As you know if you read this blog, we use Sphere FAF extensively. We have at least 7 walks a year as well as an assortment of other thon type events. The FAF/RE plugin worked great, but it brought in a lot of data we didn't need in RE and processing profile updates was a pain! Our thoughts are that FAF is our walk database. The thon donors really have a loyalty to the person they support not necessarily to us. We don't solicit them in the same manner that we do our other donors. We email them through Sphere. We do want the donations in RE however.
We implemented Import-O-Matic (IOM) and now we bring in only what we need and we have a tool that does so much more on import. For example, those pesky little entries that are all in caps or not capitalized where they should be - IOM fixes the entries on the fly. I have dictionaries set up to correct things like Capt where I want Captain. I apply the correct letter type by associating it in a dictionary to the payment type. I can merge records during import - yes, during import. I could go on and on but I just want you to know that it has cut our processing time for getting those gifts in RE dramatically. We never could stay up to date on all of our donations - we do now. If you bring in lots of gifts from FAF, you will love IOM.
We're moving right along with Papersave. We are starting to see some good benefit. It's really nice to be able to open up a gift and see the documentation right there. Our process is refined and working well. We have 2 gift processors (they do so much more) and I ended up setting up a series of queues for each person. They alternate the daily scans. We use a ticketing system so they set up tickets for each day's tasks. Here is an example:
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Papersave in Action and O'Matics Import
We did it - we are using Papersave. I really love it. There are so many ways to add a document to a record in Raiser's Edge. Currently, we have two scanners that our record processors use to scan in the daily mail. It's a new process so, of course, there is buy in time, but I have to say that it's working. It's amazing to have that documentation linked to a gift or appeal or constituent record.
I'd like to share a little advice for the install. Make sure you or a consultant is comfortable with your environment - understands where are your databases, has admin rights and knows passwords, including the sa password for your database server. If you decide to integrate with Sharepoint, encourage the process that the Papersave techs set up the site. Sharepoint integration is an option. We were confused about that in our initial contract. Papersave made good on it for us and did our integration and we really appreciate it. We use Sharepoint extensively. The advantage is that the user does not have to use an RE license to view the gifts and the associated documentation. You also have a search function from within RE that allows you to easily find certain gifts and the documentation.
We're really just getting in the swing of things with Papersave. Next week, we plan to train our staff on the search function and to show them how to add documentation using the dropdown in the constituent record. I'm happy to share any other info with anyone interested in using Papersave. Feel free to email me directly - nora@alsphiladelphi.org.
We had a great PBUG meeting earlier this month. We had lengthened our meeting to allow for a presentation from O'Matic Software. Jeff Montgomery and Pam Bruek joined us from Charleston and told us about some really cool tools and plugins that have built for Blackbaud products such as RE and FE. I want import-o-matic now. I had heard about import-o-matic in the past and I thought - oh yeah, it will make importing a little easier. I had no idea how this tool works. You can actually import all kinds of data at the same time from ONE and ONE import process. This means you can create a .csv file with name, address, gift amount, tribute info, event info - all kinds of data and import-o-matic figures out how to get it in the database without having to include all of those id fields in your file. AND you have a wonderful interface that lets you change search criteria, edit records on the fly, update info in either the import file or the record....I can go on and on. That search criteria - it can be multiple types of searches - first and last name (# of characters), address line, email address - all searched at the same time if you so choose.
Next step is to try to get it in the budget. I've kind of had a lot of projects this year so I may have exhausted any available funds. It will make me truly sad to not get this tool soon. I do plan to use it instead of the Sphere plugin. More on that later.
Off to do some work.... good day to all
Nora
I'd like to share a little advice for the install. Make sure you or a consultant is comfortable with your environment - understands where are your databases, has admin rights and knows passwords, including the sa password for your database server. If you decide to integrate with Sharepoint, encourage the process that the Papersave techs set up the site. Sharepoint integration is an option. We were confused about that in our initial contract. Papersave made good on it for us and did our integration and we really appreciate it. We use Sharepoint extensively. The advantage is that the user does not have to use an RE license to view the gifts and the associated documentation. You also have a search function from within RE that allows you to easily find certain gifts and the documentation.
