Purple Patch Blog

The most important news about The Raiser’s Edge for ten years

We’re off to BBCon in Washington DC.  It’s billed as the world’s biggest non-profit fundraising conference, with thousands of delegates and exhibitors from all over the globe. As always, we’re excited by the prospect of meeting and learning from the experiences of fundraisers with different attitudes and solutions – there are always great insights to bring home and share.

But this year there is an additional reason to be excited.  Blackbaud, the global technology provider that runs the whole event, will (we hope) be making a big announcement that will impact every one of the 20,000+ charities that use their flagship product, The Raiser’s Edge.

“What can be so important about a database” you may ask?  Well, it’s more than that.  At Purple Vision we understand how the tools and techniques you use to support your fundraising have a massive impact on the ability of your organisation to achieve its mission.   The internet is supporting a fundraising revolution that enables us to build and maintain relationships with supporters in the online places where they are, and in the new ways they want to relate to our causes.

So, technology matters.  It's the glue that holds your supporter community together, and enables you to fundraise well.

 

Blackbaud’s journey to the future

The big story in Washington is ‘Where next for The Raiser’s Edge?’  Love it or loath it, “RE” is the world’s leading system for donor management.  But it’s built on old technology – it’s good at doing the chores that we need to turn the wheels of our traditional fundraising machinery, but it’s not geared for the future.  Try linking it to your website, enabling supporters to build their own pages, or accessing it via mobile devices.  Elaborate integrations are often costly, difficult and inflexible when you want to change something. 

So, Blackbaud will obviously be looking ahead, planning their roadmap of future products in line with the direction the world is moving.  Twelve months ago they announced that development of The Raiser’s Edge was to be curtailed.  In fact, the long-awaited RE version 8 was cancelled!  Curious.  Then, in January this year, came the announcement of the $300m acquisition of Convio, a modern internet-oriented rival with new ideas and impressive results.  Convio’s solutions are more than databases – they have been built for the digital age, focusing on transparency and accessibility, and using modern web-based tools that allow users to connect everything more easily.

A smart acquisition?  We thought so.  We thought Convio’s Common Ground CRM, built on the world-class Salesforce platform, was the new Raiser’s Edge, and we said so.  But we were wrong!  Last month Blackbaud announced, to the dismay of many, that they are to discontinue Common Ground.  Some said they had ruthlessly killed off the young pretender; the company described this as a necessary rationalisation of the many products in their portfolio.

But the Blackbaud management know what they are doing.  Their decision, whilst unwelcome to pioneering fundraisers already ahead of the curve, was based on careful analysis and hard thinking.  They know that the only way to protect their market-leading position in the long-term (and hence their profits and share price) is to retain and delight the majority of their customer base – in other words, all those still using The Raiser’s Edge.

Blackbaud appears to have decided that Common Ground, and indeed the Salesforce platform in general, is not the best way forward.  And yet, with no other significant product development in the past year, what is their alternative vision?  Suddenly, a vacuum has emerged, which they must surely fill with their roadmap presentation on Sunday morning?

 

Speculating is fun

In anticipation of this important announcement, we have had some fun speculating about what they might choose to do.  What will be the replacement for The Raiser’s Edge?  Here are a few of the ideas we came up with, some fanciful and some less so!

 

eTapestry

One of Blackbaud’s many acquistions.  A fore-runner of online fundraising systems, this ageing product was ahead of its time … in 2003.  E-Tap was never developed beyond basic functionality, and is currently offered as a simpler and cheaper alternative to RE.  But its advantage is that it does not rely on somebody else’s technology – it’s a “private” cloud solution, so Blackbaud gets to keep all the revenue.  So, it might be worth investing a pile of cash to produce a new version of e-Tapestry as the online successor to RE.

 

Luminate

By contrast, Luminate, the surviving big brother of Common Ground, was proudly on display last week at Dreamforce in San Francisco, despite the fact that it is based firmly on the Salesforce platform.  Blackbaud’s attitude to Salesforce is difficult to pin down.  As recently as July this year the company announced its full commitment but, just eight weeks later, decided to withdraw Common Ground globally, and limit Luminate CRM to North America.  As a radical alternative, perhaps we are about to see a new focus on Luminate as Blackbaud’s premium cloud-based solution?  It’s the best all-round fundraising system out there and it’s built, proven and ready to go.

