disasters
When disaster strikes, you can enter needs into the system and label them as specific to that disaster. This helps the donor community understand what you need for the immediate response and what you need for day-to-day operations. You can also create templates for recurring needs where much of the information is the same. Saving these templates saves time and enables you to get critical needs posted quickly so you can get back to relief work.

Edit Needs On-Demand to Keep Your List Current
Edit your posted needs whenever necessary so as your needs change or you receive partial donations to fill a need, you can update the quantity needed and/or other details to keep things current. And if an offer is not the right fit, you can provide details in the comment area when declining so that communications stay clear.

Share Needs Information with RSS & Auto-Publish
Once your needs are posted, key data can be shared by the administrator with social networking sites and newsreader tools through an RSS feed. This further strengthens the community aspect of a portal while expanding your reach to potential donors.

Portals can also set up relationships to automatically publish and subscribe to needs with other portals. This helps automate interactions speeding up communications and fulfillment. Donors can selectively choose to be alerted by email about new needs. Donors control the types of needs they want to see and can maintain control over their level of interaction with the portals. This provides a “push” of information from your portal to your registered donors while enabling your donors to filter only the needs that are applicable to their inventories.