The Problem

The National Fatherhood Initiative used google sheets to track hundreds of subscriptions to course materials, which was less than ideal. This posed many problems when it came to subscription management and tracking of data.

With hundreds of growing subscribers, the non profit organization was held back with technology that made an unnecessary amount of their work manual.

This held their team pipeline back and left them wide open to costly human error mistakes. The weakness needed to be eradicated completely; especially since money was on the line. For instance, the google sheet’s information about the start and end dates for the subscriptions is hard to read and maintain.

It was not easy to report on the number of customers currently subscribed. Renewals to subscriptions used the same SKU as the first-time purchase, so it is not easy to differentiate between renewed subscribers and those who are newly subscribed. There was no technology available to indicate who canceled their subscriptions.

Because of this, volunteers who managed subscriptions had to manually check the google sheet every so often to see who hasn't renewed in order to shut off access to their subscription content. Another daunting thing to work with, was the many state agency customers who purchased subscriptions in bulk. Hundreds of subscription access accounts could be created, but all housed under the same state agency name. The only way to keep track on these were separate tabs in google sheets.

Overall, The National Fatherhood Initiative's subscription management workflow was heavily reliant on manual input as opposed to an automated process. This security risk, as there is too much room for human error and money on the line.