We're really just getting in the swing of things with Papersave. Next week, we plan to train our staff on the search function and to show them how to add documentation using the dropdown in the constituent record. I'm happy to share any other info with anyone interested in using Papersave. Feel free to email me directly - nora@alsphiladelphi.org.
We had a great PBUG meeting earlier this month. We had lengthened our meeting to allow for a presentation from O'Matic Software. Jeff Montgomery and Pam Bruek joined us from Charleston and told us about some really cool tools and plugins that have built for Blackbaud products such as RE and FE. I want import-o-matic now. I had heard about import-o-matic in the past and I thought - oh yeah, it will make importing a little easier. I had no idea how this tool works. You can actually import all kinds of data at the same time from ONE and ONE import process. This means you can create a .csv file with name, address, gift amount, tribute info, event info - all kinds of data and import-o-matic figures out how to get it in the database without having to include all of those id fields in your file. AND you have a wonderful interface that lets you change search criteria, edit records on the fly, update info in either the import file or the record....I can go on and on. That search criteria - it can be multiple types of searches - first and last name (# of characters), address line, email address - all searched at the same time if you so choose.
Next step is to try to get it in the budget. I've kind of had a lot of projects this year so I may have exhausted any available funds. It will make me truly sad to not get this tool soon. I do plan to use it instead of the Sphere plugin. More on that later.
Off to do some work.... good day to all
Nora
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Papersave Pre-Reqs and Workflow/Design Process
We've had our Design call and our technical pre-requisite call. Really interesting and thorough. Note to those who plan to move forward - it's really helpful if you have a good understanding of your current process and some objectives. Our technical call went well. Basically, we had a few decisions to make. We are going to link with Sharepoint. We currently have a Sharepoint Server site we use as our Intranet. By linking Papersave with Sharepoint, we will be able to have more robust search capabilites and users who don't have RE access will still be able to see the scanned backup documentation.
Papersave has two parts: the database part will reside on our current SQL Server. Here we house all our databases related to Blackbaud. The other part - the application - will reside on our Sharepoint server that has IIS installed. You need IIS for the Papersave application. The people on this call should include anyone who handles your server environment and application implementation.
Our design call also went well. There was a bigger crowd in attendance. Here you are going to walk through your process. In our case, we started with when the mail comes in the door right through to the acknowledgements and tributes. I would suggest your group should include someone who has a thorough understanding of the process of gift entry. You should also have your RE admin present and, if you use Sphere FAF, the download processing person should be in attendance. Include the exec staff who looks at the document and your finance person.
During the design call, you will work with your consultant to document all of your processes and discuss any issues. This design call is in preparation for the configuration of your application. One of the things we had to work through was how we would handle our Sphere FAF gifts that come in the mail. Currently, all gifts for our walks must be entered into Sphere FAF and then downloaded into an RE batch. Other online gifts come down into a batch also. We wanted to be able to match the scanned documents with the manually entered FAF donations. We needed to be able to identify them in the batch. We currently mark any walk donation that is manually entered by us into FAF with an attribute: Processed in Office. This will work to identify those gifts in batch. After we make sure we have all our server/appliation pre-requisites complete, the next step is the application install and configuration. I'll post more on that as it happens.
Other news: Just read that with patch 20 for RE we will have compatibility with Office 2010. We have no big plans to move yet, but software assurance will run out soon so I'll probably update soon. Everyone out there does use Techsoup for your software purchases, I hope. Biggggg savings!
Lastly, but very important - our next user group meeting will be on June 3rd and hosted by Cora Services', Peggy Campellone. I'm excited. Hope any of you near the Philly area can join us.
