Case Study: Transforming Carbon Project Management for Soil Association

As demand for voluntary carbon certification grew, we helped Soil Association replace manual, document-heavy processes with a modern Salesforce platform and secure client portal. The portal gives every participant clear visibility of project status, outstanding actions and next steps.

Client Overview

Soil Association Certification is one of the UK's leading certification bodies, providing independent assurance across a range of environmental and sustainability standards. As its Nature Markets business expanded, the organisation required a scalable digital solution to support the growing volume and complexity of voluntary carbon projects.

The Challenge

The Nature Markets team was growing rapidly, but many of its core operational processes relied on shared network drives, spreadsheets, Word documents, email and file-transfer applications. While these tools supported the early stages of the business, they became increasingly difficult to manage as project volumes increased.

Managing the lifecycle of a carbon project requires multiple stakeholders to collaborate on detailed project documentation while maintaining a clear audit trail. Internal Soil Association teams, project developers, validators, reviewers and scheme owners all needed visibility of project progress, document revisions and outstanding actions, but information was spread across multiple systems.

The objective was to transform the certification process with a secure client portal supporting client onboarding, document collaboration and workflow management at every stage of a voluntary carbon project.

The new platform needed to become the operational hub for every carbon project by:

• Providing a single, secure location for project documentation.
• Enabling collaborative review of documents recording structured comments for follow-up.
• Automating administrative processes including quote generation and contract management.
• Giving every participant real-time visibility of project status.
• Creating a complete audit trail of comments, responses and approvals.
• Scaling alongside the continued growth of the Nature Markets business.

The Solution: The Nature Markets Client Portal

We designed and developed a Salesforce-powered client portal that became the central workspace for each voluntary carbon project, from initial application through audit, review and approval.

Through the portal, Project Developers can create, update and manage projects. The Soil Association team can plan audits with project developers and auditors, while managing project documentation in a shared but secure environment.

Role-based project management

The portal was designed around the different responsibilities of each participant involved in the certification process:

• Soil Association Certification Officers: approve contracts, allocate audits, review and manage portal activity
• Project developers (PD): upload new projects and manage documents
• Verifiers and Validators (VVTL): manage and upload audit documents
• Reviewers (RV): manage and upload audit documents
• Scheme owners (SO): approve audit documentation

A connected certification workflow

The platform allows users to:

• Create and submit new project applications online.
• Track project progress in real time using Salesforce throughout the certification process.
• Manage documents securely with controlled access for each participant.
• Receive automated notifications when actions or responses are required.
• Add structured comments against individual documents.
• Respond collaboratively to reviewer comments, creating a complete history of discussions and actions.
• Access digital job instructions for auditors and reviewers.
• Automate administrative processes, including quote creation and contract issuance.

By centralising project management and collaboration into a single platform, the portal removed the need for disconnected files, manual document distribution and duplicated administration.

The Impact

The Nature Markets Client Portal has transformed how Soil Association Certification manages voluntary carbon projects.

A shared operational workspace

Instead of relying on spreadsheets, email chains and shared drives, every stakeholder now works in a single, secure environment designed around the certification workflow. This reduces administrative overhead and gives participants a clearer view of their responsibilities.

A scalable, transparent process

The result is a more efficient, transparent and scalable process that supports the continued growth of Soil Association Certification's Nature Markets business while improving the experience for internal teams and external clients.

Conclusion

The Nature Markets Client Portal has done more than digitise an existing process: it has created a stronger operating model for voluntary carbon project certification.

By bringing project developers, certification officers, auditors and reviewers into a single Salesforce platform, Soil Association Certification has replaced fragmented manual processes with a transparent, collaborative workflow. Each participant can work from the same live project information, with clear ownership of documents, actions and approvals.

As demand for environmental certification continues to increase, the platform gives Nature Markets a flexible foundation that can evolve with new schemes, changing requirements and expanding client volumes.

An Ongoing Partnership

Following the successful launch of the Nature Markets Client Portal, we have continued working with Soil Association to provide ongoing support and incremental improvements as the platform evolves.

For more information about how we can help your organisation improve your workflows through integration and get more value from Salesforce, read more about Salesforce Advisory services, reach out via LinkedIn or via our contact form - we’d love to talk.

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