About
The National Football Museum is a unique organisation that sits at the intersection of culture, sport, heritage and community engagement. It operates as a visitor attraction, a charity, an educational hub and a guardian of football’s social history. Its audiences include families, fans, schools, donors, community groups, tourism partners and corporate clients, each engaging with the museum in different ways.
The organisation’s customer landscape is therefore wide-ranging. This breadth creates both opportunity and complexity, particularly when data sits across multiple systems and teams operate with different engagement objectives.
The museum operates a Gift Aid annual pass scheme, manages group and education bookings and a successful event hire business, delivers learning and community programmes and works with donors and partners while also supporting day-to-day visitor engagement.
The Brief
As the museum’s ambitions grew, the need for a central CRM system became clear. A unified platform would bring customer information together, support more strategic communication and enable better data-led decision making.
Early research into CRM systems began internally, but the volume of products available meant many were designed for narrower commercial use cases and did not reflect the museum’s combination of charity governance, growing event hire, visitor attraction operations and fundraising activity.
Without specialist CRM or procurement expertise in-house, the risk of choosing a system that addressed only part of the organisation was high.
ReWork Consulting was appointed to provide clarity, structure and independent insight, helping the museum navigate the CRM market with clarity and a practical understanding of what would genuinely support its long-term goals.
ReWork’s role is independent of any software provider, ensuring recommendations are grounded solely in organisational fit and long-term sustainability.
The Challenge
Fragmentation
- No single CRM system to unify customer and contact information
- Heavy reliance on spreadsheets and manual processes
- Limited visibility of historic communication and engagement
Procurement Risk
- Difficulty navigating the CRM market without specialist knowledge
- Limited internal capacity to run a procurement process alongside operational demands
Future Sustainability
- A need for a future-proof solution supporting visitor engagement, event hire, stakeholder relationships and charitable activity
- Requirement for a sound return on investment within a charitable context
The ReWork Approach
1. Discovery
ReWork carried out a detailed discovery phase, combining on-site sessions with a series of one-to-one conversations across all levels of the organisation, alongside follow-up meetings with the core project group. These discussions explored business goals, customer engagement needs, current processes, frustrations, future ambitions and the realities of internal resources.
Insights were mapped against functional requirements, governance structures and resource realities, allowing operational pain points to be separated from structural design issues.
The output was a set of tailored recommendations covering supplier selection and CRM strategy.
2. Shortlist to Selection
ReWork designed and managed a structured and independent supplier selection process tailored specifically to the museum’s requirements. Evaluation criteria were defined collaboratively and weighted to reflect organisational priorities, including data architecture, fundraising capability, integration requirements, reporting depth, usability, governance compliance and long-term scalability.
Suppliers were assessed through a combination of written submissions, structured remote demonstrations, scenario-based workshops and in-person sessions involving key stakeholders across departments. A transparent scoring matrix enabled like-for-like comparison.
Commercial modelling was also undertaken, including licence structures, implementation costs, internal resource implications and projected return on investment. Reference checks and peer conversations added an additional layer of due diligence.
3. Change Management Guidance
ReWork provided advisory support during implementation, working closely with internal stakeholders and the selected CRM partner. This focused on governance, adoption, risk management and organisational readiness, ensuring continuity between selection and delivery.
This included regular progress reporting to track delivery against plan, alongside a series of employee surveys to benchmark project progress, assess confidence levels and inform action planning to support adoption and embedding of the CRM across the organisation.
The Outcome (ongoing)
Although the implementation phase is ongoing, the museum now operates with a defined CRM strategy, agreed governance principles and is working towards a shared understanding of data ownership across departments. The selection process has reduced procurement risk, clarified internal resource planning and created a structured implementation roadmap. Early engagement has strengthened cross-department collaboration and strengthened internal understanding of how data actively supports engagement, operations and growth.
In Their Words
“Working with Sarah changed the whole direction of our CRM project. We quickly became overwhelmed by the volume of information and the sales-led CRM products we kept coming across. Sarah brought the sector knowledge, structure and clarity we were missing. Her staged process helped us compare systems like-for-like and stay focused on what would genuinely work for a cultural organisation. She also helped us build real buy-in across the museum and shift mindsets towards using data in a more meaningful way. The guidance and critical eye she brought was invaluable.”
Dave Edwards, Development Lead, National Football Museum
Why It Matters
For organisations without in-house procurement or IT capacity, it’s easy to fall into the trap of over-buying, under-preparing, or launching systems that never embed.
ReWork helps cultural attractions like the National Football Museum ask the right questions, see the full picture, and move forward with confidence.
Need an independent review of your systems, and how that relates to the market?
Let’s chat here: https://reworkconsulting.co.uk/get-in-touch/