Upward Sports: Leveraging Creatio for Enhanced Partnership and Growth

Upward Sports is the world's largest Christian sports league, providing athletic experiences to millions of children in the U.S. and Canada. The organization promotes the discovery of Jesus through sports and partners with churches across the U.S. and Canada to bring youth sports ministry to local communities. Upward Sports equips local churches with everything they need to run their leagues, from training and sports apparel to player registration systems. The organization's custom programs are designed to meet the needs of every community and help children develop skills for the sports arena and values for life.

Upward Sports, the world's largest Christian sports league, was facing challenges with its outdated, complex, and code-based CRM solution. The organization, which partners with churches across the U.S. and Canada to bring youth sports ministry to local communities, was struggling with a CRM system that was difficult to operate and required a significant amount of time for process automation. The system was only operable by a limited number of employees, which further complicated matters. The need for a more advanced solution was also driven by the company's desire to improve its time to market.

To address these challenges, Upward Sports adopted Creatio’s no-code platform for workflow automation and CRM. The implementation of the platform was carried out by Creatio’s partner, Techosystems, which designed a best-fit application for Upward Sports by combining Creatio’s turnkey solutions with custom-built workflows. The first project milestone was marketing automation, with the integration of Creatio with the Upward Sports website and the setup of trigger and bulk email campaigns. Techosystems also automated sales management workflows in Creatio and mapped the partner journey stages. The proprietary system of Upward Sports was integrated with Creatio and used to manage ministry sports program schedules, process payments, register program participants, and set up teams for different games. Upward Sports also uses tailor-made workflows for partner onboarding and program renewal.

• The implementation of Creatio’s no-code platform for workflow automation and CRM has significantly improved Upward Sports' operations. The automation of lead engagement and partner management workflows in Creatio and the consolidation of data in a unified environment has considerably increased team productivity. It has also boosted lead conversion and maintained high partner retention. The ability to make many adjustments independently using Creatio’s no-code tools has empowered company employees and made building dashboards, setting up workflows, and making process changes feasible for all team members. This has resulted in a faster time-to-market for new solutions.

• Succeeded in retaining 92% of the company partners

• Increased lead conversion by 32% thanks to dynamic case management workflows

• 5% increase in MQLs as a result of marketing automation