Understanding the challenge
The SEAH team within the CHS Alliance needed to move away from fragmented and increasingly difficult-to-manage reporting processes based on spreadsheets and SharePoint tools.
The project dealt with highly sensitive safeguarding data, meaning security, privacy, and trust were absolutely critical from the outset. At the same time, the platform needed to remain straightforward and accessible for organisations operating in very different contexts and across multiple languages.
The goal extended beyond simple data collection.
The CHS Alliance wanted to create a trusted reporting system that could help humanitarian organisations identify patterns, improve safeguarding responses, and support evidence-based policy and advocacy work across the sector.
Designing for usability and trust
Given the sensitivity of the subject matter, usability played an important role in building confidence and encouraging adoption.
We worked closely with stakeholders to design a platform that balanced robust security requirements with a simple and intuitive user experience. Reporting flows were carefully structured to reduce friction while ensuring organisations could securely submit, manage, and review incidents internally.
Access controls were designed around organisational structures, allowing authorised users within the same organisation to collaborate while preventing visibility across unrelated organisations.
The platform also introduced multilingual reporting support across English, French, Spanish, and Arabic, alongside automated translation into English to improve consistency and enable clearer cross-sector analysis.
Building on Salesforce
With the CHS Alliance already investing in Salesforce internally, we designed the platform to integrate cleanly into the organisation’s wider technology ecosystem.
Using Salesforce Experience Cloud allowed us to take advantage of enterprise-level security, role-based access control, multilingual support, and scalable infrastructure without unnecessarily reinventing existing functionality.
We also implemented real-time dashboards and data visualisations using Salesforce tooling and Chart.js components, allowing stakeholders to analyse safeguarding trends more effectively and monitor reporting activity as data was submitted.
Building within Salesforce created a stronger long-term foundation for future integrations, reporting, and organisational scalability.
Delivery and collaboration
The project brought together safeguarding specialists, technical consultants, and delivery teams working across multiple disciplines.
Close collaboration with stakeholders was essential throughout, particularly given the complexity and sensitivity of the reporting requirements. Decisions needed to balance operational realities, user confidence, long-term maintainability, and strict data protection considerations simultaneously.
The result was a platform that felt robust without becoming intimidating or overly complicated for end users.
Outcome and impact
The platform provided the CHS Alliance and participating organisations with a far more secure, scalable, and effective way to manage SEAH incident reporting.
Replacing disconnected spreadsheets and manual processes with a centralised reporting platform improved consistency, strengthened security, and reduced operational overhead. More importantly, it enabled organisations to better analyse trends and contribute towards wider safeguarding improvements across the humanitarian sector.
The project demonstrated how thoughtful product design and delivery can support sensitive, high-impact work while maintaining usability, trust, and long-term sustainability.