Digital assessment, cybersecurity, Dynamics 365, data and training for the common home of organisations of people with disabilities.
Putting everyone’s house in order.
CERMI is the common home of organisations of people with disabilities in Spain. A host of organisations, a single voice and a ground-floor office on Calle Recoletos.
From there, they defend rights, sign agreements, process grants, present awards and answer everyone. They had spent years asking for the digital world not to leave anyone out. In 2023 they decided the transformation also had to begin at home.
First, ask
Before talking about tools, we asked what was eating up their time. The answer came by email, as a list: grants, invoices, membership fees, agreements, new organisations joining, the CERMI Awards.
With that list and a digital maturity self-assessment, we drew the map. We had to choose, as always when something matters. We chose what holds everything else up: security, management and people.
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Security, accessible too
An audit, an IT acceptable use policy, two-factor authentication, new passwords, a VPN, remote device management and a plan for when something goes wrong. The usual, done properly.
What isn’t usual: when choosing the security awareness tool, one of the questions was which one was the most accessible. Almost everywhere, that question comes late. Here it came first.
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Paper, put in its place
On top of the Microsoft 365 they already used, we built what was missing: Dynamics 365 configured to fit them, and small apps for those little tasks that eat up the day.
Take the register of incoming and outgoing documents: each document is scanned, uploaded, given its number and filed automatically. Meetings, events and trips in the calendar flow straight into the draft of the Annual Report. December’s work no longer starts in December.
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Data with purpose
CERMI has spent years calling out the way people with disabilities disappear from the statistics. It had its own Strategic Data Plan. What was missing was getting it going.
We supported the roll-out: assessment, architecture, pilot cases and data literacy for the whole team. For an organisation like this, putting its data in order isn’t a technical matter. It’s practising what it preaches.
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People before screens
Technology can be installed in an afternoon. Habits take rather longer.
There was training in Dynamics, cybersecurity and digital skills, and an Agile workshop with a real project on the table. No rush and no jargon. And someone on the other end of the phone the day the first dodgy email arrived.
This is what transforming with purpose means: changing how an organisation works without touching why it exists.
CERMI carries on doing what it has always done (bringing voices together, defending rights, never letting an issue drop), but with its house tidier, safer and a little lighter. We came away with a lesson we now apply everywhere: accessibility isn’t the last requirement. It’s the first question.
