CiviCRM vs Classy and DonorPerfect
One last thing from my recent conversation with a client on pros and cons of CiviCRM: how it compares to other CRM's.
When this client came to her organization several years ago, she was involved in the decision to move their data into CiviCRM from several other systems, including Little Green Light, WePay, and ConstantContact, plus an array of spreadsheets from various department heads.
On top of that, her organization has recently combined with two others, and I've helped them move their data from Classy and DonorPerfect into their existing CiviCRM system.
She had this bit of insight comparing CiviCRM to their experience in Classy and DonorPerfect (lightly paraphrased for readability):
DonorPerfect was easy enough for me to understand, becuase I work all day in a CRM and think in those terms. And it was possible for staff to get things done, but only by thinking very carefully about how all the data fit together. So it made sense from a technical perspective, but staff couldn't easily relate it to their own mental model of how things work.
As a result, they never pulled their own reports — they hired a contractor to pull out reports on a per-request basis. And it was clear that staff using DonorPerfect had been skipping data entry tasks out of frustration; it was just hard for them to see how it all fit together.
Staff who are now coming into CiviCRM from DonorPerfect are saying that CiviCRM is easier for them. That's because they've had a lot of hand-holding from me and from Allen to understand how it works, and because we've streamlined the workflows to fit the staff's understanding of the work.
Classy, on the other hand, was simple to the point of being simplistic. Staff were just using it as a contact repository, with no notes, no relationships. But because it was so simple, it was very easy to use, and offered beautiful dashboards on the data it did track. Because of this, staff coming to CiviCRM from Classy thought that CiviCRM was just impossibly complicated, and it's not as visually as beautiful, which has a subtle negative impact on their user experience.
But actually, those former Classy users are now not even using CiviCRM, because what we learned was that they weren't even using Classy as a CRM. They just used it to collect credit card payments. They never even needed reports from Classy, didn't use it to track actual contact information. So for the work they're doing now, they don't really need the CRM, so they're shielded from the complexity and I didn't have to train them on Civi at all.
I see here two bits of wisdom:
A complex system can be molded to fit the organizations needs, but without good training and careful streamlining of workflows, it can be frustrating and confusing for staff. With an open-source CRM, you can do that streamlining; but you still have to do it.
A simplistic CRM is easy to use, but it's almost not a "real" CRM at all. That is, it may allow you to collect contributions or survey responses, but don't expect to do meaningful segmentation in support of your engagement / moves-management strategy.
All the best,
A.