Historic Environment Scotland (HES) is the lead public body for Scotland’s historic environment, caring for and promoting the nation’s built and natural heritage. With a large and diverse membership base, HES required a modern platform capable of supporting complex membership management while remaining flexible enough to meet changing needs.
Photo credit: Thomas Lamont
Historic Environment Scotland worked with Chorus to replace a long-standing legacy membership system with a modern Dynamics 365–based platform, improving visibility, flexibility and control while laying the groundwork for future growth.
From the outset, HES’s objective was to replace their legacy system and bring membership operations into a single, coherent platform. Microsoft Dynamics 365 was the preferred foundation, and HES used the UK government’s G-Cloud framework to source a partner, selecting Chorus following a detailed tender process.
Built on Dynamics 365, Evo 365 is a charity CRM accelerator that gives organisations a configurable foundation, with core membership functionality that can be tailored to reflect how a specific organisation works, without the time and cost of building from scratch.
Chorus was able to show HES what was possible out of the box, and how that foundation could be configured for their specific requirements.
For HES, this meant they could implement a working system more quickly, with less custom development, while still retaining the flexibility to tailor it to their needs.
Photo credit: Historic Environment Scotland
HES invested heavily in the project from the start. Key stakeholders were released from their day-to-day responsibilities for the duration of the project, giving them the capacity to focus on delivering it successfully. This enabled workshops, requirements sessions and testing to take place without the pressure of a day job running alongside, enabling a much smoother process.
Requirements were worked through in detail, and when priorities or specifics changed, HES were quick to acknowledge a shift in requirements and move forward.
As Nick Murdock, Senior Technical Architect at Chorus, put it:
They trusted the process and the people delivering it and that’s probably the key thing. That trust made everything easier.
Photo credit: Thomas Lamont
Evo 365 is a configurable accelerator, not a fixed product. That flexibility is its strength, but it also means the platform needs to be tested as though it were built specifically for you, because in many ways, it has been. HES understood that.
User acceptance testing was detailed and wide-ranging, covering edge cases around Direct Debit cancellations, life memberships, lapsed accounts and members without email addresses. Scenarios that could easily have surfaced after go-live were caught and resolved before it.
HES’s commitment throughout the project made such a difference. All credit to them, they were fantastic. HES invested in the process. Had they not done that and not been strong enough to say “actually there’s more testing that we want to do”, it wouldn’t have been such a successful go-live.
, Senior Technical Architect at Chorus
Purpose-built membership software can handle basic membership management, but the case for Dynamics 365 was justified for everything else that was required on top. For example, requirements such as communications consent, member journeys, renewal sequences, and complaints logging (under statutory obligations). Evo 365 is built to handle that bigger picture, beyond the core membership elements.
HES’s new system now reflects that. Automated billing now runs through Stripe and GoCardless, replacing previous manual processes that required staff to download files, process them outside the system, and re-upload them every month.
Today, an integration with a third-party ticketing platform means memberships purchased on-site at visitor locations feed directly into Dynamics. HES’s mobile app (which provides digital passes to members), pulls live data directly from Dynamics, keeping member information accurate and up to date.
Photo credit: Historic Environment Scotland
Coming from Raiser’s Edge, a system that had been in place for 20+ years, the shift to a modern, cloud-based platform has changed what’s possible. Data visibility has improved across the board. The scope for change and growth is there, and with philanthropy functionality being added to the new system, the platform is already showing its adaptability.
Photo credit: Historic Environment Scotland
Chorus is an established UK Microsoft partner, helping organisations get more from their Microsoft technologies across Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Dataverse, as well as Microsoft 365 and Azure, with expertise across IT, security, business apps and AI.
As experts in charity CRM and membership systems built on Microsoft Dynamics 365, Chorus has also developed Evo 365, its own charity accelerator for Dynamics 365 that gives charities and non-profits much of the functionality they need from Dynamics while reducing the need for custom development.