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Altru Shifts Focus from the Work to the Service
April 22, 2016

Altru Shifts Focus from the Work to the Service

Shannon Knight | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Altru

The RISD Museum uses Altru for all membership, ticketing, event registration, donations, acknowledgements -- pretty much everything except for collection management. Before moving to Altru in 2012, we used a separate system in each department. There was one system for admissions, another for online sales, another for membership. Then there were myriad spreadsheets and pieces of paper where visitor contact information was kept. In order to create an invitation list for an event, we would spend at least two weeks just gathering the data. But the biggest win came for our members. Before switching to Altru, a new membership card would reach the visitor, on average, 21 days after we received the application. With Altru, it took just 2 days! Overall, Altru has provided a huge improvement in efficiency which makes our work easier and gives us more time to focus on what's truly important: visitors to the Museum.
  • Instant sharing of data across departments. When a visitor's address is updated at the front desk, that information is available immediately to our development staff.
  • 360 degree view of our visitors. We can see all of a visitor's activity -- when they're coming to the museum, what events they attend -- which gives us a better understanding of their needs.
  • Altru can be accessed from anywhere. If we hold an event off-site, we can still handle admissions/registrations so long as there is a network.
  • Altru Tech Support is awesome! They are very patient and, if they don't know the answer, they find out for you.
  • There is no online sales for merchandise.
  • The way you have to set up events that span multiple days (such as camps) is currently very clunky and not user-friendly for online registration.
  • The online shopping experience needs improvement. Visitors expect Amazon-level ease-of-use and Altru just isn't there yet.
  • The biggest change at the RISD Museum is that everyone now has access to data. We don't have to guess what our constituents are doing -- we can actually look it up and base decisions on real visitor needs.
  • Datatel, Raiser's Edge, Tessitura, Enterprise and Versai
Altru is the only complete, all-in-one solution that meets the RISD Museum's business needs.
The one thing to keep in mind if you switch to Altru is that, like with any enterprise system, you're not just buying a piece of software, you're also buying the underlying business practices. The biggest hiccups the RISD Museum had in switching to Altru weren't related to the software as much as they were related to figuring out how to do our business within the constraints of the system. Fortunately, Altru was a very close match to what we already did.