Digitize Member Registration and Fund Administration with Low-code

The Dutch Protestant Church consists of 2.1 million members, more than 3000 ministers and tens of thousands of volunteers.

The church required a Member Registration System that would centralize membership, financial and pastoral administration, while facilitating 1800 local congregations with unique requirements and integration points.

After a costly failure to customize a Human Resources Management system (HRM), Mendix was chosen to build a custom solution.

Challenge

Membership data required more flexibility than what a commercial HRM could offer. The application would need to support 10,000 concurrent users at peak times.

Multi-level, award winning security was required to protect highly sensitive data. Configured for over 1,200 local congregations, including the integration of data from hundreds of local used software systems.

Solution

Mendix’s application platform enabled the church to use an agile methodology to implement the project. The project team delivered weekly iterations and were given consistent input and feedback that would continually shape the project.

Results

The solution enables the Protestant Church to manage activities related to its membership, pastoral, and financial administration effectively. The project has resulted in a significant improvement in the quality of member registration and support of pastoral visit work.

  • User friendly, efficient and intuitive application supports unique user-base with an average age of 65
  • Maintenance costs reduced by over $1 Million per year
  • Disparate administrative staff are now directly connected, providing increased speed and efficiency

To protect members’ privacy, information in the new system is extensively safeguarded by multiple firewalls, constant back up, and user role-based data availability. The Dutch Protestant Church has been awarded the iCMG Architecture Excellence Award due to the level of security that the solution provides.

Security Standard

The Dutch Protestant Church has been awarded the iCMG Architecture Excellence Award in the ‘IS Security Architecture’ category for its member registration system developed by Mendix. The prize was awarded due to the high security standards and user authorization structures built into the system.

Some of the highlighted system requirements included confidential data and a strict separation of the financial administration and member registration. The prestigious, international prize was awarded during the ‘Architecture World 2011′ conference held in Bangalore, India.

Users Experience

Typical Mendix applications are used by dedicated professionals; people who spend a large amounts of time in these applications. The unique nature of the Church and the devoted volunteers required a system that is simple and easy to use for incidental users with – in some cases – basic computer skills. The 1500 local systems are used by 8000 users, mostly volunteers.

The LRP system is an effective, safe, stable and user friendly system implemented within budget and schedule.

Ministries of the Protestant Church

With an integrated Google Maps widget, regional congregations can be mapped out by zip code, providing visual data that enables the Church to serve its members more efficiently.

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