RAFA's Salesforce data protection challenges
RAFA's journey toward stronger data protection began with a realization: their existing Salesforce implementation, launched in 2015, wasn't meeting the organization's requirements. "Our consultancy basically delivered a system that didn't quite meet the requirements of what the business needed," Sherwin explains.
Sherwin's arrival in 2016 marked the beginning of a digital transformation. His mission? To build a team and rebuild their Salesforce implementation from the ground up. "We had to convince our trustees to do a bit of a reset," he says. This time, the approach was different: more systematic, more manageable, and crucially, more involving of the business.
The new Salesforce instance, implemented in early 2018, focused on two key elements:
- Membership management for 65,000 members
- Donation management and supporter journey tracking
Later that year, RAFA added case working management to their Salesforce toolkit, creating an end-to-end journey for beneficiary support. The system was expanded to include community portals for volunteers, outreach call tracking, and more.
"We've got quite a complex environment now that covers members, beneficiaries, volunteers, donors, supporters," Sherwin notes. "And you could be only one of those or multiple hats as well."
This complexity, combined with the sensitive nature of the data — including information on serving RAF personnel — made rigorous data protection a top priority.
Choosing Own
As RAFA's Salesforce org grew more sophisticated, the limitations of Salesforce's native backup tools became apparent. "Their responsibility and their recovery process didn't feel very robust," Sherwin recalls. The standard Salesforce tools required manual effort and were time-consuming. "Our Salesforce administrator was spending quite a bit of time once a week grabbing data out of the standard tools that Salesforce gives you, which are pretty rubbish to be fair," Sherwin explains.
Sherwin's background in the commercial sector, where he was accustomed to dealing with large volumes of data and enterprise systems, made him acutely aware of the need for a more efficient backup and recovery solution.
The search for a better solution led RAFA to explore the market. "I looked around the market back in 2017 and went, ‘Well, this is not what we need. We need something better,’" Sherwin recalls. That something better was Own. "Own was probably the market leader when we were looking in 2017 in terms of the backup space," Sherwin says. This reputation gave RAFA confidence in their choice.
Protecting multiple environments
RAFA needed data protection beyond their primary Salesforce org. "We've got two orgs actually," Sherwin reveals. "We do run another contract for the RAF, and we've got a separate org for them and Own backs that up as well." This capability to protect multiple environments under a single solution further cemented Own’s value to RAFA.
Charity-friendly pricing
Despite budget constraints due to its status as a charity, RAFA found Own’s pricing reasonable. "They were giving us a reasonable discount. And for the peace of mind of what we were spending to protect our data, I think we saw value in that," Sherwin explains.
Ease of implementation
The simplicity of setting up Own was a significant factor in RAFA's decision. "It was such an easy thing to set up and implement," Sherwin notes, contrasting it with the manual processes they were using before.
The combination of these factors made Own the clear choice for RAFA. "I think given that it's been so easy to implement and it does what it's supposed to do in terms of our need — in terms of protecting the data — I think it's been fine for us. It's done what we needed to do," Sherwin concludes.
RAFA’s favorite Own capabilities
✅ Set it and forget it reliability
One of the most appreciated aspects of Own is its reliability. "It just sits there in the background and we let things back up," Sherwin explains. This hands-off approach allows RAFA to focus on its mission without worrying about data protection.
✅ Weekly status reports
Own’s automated reporting feature provides peace of mind for the RAFA team. "I get a weekly report, and so does my team to know that the backups are running, which is the first thing you want to know," Sherwin says. These reports offer quick visibility into the health of their backups across multiple orgs.
✅ Flexible recovery options
Unlike Salesforce's all-or-nothing recovery approach, Own offers granular restore capabilities. "We've got the flexibility just to restore a few fields if we wanted to, or look at the fields and say, ‘Well, actually, do we need to bring that back or not?’" Sherwin notes. This flexibility was invaluable during development and when correcting administrative errors.
✅ Sandbox protection
Own’s ability to back up sandbox environments is crucial for RAFA's development process. "It's probably more in the sandbox backups rather than the production environment. They've done it when they've wanted to rebuild something quickly because they were testing a theory or some coding," Sherwin explains.
✅ Long-term data retention
Own’s long-term data retention also provided unexpected benefits. Sherwin mentions, "I've still got that data back from 2017 when it was backed up. So effectively, we could always compare that data if we needed to with the current org."
Own’s comprehensive protection gave RAFA the confidence to manage their data more effectively. Sherwin shares an example: "Last year we did a load of archiving because we had loads of snapshots for our reporting and we wanted to claw a lot of data back from Salesforce because we paid for storage, which is quite expensive. Knowing that Own had a copy of all that data was kind of comforting for my team.”
How reliable data protection supports RAFA's mission
What was RAFA's overall experience with using Own as the organization's backup and recovery solution?
"When I think about Own, I think about the peace of mind it gives us," Sherwin says. "It just sits there in the background, doing what it's supposed to do in terms of protecting our data."
Own’s combination of reliable backups, easy implementation, and flexible recovery options made it RAFA's data protection solution of choice. With their mission-critical data secure, RAFA can confidently continue its digital transformation journey, focusing on what matters most: supporting the RAF community.
Looking to the future, RAFA continues to evolve its digital capabilities, with Own as a trusted partner in data protection. As Sherwin puts it, "Our digital journey continues. It's not a done deal ever. We're always looking to do more."
"It's really about what it means to the people that we're trying to help," Sherwin concludes, underlining the real-world impact of RAFA's work and the critical role that data protection plays in their mission to support the RAF community.
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