Omega Research Foundation’s research database helps them identify and expose human rights abuses committed across the world by people using police, security, and military equipment.
When we first met Omega in 2019, they were struggling with three legacy databases that didn’t talk to each other. We wrangled them into a single research database (powered by CiviCRM) and helped them create searches and displays to match their workflows.
The end result: they are happier and more productive day-to-day.
“Throughout the project, 3SD have always prioritised what is best for Omega, consistently adapting as our needs have evolved over time. Their dedication, expertise, and flexibility have been invaluable in helping us create a database that is more efficient and tailored to our mission.” – Scott Mason, Researcher at Omega Research Foundation
Discovery
The aim of discovery is to develop a solid understanding of the task ahead of us. In this case, we spent a lot of time looking at existing research workflows: what was working well, where the pain points were, etc. We also explored the balance between protecting intellectual property and publishing data to support open research, and other ways that Omega could put their data to work for them.
A couple of things became clear through this process. First, that we would need to spend a significant amount of time getting their data into a structure that was aligned with their research workflows. And second, that Omega would want to continue to evolve the database to meet their needs over time, so training would be key to this project.
Priorities
After discovery, we reviewed the priorities, considering the impact of – and resources required – for each one. Generally speaking, we aim to focus on the easy high impact stuff first. This lets us get some ‘quick wins’ out the door early, and gives us time to get to know each other, and become more familiar with the problem space, before tacking more challenging work.
In this case we starting by cleaning and structuring existing data sources – something we’ve done many times over the years with other clients – with a focus on everything that is easy to do with ‘out of the box’ CiviCRM.
Contributing back
Omega have some pretty demanding data modelling requirements and after a few months using their new system in production, it became clear that we were hitting the limit of what was possible ‘out of the box’. At this point, we had two options:
- code a custom solution
- improve core CiviCRM
While a custom solution might have been cheaper in the short term, it would have been limited in scope and come with a maintenance overhead that means costs can quickly mount up over time. We discussed the options, the available budget, and in the end Omega decided to fund core improvements to CiviCRM’s ‘entity reference fields’ and ‘multi-value custom data’.
It took a while to talk these improvements through with CiviCRM’s core team, and to coordinate with CiviCRM’s release cycle. But it was worth the effort as they have unlocked powerful data modelling tools that Omega have been using for a couple of years now, and (added bonus) these features are also available to other users of CiviCRM.
Empower users
Throughout the project, we’ve been lucky to work with Helen and Scott from Omega who have been crucial to the project’s success and become a key part of the delivery team.
Helen has provided insights and a strategic oversight that has kept the project aligned with Omega’s long term goals. Scott has become a power user who now takes the lead in implementing new features in response to feedback and requests from others at Omega, only calling on us for help with the trickiest of configuration challenges.
“Our use of CiviCRM is both unique and complex, but Michael and Kurund took the time to truly understand our requirements. They developed creative solutions to the issues we were facing, while thoughtfully challenging some of our own pre-existing ideas about our data and workflows, helping us to identify efficiencies and simplify our data model in the process.” – Scott Mason, Researcher at Omega Research Foundation
What’s next?
We think this project is a great example of the power and flexibility of CiviCRM, and the benefits of building up long term partnerships with our clients. Funding permitting, in the years ahead our aim is to focus on improvements to data visualisation, and creating tools that let Omega share data with trusted partners and the public.
Let’s chat about your next project