The Corporate Engagement Awards is taking place on 12 June. Fujitsu and Macmillan Cancer Support are shortlisted for an award

Fujitsu and Macmillan Cancer Support began their two-year partnership, voted by colleagues in November 2016, with the ambition of helping even more people living with cancer. Macmillan is the UK’s leading cancer supporter charity, helping people make sense of their diagnosis, by providing expert information and advice to them live their life as fully as they can.

Fujitsu wanted to support Macmillan to be right there for people living with cancer. The partnership was a great success across fundraising and volunteering but the greatest impact for supporters, volunteers and people with cancer come from the pro bono technology co-creation projects. Three key pro bono projects were delivered during the course of the partnership.

Fujitsu provided pro-bono support through the development of a prototype for contactless giving. There is an increasing need for charities to develop digital ways of giving in a growing cashless society. This project introduced Macmillan to contactless giving.

Fujitsu used an online digital platform, through its ‘Activ8’ team, to crowd source ideas from fundraisers and experts to look at how this could work. Together we piloted foam hands and buckets to test contactless giving at the Fujitsu World Tour 2017, which has in turn evolved into 12 contactless machines, making it easy for people on the street to give.

This allowed Macmillan to build on the success of the pilot to trial these 12 devices and in turn raised over £60,000 in card donations. The work that we did together from the pilot to trialling 12 devices will allow Macmillan to develop this further and continue to use contactless as a way for the UK public to donate.

For the Fujitsu World Tour 2018 event, there was another opportunity to co-create a solution for Macmillan with Fujitsu’s Activ8 team. An innovative 360 degree video pilot was created to produce an immersive experience for head and neck cancer radiotherapy treatment. This is an area that Macmillan wanted to focus on as there was a real need for more resource to explain the radiography treatment process. It is often quite frightening to go through head and neck cancers as a mould must be developed and in place during treatment; this video would help people feel better prepared and reassured about the process.

This project directly helps people living with cancer with positive feedback from head and neck cancer specialists and patients. It is now used to support newly diagnosed patients at various hospitals, for support groups and shown at various head and neck cancer conferences across the UK. This also upskilled Macmillan’s video production team who are now able to create further 360 degree videos across their services.

Fujitsu and Macmillan worked together since the start of the partnership to ensure that we could create a service to support Macmillan volunteers. Macmillan’s ambition was to create a single technology platform which revolutionises how volunteers give their time to Macmillan.

Their solution focused on three key areas: a mobile app for volunteers, an instance of customer relationship management software to manage the data and an enhanced volunteer recruitment webpage. Fujitsu’s work has created the foundation for this project and will create a lasting legacy with a product reaching 25,000 plus users. With over £349,000 of pro bono support being donated to this programme, this will create a transformative change for volunteers, volunteer managers and Macmillan staff.

This project will deliver multiple benefits including a new ability for volunteer-data to be collected in one central place improving Macmillan’s insight and single view of our supporter, a fully joined up and integrated system that will provide an improved experience for volunteers, with greater ease of access across multiple devices, standardisation of operational processes bringing consistency within all Macmillan services across the UK, pioneering project on D365 aligns with Technology’s CRM strategy, and ensured compliance with best practices, data protection and security.

These technology projects have helped support Macmillan Cancer Support to expand its digital presence, demonstrating how companies like Fujitsu can use their core skills to create a lasting legacy for charities and society.

Craig Hall is head of charity corporate partnerships in the UK & Ireland for Fujitsu.

To book your place at the Corporate Engagement Awards, click here.