Spring is in the air - get out and enjoy! Nora
Papersave has two parts: the database part will reside on our current SQL Server. Here we house all our databases related to Blackbaud. The other part - the application - will reside on our Sharepoint server that has IIS installed. You need IIS for the Papersave application. The people on this call should include anyone who handles your server environment and application implementation.
Our design call also went well. There was a bigger crowd in attendance. Here you are going to walk through your process. In our case, we started with when the mail comes in the door right through to the acknowledgements and tributes. I would suggest your group should include someone who has a thorough understanding of the process of gift entry. You should also have your RE admin present and, if you use Sphere FAF, the download processing person should be in attendance. Include the exec staff who looks at the document and your finance person.
During the design call, you will work with your consultant to document all of your processes and discuss any issues. This design call is in preparation for the configuration of your application. One of the things we had to work through was how we would handle our Sphere FAF gifts that come in the mail. Currently, all gifts for our walks must be entered into Sphere FAF and then downloaded into an RE batch. Other online gifts come down into a batch also. We wanted to be able to match the scanned documents with the manually entered FAF donations. We needed to be able to identify them in the batch. We currently mark any walk donation that is manually entered by us into FAF with an attribute: Processed in Office. This will work to identify those gifts in batch. After we make sure we have all our server/appliation pre-requisites complete, the next step is the application install and configuration. I'll post more on that as it happens.
Other news: Just read that with patch 20 for RE we will have compatibility with Office 2010. We have no big plans to move yet, but software assurance will run out soon so I'll probably update soon. Everyone out there does use Techsoup for your software purchases, I hope. Biggggg savings!
Lastly, but very important - our next user group meeting will be on June 3rd and hosted by Cora Services', Peggy Campellone. I'm excited. Hope any of you near the Philly area can join us.
Spring is in the air - get out and enjoy! Nora
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Papersave Project Moves Forward
I've been bitten by the bronchitis bug. The fight is finally turning my way so I thought I would post an update to our Papersave project. We signed the deal for the advanced implementation of Papersave for RE. We are super excited. I've been working with Mindy at Papersave to set up our design call and IT prerequisite call. We had a good kickoff call and I'm very happy with how things are going. We were told that it was helpful to send them as much info as we could ahead of time, so we did just that. We sent a Powerpoint documenting our work flow from gift receipt to acknowledgement. We've had a few internal meetings looking at our objectives. They are:
- move toward a paperless office
- improve the process related to gift entry
- make gift related and constituent related documents easily available to our staff members
- have the ability to query on gift data and bring up related documentation
We feel we will meet these objectives. Our next step in the process are a two calls and then on to install and implementation and training. I'll keep you posted.
We had a great user group meeting this month. I was so pleased by the turnout and we had lots to talk about. Check our our Philabug yahoo group to learn more.
I registered for the Blackbaud Conference. Can't wait! One of my favorite things to do for sure. I'm already planning on getting in on Saturday. I hope to spend some time with my great account manager, Mary Lehman. I also hope to catch up with some old friends.
We're going to redesign our Sphere FAF walk site. Now that's going to be a fun project. We're pretty comfortable with Net Community design, but we'll be getting help from Blackbaud to get FAF looking the way it needs to look. Wish us luck!
Best to you all - Nora
Thursday, March 10, 2011
PBUG Meeting and new projects at The ALS Association GP Chapter
Just wanted to take a few minutes to post some updated info. I'm excited. Lots going on here.
First of all - a little gem I found. Recently, Blackbaud reminded us all to make sure our users have access to the Blackbaud support site. Well, here is one great reason for that. Buried in the user group area (at least I didn't know they were here) I found some very helpful documents. I was popping around and found Online User Clinics for The Raiser's Edge. I've been working on PCI Compliance - stuff on that in there- and we are always looking for nice visual instructions. Lots of cool info here.
