Raiser's Edge NXT is cloud fundraising and constituent relationship management software from Blackbaud.
N/A
Gainsight CS
Score 8.8 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Gainsight Customer Success (CS) is presented as a growth engine for modern post-sale teams. Built for CROs, CS leaders, and operations pros, it provides visibility into customer health, expansion potential, and revenue risk. With automation, AI, and health scoring, Gainsight helps scale outcomes without scaling headcount. With its playbooks and success plans to CSQL tracking and journey orchestration, Gainsight CS helps teams to take the right action at the right time, every time. Access to…
Personally, I feel that Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is a good solution for any size organization. They have all you need to maintain and use data regardless of how many records. It’s easy to learn and use. Plus, they offer a ton of resources that you can use to constantly keep learning how to best use features.
There are a couple of tedious areas that can give CSMs double work, like when they fill out details in a text form field, but if they don't click save for each form field, they have to retype everything. Overall, I think this is one of the better CRMs to use for companies that are enterprise. It's fast, intuitive, and easy to use.
Ability to capture all customer information in one spot
Gantt charts for overall success plans to map out TAM deliverables
Automatically integrate feeds from sources to build reports as needed
Ability to capture customer follow-up tasks so I'm not trying to capture the list of actions too repetitively (e.g. using the "Tasks" section of an entry)
Ability to use the plugin to automatically add emails to timeline; ability to use calendar integration to automatically add meeting minutes that will sync up to Gong notes
There is so much missing functionality in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT (webview) compared to database view - whilst they repeatedly tell us to switch to webview we simply can't due to crucial functionality that is missing.
In our experience, there are a lot of false promises made, particularly when renewing contracts etc, about what functionality is coming soon to webview - particularly regarding the optional modules such as Volunteering.
An increased focus from Blackbaud and all their marketing about pushing third party vendors for certain activities (email marketing being a big one!) all of which come at an additional cost. Although these integrate into Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT, I would prefer Blackbaud to focus on making its own functionality up to standard rather than integrating costly 3rd party platforms.
In my experience, Support for the platform has got worse over the years - I have been waiting over six months to resolve a technical issue which is hampering our use of the functionality.
Inability to create letters within the system (which used to be a feature in RE7 database view) is a huge issue for our supporter base who still appreciate paper-based acknowledgement letters.
Quite time consuming from a system admin perspective. It can do almost anything but does nothing without a system admin building it. Example, I wanted to identify accounts in Gainsight that didn't have any contacts (people) records. It's possible, but requires creating a custom field and a rule in the Rules Engine, and then a report.
Customer Goals and Success Plans feel like they should be tightly connected but aren't. My impression is that these were two separate features developed at different times that have never been properly reconciled.
Need better customer facing features. Hoping that the new Spaces functionality is a good answer to this.
Connection between CTAs and Tasks can get confusing. Some follow up items are so simple that I want to just create a CTA without any tasks, but the flaw with that approach is that it won't show up if I have any views that are based on Tasks. So I have to toggle between views of CTAs and Tasks and understand them as sometimes the same thing and sometimes different things.
It's nice to be able to send a Timeline entry via email, which we WANT to use for sending meeting recaps, but there isn't a way to have an email template in this area. Our CSMs send many, many meeting recaps via email and we haven't been able to identify a good approach that gives us both a fast process for CSMs and a professional customer facing email.
We have a lot invested in NXT and it suits our needs perfectly. There would be no reason for us to consider a needless conversion to a new solution. I do not believe there is any other product on the market that would be worth considering.
Gainsight offers a level of support that I've not experience before. They will work with you to come up with a solution to a problem - or help match you with another client that has a similar setup as you to get their feedback. Also the functionality that we have built within the software works for us. It's 'easy' to use (once you get the hang of it) and our users rather enjoy working in the software.
NXT seems easy to learn on a relatively deep level. There are glitches, like with everything, but it is usually easy to see where they are, most of time. I like that Development staff can choose what they want to see and where they want to see it, and it doesn’t affect my screen.
Reiterating that yes, it is one of the major players, and has for many years been a pioneer in driving customer success tooling, but is lagging behind with what you pay vs. the agility you want and need these days. Rather, OK to adopt internally, but CS members feel it is too administrative.
