It works well enough for fundraising purposes and donor tracking. I think it would be less appropriate for instances or industries where you don't need so many data points on someone. You are able to attach a lot of information to a record so if you don't need that info (simply need contact info for example) you might want a simpler system
Claritysoft is well suited if you need more of an address book as your CRM. Situations where sales are more passive and based on increasing awareness instead of hard, closing sales. In my previous role selling medical equipment, this would NOT work. However, in my current role where awareness is the key factor that drive smaller sales amounts, it does it's job. I've just been in a lot more roles where I need to upload contracts with signatures and track sales Opportunities, and Claritysoft doesn't seem able to do that.
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
Certain aspects of Blackbaud are oddly non-customizable.
Blackbaud updates/support is slow and often ineffective - our organization switched to Microsoft 365, which is apparently incompatible with Blackbaud. Help/support recommended clunky workarounds that don't actually work, rather than proactively enhancing compatibility
There should be a flag in constituent search to show which people in the results list are deceased.
Query isn't very user friendly. It should be simple to locate the information that you want to pull, and add parameters to that information. Instead you have to write multiple queries to set parameters, then write a query that looks at those other queries. It's time-consuming and easy to make mistakes, and the knowledge/proficiency is difficult to explain or transfer to new staff.
Blackbaud generally just feels like its technology is outdated. It wasn't built for the needs of a modern organization, and its developers have failed to make the necessary improvements over time to stay competitive.
There is no spell-check function to use when you are sending emails.
Some of the functions you need when deleting records and the like are not always available on every page when you are working in the application.
When moving quotes to opportunities, the attachments go with the move so when you go back to the quote, it is not there. Also, when you move a quote it does not automatically fill in the quote number as it was on the quote, it creates a new number. This should be fixed.
When you convert a lead it does not move the lead to archives or get rid of it. It leaves it in the Leads area and so you have to manually get rid of it.
There is no auto-dial feature built into Claritysoft.
The mobile app needs to look and feel just like the online version.
We've covered a lot, but mostly because we are happy with the system overall. There are a few kinks, and sometimes it takes a minute to figure out the right wording to pull a report or the best way to code a new category that we want to track. But Blackbaud is always there to help us, and once things are figured out - they are super simple to replicate. It wouldn't be worth it to switch to a new system and lose of all our information and time put in to mastering the system
It is VERY, VERY, simple and easy to use and learn. All I needed was a super brief 30 minute overview to understand how to use it, and their Customer Support is pretty good. I was raised on Salesforce, which is much more complicated, but allows you to do so much more.
I have not personally had to reach out to Blackbaud CRM Support, because we have a central office that manages the Blackbaud CRM relationship. However, any time I've reached out to our support team, there is nothing they can't figure out by utilizing the support they receive from Blackbaud CRM. I've not had any issues that have gone unresolved, and they can always get things done in a timely fashion.
They are very helpful and quick whenever I have a question about Claritysoft CRM. I think the guy I've spoken with is named Evan, and he's been very helpful. Claritysoft, give the man a raise if you know who I'm talking about. He responds super quick with truly helpful insights.
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.
Blackbaud CRM is more robust and has better functionality. It is necessary for a bigger fundraising shop. Blackbaud Raiser's Edge and NXT worked well in smaller organizations with fewer users and fewer donors/prospects. RE was more affordable than CRM was for the smaller organization.
Claritysoft's emails are much easier to use since Salesforce is in the middle of switching from Classic to Lightning. Also, Salesforce does not have a native group edit option. Claritysoft is much more data driven and you can use all functions of Excel to customize reports. However, Claritysoft does not have as many third-party add-on options compared to Salesforce's app exchange.
Change is always expensive and painful, but CRM is worth the time and effort. One immediate benefit is improved transparency internally, especially for internal accounting, controls, and compliance departments.
Cloud hosting helps cut cost and demand on organization staff. Improves access and meets compliance on every level.
Ability to make global changes to recording donor phone communication makes it a one-stop resource for a well-run development team.
It has made it easier to see our overall sales for each sales rep.
The only negative is that we cannot change over the account, contacts, leads, and opportunities with one ownership field. You have to do each one separate and when you are transferring 1000 clients this takes much too long to do. No reason for it.