As I mentioned before, we are moving forward with Papersave for RE. We've got a pretty good workflow process now, but we are hoping to streamline things even more, provide more visibility to donor docs (to those with access) and keep working toward that paperless office. I've just gone through the price negotiation process - isn't that always fun. Now on to the really fun part. In future posts, I'll walk through the process step by step. So far, I've had the "hand-off" meeting. We purchased Papersave through Blackbaud, but the implementation will be handled by Papersave. I had a nice meeting with my account manager, Mary Lehman (love that lady) and Diana McGowin, the manager of the Professional Services Team at Papersave (PS). Diana worked many years for Blackbaud and now serves as a great liason between BB and PS. Kickoff meeting to come soon. We took the advanced implementation package which will allow us to work with PS to set up a workflow process using the application. More to come on that.
Last night I updated BBNC to the latest version. I will admit I spent most of the time praying that the update would finish well - and it did. I normally do all the patches and upgrades without much worry. This one had me scared. Lots of changes as we move the database up into the cloud. Everything went great and I am already impressed by some of the changes. Spent some time in email design today and it was much easier. For all of you out there looking to do this update, BB recommends doing it on a test server first. I believe in that too; however, I gave up my test server budget to put toward Papersave. We don't have any customizations in our BBNC implementation so I felt pretty confident since I had good backups. However, I imagine my nerves wouldn't have taken quite the beating they did if I had tested the upgrade first.
We've been using Blackbaud Merchant Services for a couple of months now and we like it. The online interface is good and the reports are great. Our Controller says that balancing is nice and easy. We moved everything except for Direct Debit from IATS. Currently, BBMS doesn't do direct debit - I'm told it's coming soon.
This has nothing to do with Blackbaud - but I'll share anyway. We're also looking to move to a hosted phone system. Whoa - little bit of a learning curve here for me. Last system I managed implementing was an Avaya pbx. Lots of vendors out there with hosted systems. Lots of new acronyms.
And last, but not least in today's post, our Philadelphia Blackbaud Product User Group meeting is tomorrow (no direct affiliation to Blackbaud). We are meeting near our office in the Horsham library. Go here for more details or to sign up: http://www.alsphiladelphia.org/pbug. If you don't want to sign up - come anyway. It starts at 10am. Our user group consists of almost 70 Blackbaud product users from a tri-state area. We share lots of info - I always learn new things.
I hope everyone manages to avoid any flooding today. Best to you all - Nora
First of all - a little gem I found. Recently, Blackbaud reminded us all to make sure our users have access to the Blackbaud support site. Well, here is one great reason for that. Buried in the user group area (at least I didn't know they were here) I found some very helpful documents. I was popping around and found Online User Clinics for The Raiser's Edge. I've been working on PCI Compliance - stuff on that in there- and we are always looking for nice visual instructions. Lots of cool info here.
As I mentioned before, we are moving forward with Papersave for RE. We've got a pretty good workflow process now, but we are hoping to streamline things even more, provide more visibility to donor docs (to those with access) and keep working toward that paperless office. I've just gone through the price negotiation process - isn't that always fun. Now on to the really fun part. In future posts, I'll walk through the process step by step. So far, I've had the "hand-off" meeting. We purchased Papersave through Blackbaud, but the implementation will be handled by Papersave. I had a nice meeting with my account manager, Mary Lehman (love that lady) and Diana McGowin, the manager of the Professional Services Team at Papersave (PS). Diana worked many years for Blackbaud and now serves as a great liason between BB and PS. Kickoff meeting to come soon. We took the advanced implementation package which will allow us to work with PS to set up a workflow process using the application. More to come on that.
Last night I updated BBNC to the latest version. I will admit I spent most of the time praying that the update would finish well - and it did. I normally do all the patches and upgrades without much worry. This one had me scared. Lots of changes as we move the database up into the cloud. Everything went great and I am already impressed by some of the changes. Spent some time in email design today and it was much easier. For all of you out there looking to do this update, BB recommends doing it on a test server first. I believe in that too; however, I gave up my test server budget to put toward Papersave. We don't have any customizations in our BBNC implementation so I felt pretty confident since I had good backups. However, I imagine my nerves wouldn't have taken quite the beating they did if I had tested the upgrade first.