The only reason I cannot give a 10 is because like all web based products, internet connection is required and that is not something that can be counted on 100% of the time. When the internet connection is stable, I have had little to no issues using Raiser's Edge.
Rarely any issues with availability or outages. When they do occur, there is excellent communication and consistent updates. Bugs are usually addressed in a timely manner, and communication around those issues is also extremely good
NXT itself is a pretty simple interface, and is great for front-line fundraisers to be able to look up info and run some simple "reports"/analysis. It's very quick and intuitive, but the back-end attached to it (RE 7.96) may have connectivity issues from time to time. NXT itself, though, is simple enough that issues are rare.
There are some times when it can take almost a minute to load some of our reports or the rules engine. Within a rule it can also take time to load the actions as they each load one at a time when scrolling. The ability to scroll without waiting would be ideal
Overall I feel like I receive sufficient assistance when reaching out to Blackbaud's Support area. When my questions cannot be answered completely during an online chat I appreciate the ability to easily access the ongoing notes so everything is together. It can be frustrating at times, though, as emailing back and forth seems to make solutions take longer.
The CSMs are very hands-on and helpful, both Elaine and Lane have provided a lot of guidance and value over the years. Support is responsive and will jump on things as needed. The thought leadership and community is probably the most valuable part of our support from Gainsight.
When you get a good, knowledgeable person for in-person training, you can't beat it! Hands on, real time, questions answered on the spot. And they want to make sure you get what you needed before leaving. To also have dedicated time without other distractions is very important to the learning process in my opinion.
As with most trainings, the learning curve is more difficult when mostly online, and I felt that we could have used more check-ins once we'd been using the product for a few months. Most things were explained well enough, but the difficulties discovered through use were not always addressed right away.
The online videos are very good for basic tasks in the platform, but it isn't very descriptive or helpful trying to make your own specific variables fit the simple example that is typically used. Typically, I'll watch a video, try on my own and still have to get help from support or Customer Success team
Training is key. Blackbaud offered the training package prior to implementation and it helped us understand how to build it so that the future use would be appropriate to the operation of the organization. Data conversion stage was also very important. A lot of work must be done before making the final decisions about the data conversion - what data to convert and what to leave out, where certain information was supposed to be placed within RE.
I was not part of the implantation (I took over later). However, based on what was passed to me, the tool was not well implemented at our org. I think this had to do with complexity, wrong person assigned in our org, and org buy-in. I think it would have been very successful if we had a better assignment process internally.
I have not used other products like this before. I have used and created some SQL databases and ERPs, but have not used fundraising-specific software such as Raiser's Edge. Based on what I know from other products vaguely similar to this - databases and ERPs - this is very user friendly and easy to pick up for anyone, especially with their NXT webview offering.
Gainsight has always been the leader in the industry, in my opinion. While a lot more expensive that their competitors, the tool seems to have a better UI and functionality that support the CS organization. My prior employer had a very good implementation of Gainsight and it's a tool I used every day. Some from the Sales org also wanted access based on the great data I was able to monitor from the tool. When talking to customers, the graphs and trends helped me tell a story of activity that was very helpful.
Pricing really seems to be all over the place, and everything else you need is an extra add-on cost. The biggest issue is training. Options are limited unless you subscribe and pay for it across your contract.
New features are constantly being added to Raiser's Edge NXT that expand its capabilities. Features such as constituent mapping and easily accessible actions allow for more in-depth analysis of existing constituents. The future ability to manipulate soft-credits and customize reporting dashboards will make NXT even more attractive to our fundraisers and executives. It's great to see that the software is evolving.
It can lean a little heavily toward Customer Success, but the ability to customize many areas based on specific user or account characteristics allows you to make it work across many different roles. This also makes collaboration within the tool across teams possible. It a flexible tool if you have a skilled admin to help guide your process building.
Having everything in one system means that information is much more likely to be up to date. We hardly get any returned mail from the post office when we pull lists.
Our gift officers can easily pull up donor information on their phones while out on a visit, giving them the edge they need to close a gift.
Information tiles on a person's record that are easy to reorganize and collapse per the needs of each user makes finding pertinent information quick.
No metrics yet, but we have improved our at-risk customers by identifying risks earlier via our automated health score and with our Gainsight approved mitigation workflow, CSMs and leaders have better discipline with mitigation efforts and sharing at-risk customers across the org so other teams can step in and assist
