Yesterday I was honored to host an FE User group for Blackbaud. It was held at our Horsham Library - thanks so much to the library for this wonderful service - a great space for no cost!
I'm not sure how many people were there but the turnout was good - I'd estimate 30-35 people. We saw a couple of quick presentations from Ben Cade and James Bradley from Blackbaud. We learned more about FE dashboards and the VCO.
We ate lots of food - no event is really good without lots of food. We also broke up into focus groups. I took part in the database management/content group. Most of our talk was about integrating RE and FE. I was somewhat surprised to see how many people have not integrated their systems. Some reasons for this include:
- Difficulty with communication between Development, Finance and IT. This is undertandable - we all have different requirements for the software. It's hard to come to an understanding to be able to formulate a plan. I think a third party helps here.
- Lack of support/training. Don't we all feel this. I feel fortunate to be able to provide the IT support our organization requires. Many organizations just don't have the budget for this. I've found it helpful to assure to include in the budget consulting service from the vendor for any purchase of software. I know this is hard - we can't even afford the product. However, we don't want to buy the product, spend the money and not use it.
- Lack of information on how to set up FE to integrate with RE and vice versa before you purchase the other product. Most of us bought one product first - FE or RE. By the time we get the other product, we are entrenched in our current procedure and fight changing anything. Wouldn't it be great if we had a road map from Blackbaud on how to set up the product so it would integrate well. There are basics that will fit in with every organization. We can't decipher this from user guides and we can't pay for consulting services whenever we make a change. Give us a roadmap to help us understand how things should work.
- Lack of user groups - nothing beats sitting in a room with other users talking about how you do things. I'd love to have a small budget for snacks at the user group meetings we hold every three months. Thanks to Taylor Moore from BB for sending us goodies for our last meeting. Blackbaud needs to foster these independent user groups. They know we sell product at these meetings by showcasing our use of their products.
- Finance doesn't know RE and Development doen't know FE. This is normal but someone has to know both systems in order to integrate them. Blackbaud is now doing better at supporting integration. Bring in consulting support, if possible. I don't want to always sound like I think Blackbaud consulting is the only provider out there - it's not. I just don't have personal experience with other companies and I've good experience with Blackbaud.
I'll stop there but it really disappoints me to see systems that are not integrated. I hope I can help in some way. Email me with questions if I can.
Quick update on our move to a vmware environment. It is going well. Taking longer than I thought but that is because our consulting help is so thorough and great at doing due diligence. Anyone in the Philly suburb area, you can do no wrong going with Lantium for consulting services. Excellent! Special thanks to Ed Keiper.
Off to work now. We are working through our Major Gift campaign policies and procedures - talk about different requirements for Finance, Development and Operations. I'll share the outcome in the next post (which will be sooner than later).
Best to all - Nora