We've been using Blackbaud Merchant Services for a couple of months now and we like it. The online interface is good and the reports are great. Our Controller says that balancing is nice and easy. We moved everything except for Direct Debit from IATS. Currently, BBMS doesn't do direct debit - I'm told it's coming soon.
This has nothing to do with Blackbaud - but I'll share anyway. We're also looking to move to a hosted phone system. Whoa - little bit of a learning curve here for me. Last system I managed implementing was an Avaya pbx. Lots of vendors out there with hosted systems. Lots of new acronyms.
And last, but not least in today's post, our Philadelphia Blackbaud Product User Group meeting is tomorrow (no direct affiliation to Blackbaud). We are meeting near our office in the Horsham library. Go here for more details or to sign up: http://www.alsphiladelphia.org/pbug. If you don't want to sign up - come anyway. It starts at 10am. Our user group consists of almost 70 Blackbaud product users from a tri-state area. We share lots of info - I always learn new things.
I hope everyone manages to avoid any flooding today. Best to you all - Nora
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Blackbaud and Papersave - Great Partners
Wow - what a holiday season. Lots going on.
We had a great user group meeting at The Philadelphia Art Museum in December. Join Philabug yahooo group to read about what went on. Our group now has 57 members - whoohoo! Our next meeting will be in March at the Horsham, PA library. All Blackbaud product users are welcome.
We implemented Terminal Server and my remote users are thanking me. We have an agreement with a great IT consulting group, Lantium, and they set it up for us. It's easy to use and really fast - loving it myself. Our only issue is with some licensing. I'm going to have to check to see if there are ts licenses for some of our software. All Blackbaud products work great. Our vmware move was a real benefit for us here as it was easy to set up another server.
We're taking on another FAF site. We will be hosting the ALS Express event on a separate FAF website. This year's event will go live very soon. FAF has really worked well for us. I speak with quite a few people as a referral source and I still think there is a lot of confusion as to what product to use when. I'm trying to get some guidance on that and hope to get a presentor for our next user group meeting. More to come on that in the future.
We're beginning our talks on how to handle our impressive amount of online donations. They bring their own issues especially with who is doing what. Normally, we have one person downloading all of our online transactions and processing them into batch. When we have two walks close together, we really suffer getting the downloads processed. The good news is that all the info on our online sites is the latest and greatest so we can get totals and reports and all that good stuff. We also e-receipt/thank all our online donors (except event registrants in BBNC) so acknowledgements are handled in a timely manner.
We have two full time gift processors. They handle all the daily mail/acknowledgements/tributes, etc. They are pushed during our very active walk season. We are heading into part 2 of that season now. I'll be posting here how our meetings go and what we decide to do.
F9 news - I'm starting to get pretty good at F9 in my very untrained manner. I'm thinking of splurging for official training, if not for me then for our controller who is ready to make the move to F9 for our financial reporting. I've set up most of our financial statements and love that I can just change the month and get a whole new report instantly - wow, very cool.
Next on my blog update will be the BBNC update to version 6.15. I've transitioned the database to the "cloud" (I'm still vague on this). This took about 3 hours for our database. It did not affect the site after the transition. During it, there may have been some slowdown. No complaints from anyone though. Wish me luck!
Nora
I'm adding on to this blog and changing the title. Never done that before and likely won't again, but is warranted here. Chalk it up to a bad week for me or just my tendency to want it all right now.... but I was mistaken by doubting the partnership between Blackbaud and Papersave. I've since seen a lot of effort between both companies to make sure that I understood what Papersave could offer and how Blackbaud could help make it happen. It looks like we will be moving forward with our Papersave implementation. We're in the final pricing phase and I'm excited. I've had great support from Holly Condon at Papersave and my account manager, Mary Lehman, at Blackbaud.
