Member Management for Crohn/Colitis Portugal

📋 Overview

Associação Crohn/Colite Portugal, the national reference in supporting people with inflammatory bowel disease, needed to modernise its member management. The new solution, built entirely inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, eliminated legacy platform costs and automated critical administrative processes.

🎯 The Challenge

Business context The association used a third-party SaaS platform for member management that carried a high fixed cost — roughly €300 a month — and offered little flexibility. Its data sat apart from the rest of the working environment in Microsoft 365, forcing duplicated manual work for simple communications such as membership fee reminders or birthday messages. The goal was to cut operating costs without reducing the quality of service to members.

Technical requirements

• Complete member management: an intuitive interface for creating, reading, updating and deleting member records.
• Fee management: a visual system for tracking payments and arrears.
• Communication automation: automatic emails for fees falling due and for birthdays.
• Data security: take advantage of the compliance and security of the association’s own Microsoft 365 tenant.
• Zero licensing cost: use only what is already included in Microsoft’s non-profit licences.

💡 The Solution

Strategic approach The architectural decision was to remove external dependencies. We built a custom SPFx (SharePoint Framework) web part acting as a modern front end over SharePoint lists. That keeps the data solely in the client’s own tenant — data sovereignty — and removes the monthly subscription entirely.

Technical implementation The solution runs on a serverless architecture inside SharePoint Online. The interface, built in React with Fluent UI, gives a modern experience that feels familiar to Microsoft users.

For the administrative team we built a dashboard presenting real-time metrics on new members and the volume of fees settled, giving an instant view of the association’s financial health.

Timeline

• Phase 1 (discovery and analysis): 1 week
• Phase 2 (SPFx development): 3 weeks
• Phase 3 (Power Automate and testing): 1 week
• Phase 4 (deployment and training): 1 week — 6 weeks in total

📈 The Results

Success metrics

• 💰 Direct saving: €300 a month in previous software licences eliminated.
• ⚡ Administrative efficiency: 4 hours a week saved on payment validation.
• 🎯 Fee collection: membership fee settlement up 15%, driven by automatic reminders.
• 👥 Adoption: the administrative team adopted it fully within the first week.
• 🔒 Compliance: all data hosted in a compliance-grade Microsoft environment.

Business impact The change let the association redirect vital financial resources straight into its mission of supporting patients rather than into IT costs. The administrative team was freed from repetitive tasks and now focuses on higher-value initiatives and direct member support.

🛠️ Technology Stack

• SharePoint Online: the secure data store and hosting platform, at no additional cost.
• SPFx (SharePoint Framework): the framework chosen to build a rich, fast, integrated interface using React.
• Power Automate: the orchestration engine automating email notifications with no human intervention.
• Fluent UI: makes the application look natively part of Office 365, reducing the learning curve.

💬 Client Testimonial

“The new platform fitted perfectly into how we work. We stopped losing time on manual processes and, most importantly, we cut significant fixed costs that now go into direct support for our members.”

Board Associação Crohn/Colite Portugal

🎓 Lessons Learned

• Leverage non-profit grants: the potential of Microsoft’s non-profit licensing is often underused; custom low-code or pro-code solutions inside the ecosystem can replace expensive SaaS.
• User experience: visual familiarity through Fluent UI was critical to immediate adoption by non-technical users.