 

Project X

That’s a name we made up for an imaginary new product that Blackbaud experts have been carefully developing in secret over the past 18 months. Not so far-fetched when you think about it.  If true, it would be strategic genius; remove the main competitor from the field, creating a perfect distraction whilst all the time working on the replacement.  Ta-dah!  What has Shaun Sullivan been doing since he (apparently) left Blackbaud anyway?  ;-)

 

Nothing

Doing nothing is always an option.  At least that’s what they tell you in Strategy 101!  And it is an option for Blackbaud, one that they have been exercising with respect to The Raiser’s Edge for quite a few years now.  RE7 is good software.  Like a second-hand BMW, it is functional, stable and does 95% of the basics really well.  It still looks OK too, but it is not future proof and, sooner or later, it will need to be replaced.  How long can Blackbaud go on without announcing the path to a credible replacement?  The longer this uncertainty persists, the greater the confusion and anxiety for a community that Blackbaud aims to cherish.  On behalf of RE users everywhere, please explain your plan.

 

The Raiser’s Edge 8 – Infinity

The least exciting – but most likely – outcome is that Blackbaud will retrench to its position twelve months ago and announce that RE8 is back on the cards.  Their enterprise-level system, Blackbaud CRM, was developed with significant resources using Microsoft’s .net technology and is known as the Infinity platform.  Originally, it was intended that RE8 would run on Infinity but snags crept in and this never happened. This is good solid technology, available in the cloud with an open architecture that supports integration of data and third party solutions.

 

Our money is on this last option as the preferred way forward.  We await the answer, and we'll bring you the news and views that matter as soon as we find out.

Purple Vision’s Steve Thomas and Bertie Bosrédon will be at BBCon in Washington DC until Tuesday 2^nd October.  You can find their blog posts at blog.purple-vision.com/ and tweet updates @purple_vision and @cafedumonde.

Blackborg. Resistance is futile – you will be assimilated!

 

 

As every Star Trek fan knows, this chilling statement is the rallying cry of the Borg, a race dedicated to incorporating the unique characteristics of everything it encounters. 

“Just like Blackbaud”, you may say!  But is it?  We think the “new Blackbaud” emerging from the merger with Convio is beginning to look more like Convio than old Blackbaud.  Who is assimilating whom? 

Last week Blackbaud Europe announced its new-look management team, which includes  three former Convio managers, two recent hires and only three longstanding Blackbaud staffers.  This isn’t the only signal that things are different this time.  Back at corporate HQ in Charleston, Convio’s former CEO, Gene Austin, has been appointed to the executive team as President of the Enterprise Customer business unit, and a number of other Convio execs are emerging in key roles in new Blackbaud.

Unlike previous acquisitions, where targets have simply been absorbed into the product portfolio, this time things are different: this time they mean to reinvent the company.  But why change the habit of a lifetime?

These people are smart; they are doing this for good reasons. We have discussed previously in this blog how the culture at Convio is very different to old Blackbaud.  Open not closed; collaborative not isolationist; modest not proud.  In short, Convio is a fresh new organisation, conceived and built in the online social world, and in tune with a new generation of fundraisers. This is the kind of organisation that Blackbaud knows it needs to be like if it is to achieve its ambition to become a billion-dollar company.

It has been said that this cultural difference is a threat to the success of the merger, but we wonder if this was in fact the very reason for it.  Blackbaud will achieve the change it needs to make faster and more effectively, not by smothering Convio, but by adopting these vital characteristics and changing itself.

So when can we expect to see more concrete signs of this change, and how will this impact non-profit organisations?  The clues are to be found in the various announcements, press conferences and videos that have been released.  A few themes are coming through loud and clear:

1.  Cloud/Software-as-a-Service

Almost all of Blackbaud’s technologies, and in particular its principal mid-market product, The Raiser's Edge (RE), is based on old client-server technology, and is starting to show its age.  In late 2011 the company announced that development of the long-awaited RE8 had been scrapped.  Given that Blackbaud has repeatedly stressed its commitment to cloud computing, they clearly had an alternative strategy in mind to achieve this, and Convio brings the know-how to fill this gap.

2.  Products

This points to a key role for Convio’s online products and Services in Blackbaud’s future product range, such as Common Ground, Luminate and Team Raiser, and we expect to see initiatives to help migrate RE clients to these new platforms. And there is further evidence - in his video message in early May, CEO Mark Chardon announced a series of challenging deadlines to deliver specific changes in 30, 60 and 90 days.  These are fast by any standards, and you can be sure that we’ll be watching out on the days these deadlines expire, ready to bring you the news here at Purple Patch!

 3.  Collaboration

Chardon and others have also been at pains to stress a new openness – listening, engaging and interacting, rather than just announcing.  This has been directed towards relationships with clients, whose satisfaction levels are known to have been slipping in recent years, through a refreshed consultation process.  But also we are seeing signs of new behaviours in the way that Blackbaud engages with other professionals in the market, such as digital marketers, system integrators and other software vendors.  For example, at Purple Vision, we have had more contact with Blackbaud in the past three months than all the years we have been working with their products.

