[vslotfee]

Hello, I just joined the community. After reading through many of the email exchanges, I can see the immediate benefit--glad I joined. I hope to contribute once I learn more.

On behalf of our organization, I need some advice. . .

Our organization is considering moving to RE7. We have identified shortcomings in our existing database that impose certain restrictions on the data conversion. We have relatively simple requirements with less than 50,000 records, less than 50 fields, and only 3-4 tables to convert. As a result, we have adjusted our expectations and are content with a scenario in which only specific data (suitable for import into RE7) migrates over to the new system.

The professional service fees associated with the data conversion seem extremely high in the proposal from BB. I am basing this statement on these facts:

1) We are confident that we can output data from our current system to whatever format is required by RE7
2) We are aware that the format of our existing data prevents us from importing and placing data in RE7 in an optimal manner; we plan to deal with this separately

From our point of view, it would seem that our data is a straightforward conversion, especially considering the excellent import feature provided in RE7. Complexity is next to zero. We are not entirely comfortable with the proposal we have received from BB. We understand that they provide a great product and are in business to make money. However, the professional services associated with the migration of our existing data seem to be excessively overpriced.

Does all of this sound familiar to anyone? Can anyone help shed light on justifying the costs for BB's professional services? What are the questions we should ask? What else can we do to help offset these costs beyond cleaning-up data prior to migration? What options do we have going forward?

Thank you!
Victoria

___________________________
Victoria Slotfeldt
Scleroderma Research Foundation

[DrewAllen]

In my opinion, BB consulting prices are horribly inflated. They operate under the assumption that (a) their clients don't know enough to do it themselves, and (b) their clients don't have the connections to find more reasonable alternatives.

They do claim to be providing consultation on improving processes, but they didn't really improve our processes significantly. In fact, they did a horrible job of tying everything together to get a good overview. They treated each group as if it was a completely independent organization.

For instance, they wanted to create "Annual Giving Hospital Tour", "Major Giving Hospital Tour", "Planned Giving Hospital Tour", etc. I argued that a hospital tour is a hospital tour is a hospital tour and that you can determine who gets credit by who is assigned as a solicitor. When I set up the table entries, I only set up one "Hospital Tour". They complained that I had not followed the specs and went in and added the additional ones that they had specified, which I then later merged together.

If your contract is already signed, there is not much that you can do. If you haven't signed yet, you might want to check out some of the consultants who work with Blackbaud products.

Drew

[Peter Gulka]

The Marketplace section of Blackbus is intended to connect people like you to 3rd party consultants who can offer an alternative to the Blackbaud consulting services.

I am also working on a way to identify consultants who participate in the forums as consultants so that people know they can go to them for services. What we won't allow in these conversations is spam by consultants with messages like "I can help you with this. Please visit my site".

I will however continue to encourage them to particpate in the discussions as much as possible. They end up getting way more referrals that way anyway.

[Nina Williams]

I am late chiming in here as I was on vacation last week, but if you are thinking of doing the conversion yourself, I recomend thinking twice. I am still cleaning a database that was converted in house by someone who thought she could do it, but in the long run it was over her head. I would recomend at least an independent consultant, but make sure they have done conversions before.

[Peter Gulka]

To add to that there is a great deal of value in having a fresh set of eyes
looking at your data objectively.

[Debra K. Moore]

I am an independent consultant - seen a lot of messy RE conversions. They dont customize anything. I would suggest if you can send the data out of your own database, just clean the files up in Excel and import into RE. I've done a lot of conversions. Better to invest the money now than clean up forever afterward. As far as Cleveland Art Institute, I didnt do that conversion.

www.dkmpro.com
Debbie Moore

[Nina Williams]

No, Debbie, you did not work for us. Another person did and after leaving here and another job became a "consultant" .

[Mr.Conversion]

I too, just joined the community. I am an independent consultant and am in the process of being listed in the Marketplace, so I can't say contact me. However, I've published an article on supportingadvancement's website which may be of interest. You can find it under "Systems" titled "Using a consultant"