Head of National Salesforce Platform

Forestry England is looking for a Head of National Salesforce Platform to lead and deliver the development and integration of a critical (CRM) system. Forestry England is a world leader in sustainable forestry and the largest provider of outdoor recreation in the UK, with over 300million visits to the nations forests last year.

This is an exciting new role. The role-holder will act as the lead Salesforce professional, being able to make recommendations, influence and drive business decisions ensuring organisational performance is improved, enable strategic decision making at a site, district and national level by revolutionising the way Forestry England uses it data analytics to improve performance and revenue. The post-holder will be responsible for business-critical system functionality, supporting 365 business operations across the nations forests.

This is a hybrid / flexible working role, combining regular attendance at one of Forestry England's main offices with remote working from home. Some national travel will be required to attend site visits and business meetings as necessary.

Job summary

This is an exciting new role - Forestry England is looking for a Head of National Salesforce Platform to lead and deliver the development and integration of a critical (CRM) system. Forestry England is a world leader in sustainable forestry and the largest provider of outdoor recreation in the UK, with over 300million visits to the nations forests last year.

We have created Connections by onboarding multiple legacy systems onto the market leading Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, Salesforce. Our national platform provides our membership offering, integration with parking systems, fundraising capabilities, volunteer and permission management and marketing automation functionality. As Forestry England moves to increase its business performance and efficiency and grow the net contribution from our growing Recreation and Visitor Development business, putting customers and insight at the heart of what we do is crucial to the success of the future organisation.

Purpose of the Job

Forestry England has implemented an MVP solution to transition key recreation systems legacy systems to Connections (our internal name for our CRM, Salesforce and Marketing Cloud). This has seen fundamental changes in the way we conduct business and our connections with our Recreation customers, third parties and volunteers, however there is more to achieve. Over the next 5 years, Connections will provide a single customer view for event permissions, enquiries /complaints, volunteer management, membership, legacy giving, ticketing and more.

The CRM system will allow Forestry England to deliver better public interactions and customer service; improvements to our marketing intelligence, by enhancing the way we engage with our members, visitors, volunteers and the wider public, thus enabling Forestry England to increase revenue, visitor numbers and better tell the story about what we do for the nations forests.

Reporting to the Executive Director of Recreation & Visitor Development and in close cross-functional collaboration with teams from across the business including IT and Marketing the role-holder will be responsible for securing and consistently delivering high-quality outcomes and contributing to significant business improvement by leading the critical system for Recreation customers, members and volunteers at Forestry England.

The role-holder will act as the lead Salesforce professional, being able to make recommendations, influence and drive business decisions ensuring organisational performance is improved, enable strategic decision making at a site, district and national level by revolutionising the way Forestry England uses it data analytics to improve performance and revenue. The post-holder will be responsible for business-critical system functionality, supporting 365 business operations across the nations forests.

The CRM system manages 140,000 contacts across member, volunteer, permission holder, donor and subscriber audiences. The platform supports approximately 450 internal Salesforce users and 60,000 external portal users, with operational support provided by a 10 person internal team and key business SMEs. The system is delivered and maintained within an annual budget of ~2.5m.

You will form part of the national leadership team for Recreation which is part of Forestry Englands National Operations team. Success in this role will require energetic and collaborative leadership which develops the one team culture across a wide range of activities and is inclusive of National and District staff. The role involves advocacy of the development of Forestry Englands CRM functionality and driving the strategy for the growth of the platform within the organisation. It requires high levels of Salesforce experience and technical proficiency to continuously develop the platform and the deployment of this within business processes. You will have line management of 3 resources across the Business Analyst, Technical and Delivery teams.

Key responsibilities & accountabilities

Strategic Vision and Direction

Maintain an up-to-date view of the vision and objectives of Forestry England through proactive engagement with key stakeholders

Initiate constructive dialogue with senior stakeholders with ideas & innovations for improving the operations of Forestry England utilising the Salesforce platform

Develop and maintain a 3-5 year strategic roadmap of Salesforce solutions that maps to Forestry England vision and strategy

Maintain knowledge and understanding of Salesforce and its innovations through proactive strategic engagement with senior Salesforce executives

Maintain strategic view of Salesforce expertise & capability needs required to support strategic roadmap

Champion business value of Salesforce to Forestry England executive

Champion and lead the Salesforce support team to drive innovation, and continuous improvement of operations/BAU

Ensure benefits realisation of investment in the platform including use of insight

Technical

Head of CRM profession

Ensure Forestry England is able to make informed decisions Ensure AI integration is optimised across the platform securely

System security, as system owner, working with IT and IT / Cybersecurity colleagues to deliver against Forestry Commission and HMG DDaT frameworks, standards and best practice, ensuring compliance obligations are adhered to

Support test, audit and assessments activities and engage with IT and security colleagues to implement change and remediation activities

Disaster Recovery and resilience, responsible for managing and testing Connections DR Plans and continually develop and improve them while engaging with wider DR/Business Continuity activities

Head of Salesforce expertise within Forestry England, leading business roadmap discussions to provide guidance on how the technology can support the business strategy.

Data compliance working with KIM team on data and information governance legislation, frameworks, standards, policies and practices

Programme Management

Lead reporting to and management of Programme Steering Group, including annual review of Terms of Reference

Responsible for the iterative development and delivery of change within the Connections (Salesforce and Marketing Cloud) platform Unblock obstacles to ensure delivery of solutions on-time, within budget and of high quality. Driving the team to completion and escalate decisions where required.

Accountable for setting a CRM roadmap of delivery, reporting regularly to Senior Management on project progress

Governing the project charter process for net new projects/initiatives ensuring clear KPIs, objectives, defining roles & responsibilities and benefits/ROI are identified and traceable throughout the project.

Ensuring the project team is sufficiently resourced to achieve milestones

Responsible for the oversight of recruitment within the team and owning the onboarding/offboarding of all new team members

Understand the need to ensure Data Protection and Privacy Legislation and IT Security mechanisms are adhered to throughout the system and processes

Facilitate regular reporting cadences to key forums including Programme Boards and Steering Group

Responsible for the governance of Connections delivery including RAID, Action and Decision Log, escalating to the organisational risk register where required.

Oversee change management strategy for Connections including user adoption strategies, training and transition planning.

Relationship Management

Initiate stakeholder engagement to understand the needs of the business areas, aligning these with the functionality of the new system, ensuring increased efficiencies through system integration and agreed processes

Recognise the need for coordinating activities and delivery across multiple internal projects, both technical and operational, uniting previously siloed business areas. ...