Context and challenges   

“Nos Quartiers ont des Talents” (NQT) is an association within the meaning of the 1901 law. Created in 2006, NQT is a collaborative platform aimed at professional integration, by connecting young graduates from modest backgrounds with managers or senior managers from partner companies.  

Young people with support are under 30 years of age, with a minimum of 3 years of higher education and their social environment is determined by the territory or with a range of indicators of their socio-professional category (profession of parents, beneficiaries of minimum social benefits, etc.).  

NQT addresses the lack of orientation and/or network of these young graduates. The association provides them with a network of companies, through the mobilization of managers with at least 8 years of experience who become mentors. The operation of the association is thus based on 3 pillars:   
 

1. Sponsorship to provide support:   

• Moral/psychological  
• At the HR level (how to write a CV, a cover letter, a successful interview)  
• At the network level (build, solicit, maintain your network)   

2. Organizing workshops: more than 1,000 workshops organised per year (presentation of sectors, corporate best practices, etc.)   

3. Providing digital tools for training (acquiring additional skills, learning English, etc.).   
 

Today, NQT : it’s  70 people throughout France, 9,000 young graduates supported in 2019, 12,000 mentors including 6,000 active workers and 750 partner companies.
 

Good contact management (young people, companies and mentors) : a critical issue for the NQT association 

Until 2018, the relationship between young graduates and companies was managed by an ageing "custom" tool that no longer meets the challenges of a growing database and NQT's desire to accelerate its digital transformation. Management and governance therefore decided to change tool and opt for Salesforce CRM.   

In the second quarter of 2020, the health crisis led to a sharp increase in demand from young people to NQT. The association wanted to speed up the optimization of its CRM to respond effectively to demand. In May 2020, through a skills sponsorship, Talan offered help to the association with the following subjects:   

1. Definition of KPIs (performance indicators) and implementation of automated dashboards for professions 
2. Automation of the matching process between young people and mentors/mentors 

Solutions : support the optimization of Salesforce and develop an automatic matching tool. 

The Talan teams eventually supported NQT on 4 projects, two of which emerged during the mission.   

1-Implementation of reporting and performance indicators   

NQT did not have automated reporting of activities in Salesforce and struggled to have a clear vision to effectively steer the business. Talan stepped in to help NQT define its essential performance indicators to track and create reports and dashboards in Salesforce to have a clear vision of the activities carried out.   
 

2-Development of a matching tool between mentors and mentors   

Matching between mentors and mentors, considered a time-consuming manual activity, needed to be automated. The teams therefore worked on creating a matching tool via Salesforce. Several workshops were organised to define and frame the need for the association, determine all the matching rules and add a component to the tool in order to put an end to these manual tasks.   
 

3-Support for critical updates from Salesforce   

During the mission, a new need appeared : the CRM had to be updated. It was necessary to overhaul the tool in relation to safety standards. Talan then supported the skills development of a person at NQT to provide critical updates to the Salesforce platform and stabilize its use over the long term.   
 

4-Optimisation of the contract validation procedure   

Finally, the optimization of the tool also enabled the sales (regional delegates) and financial teams to better communicate about contract validation.  The Salesforce tool was used to create a link between the finance and operations divisions (project managers). A contract validation and monitoring procedure has been directly integrated into the Salesforce tool. This allows Regional Delegates to record their contracts in Salesforce and the Finance department to monitor these contracts (payment of contributions, updates, etc.) in the same place.   

Results   

In a few months, this mission enabled NQT to:   

1. Promote the adoption of the tool by the business lines by providing them with a platform and reports that meet their needs  
2. Promote collaboration and the exchange of information between the Finance and Operations departments  
3. Automate matching, which can be done by clicking against 2 hours per file in the manual process. The matching tool will be fully operational in November 2020.