Just as Apple and Salesforce have pioneered the explosive development of their businesses with open platforms and well organised app exchanges, Blackbaud knows that Convio has grown fast by exploiting the power of innovative independent partners.  They understand the concept that involving others in your business is an investment that enhances the attractiveness of the platform, and grows the whole market, resulting in greater value for for everyone. 

 

So, what does this mean for Blackbaud and Convio clients?  Many people fear that with fewer suppliers in the market, innovation will be stifled and choice reduced, leading to neglected customer service and scope to increase prices.  On the other hand, if you are an RE user, there is precious little on the product development roadmap, and nothing that addresses the opportunities for fundraising in the cloud.  But now, with Convio joining the Blackbaud family, you have access to a range of innovative new products and services, delivered not by one monolithic vendor, but by your choice from a network of independent partners.

Time will tell if Blackbaud can boldly go where no-one has gone before.  Stay tuned for the next episode!

Where does the Convio acquisition leave Blackbaud users?

So, one week on from the big announcement that Blackbaud is buying Convio (see our previous post), and people everywhere have been furiously blogging and commenting about what it all means. Some are asking questions, some are showing signs of fear, and some are just plain gossiping! Here are a few we enjoyed:

• The Agitator – Any colour you like as long as it’s black
• Nonprofit Force - The Convio-Blackbaud merger - one customer's perpective
• Appichar – Blackbaud/Convio: a match made in heaven or hell?
• Event 360 – Why I’m optimistic about Blackbaud’s acquisition of Convio

What we haven’t seen so far is very much serious consideration of what it means for a charity that has a Blackbaud product right now. Here in the UK, that is predominantly The Raiser’s Edge 7, since Blackbaud’s wider range of products (such as Enterprise CRM, BBDM and eTapestry) are less well established.

At Purple Vision, we work every day with clients who use The Raiser’s Edge. Most of our team have known it for many years as client-side database managers and practicing consultants. We’ve put in a lot of hours, and we know it to be a robust, reliable and trusted fundraising database. But we also know that the foundations have started to creak of late, not only with the announcement last year that development of RE8 has been discontinued, but also with the emergence of smart new alternatives. And now that we learn Blackbaud is buying Convio, organisations that use The Raiser’s Edge will be thinking about succession planning for their CRM system. A scary thought, but one that needs to be considered by anyone who is serious about ensuring excellent stewardship as well as real efficiencies.

Although Blackbaud’s product plans are not yet known, it seems clear that they have absorbed their emerging competitor because of their technical know-how; they understand that the future of fundraising lies ‘in the cloud’. This trend is accelerating, and we think it means that RE7 could soon be retired.  That’s OK for future clients, but existing customers will need to work out how to replace it. Just think about that for a second; it’s huge!  Imagine your CRM system – not just the database, but also the people and processes behind your strategy – taken out of the equation and replaced. And think about the project that will need to be built to support the process – business case, SMT buy-in, trustee engagement and support, scoping, project team, resourcing etc., and then the migration project itself. Are you ready for that? Can you afford not to be?

We’re not trying to be alarmist. Really, we’re not!  No matter what size your organisation is, it’s daunting, but not impossible. We work with many nonprofit clients, and can think of a number with projects already underway that this will affect:

• One large charity, looking to move up from RE, is not too far down that road – luckily they can stop and reassess now – or at least pause – to see what happens.
• Another client is just setting out to integrate its website and operational database with RE. They might want to take a step back and rethink that, as the risk of building a system based on an ageing product is a significant one.

What next then, and how best to proceed? To be honest, it is too early to tell. We recommend that anyone using The Raiser’s Edge should “pull up a chair” and watch as this acquisition (still to be approved by the US authorities) unfolds. The effects on the UK charity market will be real, profound and imminent. At Purple Vision, we’ll be keeping our eyes and ears open and, as always, we will be on hand to help charities that need guidance and support. Your CRM strategy should never, ever, be just about the database. That piece of technology represents your supporter community, the very heart of your organisation. Fail to protect it at your peril!

 

The sincerest form of flattery

We are delighted to hear that Blackbaud has followed Purple Vision’s lead by offering a health check service.

They are right to identify this as a valuable service for users. We have been offering our own Database Healthcheck for many years and our clients regularly report great value for money from the immediate and practical help that it delivers.

