Well Worth the Cost!
April 26, 2016
Well Worth the Cost!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with The Raisers Edge
Raiser's Edge is being used in the University Advancement department and in the President's Office. It is used in our department to track contact with and proposals to donors and potential donors, while also enabling us to track all gifts to the university. Additionally, our events team uses it to track and manage events while our Alumni Relations group uses it to track Alumni membership status. It addresses the issue of tracking contact information and relationships our prospects have that could be important. The other area it addresses is accurate reporting of current information. By providing canned reports, custom reports, and query/export options for the data we are able to have a clear picture of where we are.
- It is easy to move around in and find information quickly.
- Information can easily be pulled out of the database by using queries.
- It makes it easy to create mail templates for bulk mailings which are saved and can be used again in the future. This saves time.
- It offers many canned reports that provide valuable information, but is flexible enough to allow custom reports to be created using Crystal Reports.
- The events module makes it easy to track all event information including participants, expenses, and income. It has a very easy to use interface.
- Lately, hold times for customer phone support have been long when needed.
- Fund records lack notes and media tabs that would be helpful to track key information related to the fund.
- There is no auditing feature in Raiser's Edge to easily see things like the last time someone logged in, who made changes to records, etc. This would be very helpful to have plus a way to rollback a change someone may have made.
- There is no way to create a standard format where specific entry requirements can be done automatically for consistency (i.e. addresses change Dr to Drive, specific salutations are automatically included, spell check, etc.)
- There is not a way to add/track custom goals for development officers that aren't necessarily tied to gifts or dollar amounts (i.e. number of proposals, number of meetings, unit $ goals that can be tracked through gifts received, etc.).
- Reporting is key and Raiser's Edge makes it easy to pull information and track where people are in the development process and what they are being included in. This also aids in monitoring contact frequency to avoid over solicitation. Without Raiser's Edge, the process would be very time consuming and cumbersome.
We have not used or evaluated other products as we are happy with the value Raiser's Edge provides us with.
The Raisers Edge Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success | None |
Yes - We pay to have phone support because it is often easier to talk to a support person on the phone instead of through email or chat.
Yes - It is always resolved timely and support personnel are good at communicating status information throughout the process.
We recently migrated to a hosted environment and had an issue with the Outlook Anywhere integration after the migration. The support agent knew what she was talking about and did some quick troubleshooting and escalated the issue to the next level. She told me when she would follow up with me and did so as expected. The issue was resolved by the next day.