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BB e-CRM - Investigated, selected, installed and rewarded!
January 04, 2024

BB e-CRM - Investigated, selected, installed and rewarded!

Alan Weinberger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud CRM

We use BBCRM to track all gifts by Alumni, Donors and friends to the University. This includes actual cash gifts, pledges, matching gifts, planned gifts etc. We populate the system with in depth bio, personal and financial data and then use the system to sort and highlight potential prospects. The system is available to all staff at the University although access to certain data is restricted by use case. Currently we have about 500 active users across campus. The system is available 24/7 and is reachable via any internet connection through a series of secure firewalls and MFA. It is also available on IOS devices.
  • Accessing in-depth data for a single constituent is easily done and customizable by user working with "tiles" on the home screen
  • Generating lists of possible prospects with specific similarities can be done with a few clicks and then stored for more research later
  • well designed relationship options allow for a a look at specific constituents and how they might relate to other constituents in the system leading to more effective prospecting
  • Screens can be easily customized by user or user group eliminating irrelevant data and presenting only truly relevant information
  • Tighter integration with other BB products like Award Management would be nice
  • Better emailing and event modules within BBIS would allow us to do more within CRM and not have to support extra software
  • More and better API will allow users to build more sophisticated interface to external products
  • Our ability to provide consistent accurate performance numbers has improved dramatically. Anyone, at any time, can hit a single button and know what our fundraising goals are and how we are performing against those goals. Very popular with upper management
  • Implementing different modules within the system has save us time and cost using outside options. NCOA is a good example. We run t quarterly for all records. Any school or subunit can then send mailing out at any time without dealing with another cleanse and the associated cost. We've saved over $200,000 doing it once for all instead of piecemeal.
  • The system provides more accurate data faster for major gift research and solicitation. Our staffing levels have dropped (not recommended) but our actual funds raised and gifts processed have increased by 25%
Most of our issues were self-inflicted and related to BB's work. We did not "staff up" correctly, our data to be converted was not in great shape and we set some unreasonable goals. With BBs help we were able to clean our data and prep it for conversion and we adjusted the goals to be more achievable with the timeline we were given. We found the BB staff to be responsive and focused, especially when working on-site with us.
When were doing our search, in 2016/2017 we identified three products that might have potential for our use. They were Ellucians Advance, BlackBaud e-CRM and Sales Force.
We had 18 years experience with Ellucian, we had several Sales Force installations on campus and very little knowledge of e-CRM.

We rejected Ellucian's Advance because at the time they were implementing a new sub-platform and the product was still being developed. Their anticipated completion date did not meet our campaign timeline.

We rejected the sales force offerings because we did not have the time or resources to select different apps, tie them together so they shared data correctly and then deal with multiple vendors when there was an issue.

BB e-CRM offered us an established, growing platform that was fully integrated internally. It had the capability's we needed and room to grow.

Do you think Blackbaud CRM delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Blackbaud CRM's feature set?

Yes

Did Blackbaud CRM live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Blackbaud CRM go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Blackbaud CRM again?

Yes

I think scale is the largest consideration. When you are trying to manipulate and work with a 600K of records or more, a smaller system with less flexibility and capability will not function. BBCRM is fully integrated and fairly consistent in it's approach. Unlike some systems that you might customize with different modules or apps this is a complete system. You may not use all of it at the start, but it's potential is always there. We are continuing to turn on new modules and functions, already in the system, and finding new value with existing data. We do not have buy extra "apps" or modules to get things done.