Quite often we arrive on site to hear strong criticisms of the database. But typically it is quite capable (with a bit of reconfiguration, restructuring or training) of delivering most, or all, requirements. The Database Healthcheck is a great way to demonstrate where, why and how the database can do its job. So, if you are annoyed with your system, think again – it may not be its fault!

And it’s not just about The Raiser’s Edge. Being independent, we are not limited to any particular vendor or technology. By working with all major CRM and fundraising tools, we suggest and implement best practice – regardless of the system in question.

Iris – The Next Generation (and no Klingons in sight!)

The IRIS NFP World conference this month was the Launchpad for software vendor Iris NFP to finally unveil its new-look range of CRM systems for non-profit organisations. And they look good, with potential to challenge strongly in the middle and upper end of the market. On the other hand, the cost to upgrade could prove to be too high for many existing users.

Having spent several years buying up various smaller developers, Iris has finally settled on a three pronged strategy. For the medium to large charity there will be IntegraNG and CareNG. Integra will deliver membership functionality with Care having a stronger focus on fundraising. Meanwhile, for smaller organisations who don’t have such complex requirements (or big budgets), there is Donor Strategy, which comes in various versions for charities, membership organisations and schools.

There has been much speculation about if and when Iris would choose to bring together its two main products in a single technology platform, and now we have the answer: the new NG product range is an updated version of the Iris Care. This decision is not a surprise since Care is already a more modern and flexible solution than the ageing Integra. So now, although they are the same behind the scenes, the two NG systems sport different features, depending on whether you are looking for charity functionality (donations, sponsor me, legacies, financial processing) or membership tools (CPD, subscriptions, examinations).

As many Iris customers know, support has been a problem in the past 12 months or so. The scale and simplicity of a single technology base and a vendor committed to development and support is an encouraging step forward. Martin Carter, the new Head of Support for IRIS, said he has been hiring staff and building capacity so that there is now a single integrated team handling queries for all of their products. Let’s hope things continue to improve. If you are an Iris user please let us know if you’re feeling the benefit of these changes yet?

For anyone interested in the technology, Iris has selected the latest implementation of Microsoft’s .NET framework – version 4. The NG software should be easily accessible via web services, which means that other developers, in particular web developers, should be able to access the data in the NG system and integrate it with a wide range of third party applications. Interestingly, by shifting further towards .NET Iris has followed their rival Blackbaud who announced their commitment to the same technology (their so-called Infinity Platform) back in 2009. However, don’t assume that the gap is as great as it may sound, because Iris has the advantage of many years of Care development in earlier versions of .NET, and Blackbaud has been slow to bring to market the new version of its market-leading product, The Raiser’s Edge.

So, this all sounds like good news. Iris has got its act together and the playing field has been levelled for anyone considering a new CRM system. But what about the options if you already have the current versions of Care and Integra? Happily, there is no charge to adopt the new versions of the software – they come for free, as long as you are up to date with Iris’s annual licensing and support scheme. However, the process of upgrading will not be free, with various costs (and risks) associated with planning and managing the migration to a new system. The migration path will be much easier for existing Care clients as they are already familiar with the .NET framework. For Integra users, it will be a much steeper learning curve, with a lot of work to translate, import and restructure. Estimates for the amount of consultancy time needed to upgrade start at around 30 days for smaller implementations, which is not a low cost upgrade!

With all the operational changes and retraining, for many users this will feel like an entirely new system, with all the associated headaches (and the benefits of course)! This may not be an entirely attractive prospect, but ultimately you have no choice! Iris has announced that their current products will be supported until 2015, but after that they plan to progressively withdraw support from the old Care and Integra, with clients expected to move across the new platform.

Overall, we think this is a welcome development. Iris NFP has staked its future on NG, which appears to be a much better product with vital improvements to integration and flexibility. New customers have an good option and existing customers can lok forward to the prospect of significant enhancements. We look forward to seeing the products in more detail and we will keep you posted here.

(Virtually free) charity databases - market update May 2011

'The revolution will not be exported into a spreadsheet' - not my words, but those of Citizen CRM.

Now I know very little about Citizen CRM, other than it appears to have taken it's marketing spiel straight from Citizen Smith - and therefore may well be marching on Tooting Town Hall any day now...

But what I do know about Citizen CRM is that it's one of a new breed - one of the new software as a service ('SaaS to those in the know') solutions designed to give charities a decent database system without a) all the cost of something like Raiser's Edge b) all the complexity of something like Raiser's Edge and c) all the IT headaches associated with something like R...you know what I mean.

There are others out there - Convio, a non-profit solution increasingly popular in the US of A and based upon Salesforce. CiviCRM, an open-source, not necessarily hosted solution aimed perhaps more at those in the non-profit sector with a few more techy skills, and who have a Drupal or Joomla website/CMS.

