Case Study: National Lottery Heritage Fund achieves migration-ready data clarity for modern grant funding with Civica

National Lottery Heritage Fund lays groundwork for a modern approach to grant funding with Civica’s investment management system

The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the UK’s largest dedicated heritage granter, needed to replace its ageing, customised case management tool (GEMS) and prepare for a move to a cloud-based investment management system. Facing inflexible business flows, limited data interrogation and large volumes of structured and unstructured investment records, the Fund engaged Civica to run a data discovery exercise and transfer knowledge about the existing tool to inform migration planning.

Civica identified and classified data across GEMS, SharePoint, a reporting database and linked systems, analysing 4.6 million rows and 1.7 million documents over a 60‑day engagement. Civica delivered conceptual and physical data models, application workflow visualisations, a systems map, a data quality monitoring framework with 160 tests, and recommendations (including a Power BI/Azure Data Factory/Azure SQL data warehouse pilot). The work gave the Fund clarity on migration scope, surfaced data inconsistencies, improved readiness for handling in‑flight projects and established a measurable foundation for better reporting and the next stages of migration.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund

Tom Walters

Head of Research, Data and Insight