Choosing which provider has the best CRM solution is a technology decision, right?
Wrong. It is a business decision (informed by technology).
Think of it more like choosing a car...
- Ask a young man to choose a car, and he will likely choose the fastest, beefiest, baddest set of wheels they can get their hands on.
- Ask a cheapskate, and you'll end up with a $500 car (that ends up costing $3,000).
- Ask a utilitarian, you'll get a minivan.
Chances are that your organization, on discovering the need to adopt a CRM solution, created a committee of tech-savvy and predominantly "young" people (because everyone knows young people understand technology).
Not having been given further guidance than "we need the best," the group then spends most of its time evaluating features that few will understand, much less use.
A much better approach is to first ask the question, “what problem are we solving?” This allows clients to “begin with the end in mind,” and to increase their chances of choosing the best solution for the organization.
Lots of Choices:
Yes indeed, there is a lot of software that is used to track and manage relationships. In the foundation field, MicroEdge's FIMS, FoundationPower and GIFTS platforms are used for this purpose. Other providers include SalesForce.com, Kintera SPhere, Convio, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge, CiviCRM, SugarCRM and others. Many social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) are morphing into CRM functions the same way our accounting systems have stretched to cover the water front.
If we resist the temptation to focus only on the technical, the right question to ask of these packages is: What business needs are important? What are we trying to do?
One of the allures of CRM is that it promises everything: it can reach from soup to nuts, from directly talking with your customer to translating that data directly to your suppliers. But this allure is its own downfall - a LOT of big corporate multi-million dollar CRM projects fail because they try to go too far too fast.
Foundations have many business requirements:
- Funds Development: Relationships, Contact Management, eCommunications
- Client Self Service: Event Registration, Online Donation, Donor Fund Portal, Grantee Research, Grant Application, Social Networking.
- Workflow Management: Task Assignment, Scheduling, Opportunity Management, Case Management, Document Management
- Reporting: Each of the above has its own flavor of reporting: Client profile (360 degree view of a customer), Scorecards (summary to a client), Dashboards (summary activity reporting, exception reporting.
- Systems Maintenance: user administration, version control, data synchronization, systems administration.
This list can go on. A quick survey of the major CRM platform options shows that none is able to meet all of these requirements singlehandedly!
- It turns out that doing "funds development" is different than "corporate sales."
- Packages written for the nonprofit sector, such as Raiser's Edge and Kintera, understand what a complex relationship is, and these relationships lie at the heart of the data model.
- A corporate business-to-business solution, such as SalesForce, does not. It can be added, but it is at best a second best solution.
- Self-service is a powerful tool, but it brings up security issues that scare a lot of people.
- Kintera and Convio are very good at client-facing forms.
- Raiser's Edge, which does not sit on the web directly, requires an add-on application layer to be accessible.
- SalesForce, through its licensing policies, discourages direct customer participation in its system. It also requires an added application layer for access.
- Social Networking is up for grabs, with many options and no cases where a foundation has incorporated it into their operational systems.
- Workflow is generally well supported.
- SalesForce shines when it comes to back office workflow features, and the ability to customize workflow functions. Hands down.
- Reporting[o1] :
- Ask a FIMS or FoundationPower user to compare their reporting options with those built into any CRM system, and they will just smile. But go to a user conference for any of these same CRM systems and listen to the major complaint? Reporting.
- The biggest problem in reporting is that users know that they are unhappy with current options, but are not willing to invest the time to get inside the issue.
- Systems: Yes, the choice of CRM is informed by technology - just not driven by it.
- Local versus Hosted:
- Raiser's Edge is feature for feature the best CRM option for nonprofits, but it is a client/server system, meaning that you the customer have to worry about having a server to put it on, a secure network, physical security of the server and network, a current version of the software, backup, disaster planning, etc.
- Kintera and SalesForce are hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, meaning you don't worry about these things. Smart.
- Data Synchronization: if it does not work with your back office accounting system, the CRM system will be less than effective.
- The Atlas Data Bridge (http://www.atlasdatabridge.com) provides this type of synchronization between systems. The list of supported providers is growing, but it includes FIMS, FP, Kintera and soon SalesForce.
- Local versus Hosted:
And the Winner Is:
Clearly, it depends on what is important to an individual client. Clients are encouraged to consider as many as four systems. The precipitous drop in software pricing over the past five years and advances in data synchronization make this do-able.
- Kintera Sphere: to handle funds development and constituent self service.
- SalesForce: to handle back office workflow processing and document management
- Atlas Data Bridge: to handle data synchronization
- Up for Grabs: Social Networking.
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1 comment:
Enjoyed your post. I have long been a believer in Kintera, but lately Convio seems to get the press. You mention Convio, but seem to place Kintera ahead. Why?
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