And then there's DonorForce - a new solution, again based upon the Salesforce platform, developed by AppiChar and recently soft-launched at the Institute of Fundraising.

CiviCRM and DonorForce are/will be available in the UK - and are/will be developed to meet the needs of the UK non-profit world. Convio and Citizen CRM - well, who knows. However, the Salesforce platform looks very strong - and now that it's being taken and developed away from it's traditional, vanilla sales-pipeline management functions, is surely going to be an ever stronger rival to those of Blackbaud, ASI, ThankQ, Iris etc.

Watch this space...comrades

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raiser’s Edge users are no longer stuck with Blackbaud as their only option

Time was, say back in the early 2000’s, when if you had Raiser’s Edge you had to go to Blackbaud for everything. Absolutely everything.

Need some training? Go on a Blackbaud classroom training course. Need someone to import some data for you? Ring Blackbaud and get one of their consultants in. Need Raiser’s Edge to do something different? Buy the RE:API.

But, slowly but surely, over the last few years, that’s been changing.

Blackbaud clients now have more options when they’re looking for training and consultancy – with companies like Purple Vision (that’s us!) in the UK – www.purple-vision.com, or Heller Consulting in the USA – www.teamheller.com – offering experience, capacity, independence and value for money that offers real competition to Blackbaud’s in-house professional services team. And there’s a legion of independent, one-man-band consultants out there too.

However, on the software side, things have moved a little more slowly – but there are now serious options for users that like Raiser’s Edge, but perhaps have needs that Blackbaud’s core offerings don’t cater for – or that are too expensive for!

One interesting company is Zeidman Development – www.zeidman.info – who offer supported customisations for Raiser’s Edge. In addition, their growing range of add-ons or ‘plugins’ offer tools that integrate with Raiser’s Edge and that often fill in the missing gaps in Raiser’s Edge functionality (there are also tools that work with other Blackbaud products such as Enterprise CRM and Blackbaud Direct Marketing)

One such product is ‘The Mergician’ – which offers the ability to merge files of multiple duplicate records – rather than the one-by-one merge record process that comes with the core product. This particular add-on comes with a price tag, but other downloads are freeware.

Of a different nature is a range of integrated modules from O-matic Software – a company based in Charleston, South Carolina (as are Blackbaud) – and who have a range of bits of kit that may prove to be a ‘Goldilocks’ solution for clients where things like Blackbaud Direct Marketing are just too big, complicated and expensive.

There three most popular tools for the UK market are Import-O-matic (touted as a more seamless, less clunky way of importing data into RE), Segment-O-matic (to help develop segments for direct marketing – sidestepping some of the limitations of the query tool) and RE Store (an integrated sales order processing and stock control system).

Now, Purple Vision haven’t yet tried out any of these tools, but we’re watching closely as contacts of ours, and clients, start evaluating them and getting a feel for them.

This is all good news, and fits in with the ‘partner ecosystem’ that certain Blackbaud luminaries have said that they are keen to develop. With Salesforce’s growth being at least partly down to their own ecosystem of partners – with software developers and consultants supporting their growing band of non-profit clients – this is surely the way for Blackbaud to go, and their clients can only benefit from this trend.

 

 

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck … it must be The Raiser’s Edge!

The Raiser’s Edge version 8 revolution is coming (in 2010 we hear).

Using an all-new ‘Infinity’ platform based on Microsoft’s .net technology, Blackbaud’s flagship product will be transformed into an open and accessible tool that integrates with a growing range of third party solutions, especially online tools.

When (and if) existing users choose to accept the upgrade to version 8 they will automatically adopt the new technology, but to ease this transition it will be built to look and feel (and quack) much like the current beloved product.

But the big change comes for larger players. The same Infinity platform will be used for a new product called Enterprise CRM. This will enable Blackbaud customers to mix and match different solutions to suit the needs of the whole organisation – including back office, local branches, head office, web, service delivery, marketing – all in one joined up architecture.

This is important because it takes a big step towards the holy grail of the 360-degree customer view and total relationship management. In future, you will be able to look at an individual and see not only their recent donations and communications preferences but also their history of services used, online interaction and any other relevant links to your organisation.

Our sources at Blackbaud liken their new technology to lego!  Buy the simple model and it comes out just like the picture on the box; buy the big kit and you can build it the way you want.  Crucially, it all fits together all the time.

“Bring it on” I hear you cry!  But Blackbaud are not planning to launch these new products until they have credible anchor clients up and running successfully.  We have all read that Oxford University is the first high profile early adopter, and we hear that others are likely to be announced in the next few weeks.