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
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