Going through this process has been so informative. It can be easy to look at Papersave as just a repository for scanned documents. It is so much more than that. I've talked to some other Papersave users and, across the board, they've spoken to how Papersave has changed the way the office manages important information related to their constituency and to the gifts.
As we worked through the feasibility of implementing Papersave, we came up with more reasons it would help us do our jobs better:
We had a great user group meeting at The Philadelphia Art Museum in December. Join Philabug yahooo group to read about what went on. Our group now has 57 members - whoohoo! Our next meeting will be in March at the Horsham, PA library. All Blackbaud product users are welcome.
We implemented Terminal Server and my remote users are thanking me. We have an agreement with a great IT consulting group, Lantium, and they set it up for us. It's easy to use and really fast - loving it myself. Our only issue is with some licensing. I'm going to have to check to see if there are ts licenses for some of our software. All Blackbaud products work great. Our vmware move was a real benefit for us here as it was easy to set up another server.
We're taking on another FAF site. We will be hosting the ALS Express event on a separate FAF website. This year's event will go live very soon. FAF has really worked well for us. I speak with quite a few people as a referral source and I still think there is a lot of confusion as to what product to use when. I'm trying to get some guidance on that and hope to get a presentor for our next user group meeting. More to come on that in the future.
We're beginning our talks on how to handle our impressive amount of online donations. They bring their own issues especially with who is doing what. Normally, we have one person downloading all of our online transactions and processing them into batch. When we have two walks close together, we really suffer getting the downloads processed. The good news is that all the info on our online sites is the latest and greatest so we can get totals and reports and all that good stuff. We also e-receipt/thank all our online donors (except event registrants in BBNC) so acknowledgements are handled in a timely manner.
We have two full time gift processors. They handle all the daily mail/acknowledgements/tributes, etc. They are pushed during our very active walk season. We are heading into part 2 of that season now. I'll be posting here how our meetings go and what we decide to do.
F9 news - I'm starting to get pretty good at F9 in my very untrained manner. I'm thinking of splurging for official training, if not for me then for our controller who is ready to make the move to F9 for our financial reporting. I've set up most of our financial statements and love that I can just change the month and get a whole new report instantly - wow, very cool.
Next on my blog update will be the BBNC update to version 6.15. I've transitioned the database to the "cloud" (I'm still vague on this). This took about 3 hours for our database. It did not affect the site after the transition. During it, there may have been some slowdown. No complaints from anyone though. Wish me luck!
Nora
I'm adding on to this blog and changing the title. Never done that before and likely won't again, but is warranted here. Chalk it up to a bad week for me or just my tendency to want it all right now.... but I was mistaken by doubting the partnership between Blackbaud and Papersave. I've since seen a lot of effort between both companies to make sure that I understood what Papersave could offer and how Blackbaud could help make it happen. It looks like we will be moving forward with our Papersave implementation. We're in the final pricing phase and I'm excited. I've had great support from Holly Condon at Papersave and my account manager, Mary Lehman, at Blackbaud.
Going through this process has been so informative. It can be easy to look at Papersave as just a repository for scanned documents. It is so much more than that. I've talked to some other Papersave users and, across the board, they've spoken to how Papersave has changed the way the office manages important information related to their constituency and to the gifts.
As we worked through the feasibility of implementing Papersave, we came up with more reasons it would help us do our jobs better:
- we can allow people who need to make decisions, contact constituents, manage our major gift programs, etc. have easy access to documentation related to those constituents or their gifts
- when the auditors show up and ask for that documentation, we can use queries to pull the gifts and related docs - no digging around
- we continuously look for ways to streamline the process related to gift receipt, data entry, acknowledgements and tributes. We can set up a work flow process that allows us tasks to be accomplished more efficiently and let's us know where we are in the process
We're looking forward to seeing the product in action. I'll post here as we move through implementation (fingers crossed for final approval).
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