By Steve Thomas
To be precise, more Americans are coming! In the UK we already have dominant CRM solutions from Blackbaud and ASI, and soon they will be joined by US competitor Convio.
Earlier this year Convio bought Baigent Digital, the well-respected UK digital agency focusing on non-profits. Since then we haven't heard much - no doubt they are preparing their plans and products for the UK market. What can we expect when they launch here? Judging from the products and services available to US fundraisers, some very interesting things could be coming our way.
To find out more, we subscribed to Convio's US mailing list and this week a newsletter arrived about their main CRM tool, known as Common Ground. Convio products make use of the powerful SalesForce platform, and with Common Ground they claim that users get straightforward, easy-to-use tools to create, launch and manage fundraising campaigns direct to their social media sites.
A single, integrated solution delivering a true 360-degree view; all securely hosted in the cloud for a fixed monthly fee. No servers to manage, no technology snags and no integration headaches – all you need is a browser and you are away. That is quite a promise!
Watch the video for yourself here. It lasts 6 minutes. This is a tantalising glimpse of how a CRM system should be – we look forward to seeing what it will look like when it becomes available to UK fundraisers. We’ll keep you posted – watch this space.
I agree, this does look very interesting. Both in my past life as a Database Manager, and in my current life as someone who works with charities to employ joined up thinking about supporters, across campaigns, and incorporating the ever increasing numbers of interaction channels out there (twitter, facebook, SMS etc etc), the Common Ground offering looks promising.
As I see it, we don't yet have an out of the box, nfp ready, cloud based solution in terms of CRM - and this could be it. Looks like things could get very interesting in the cloud-based CRM arena, what with Salesforce, Supporter360 and Common Ground all on the go (or about to be). Hopefully, this should only be good news for the charities out there who need smart, integrated solutions - and fast!
I look forward to watching as things unfold...
Posted by: Dawn Varley | October 22, 2011 at 03:24 PM