Advancement CRM Software Evaluation and Selection

Accurately selecting your next CRM and related systems to run advancement, alumni engagement and philanthropic activities is one of the most important decisions an organization can make. Fortunately, this service is what TSI does. Consider TSI to be TSI your Next Generation CRM Software Evaluation and Selection Expert.

In any given year, we evaluate Advancement CRM, Marketing, Finance, SIS and other software products in a year than most do in their career.

What Is An Advancement CRM Software Evaluation and Selection?

Having an objective, unbiased Software Evaluation and Selection Expert is mission-critical for organizations today. The Salesforce-based CRM options – Affinaquest and UC Innovations competing with various Blackbaud, Ellucian, Slate and other products are confusing. Then, there are dozens of “add on” packages to handle functions like advance analytics, marketing, portal, workflow, event management, special giving days, telemarketing and many others. Finally, overlay a myriad of implementation vendors combine to make this a very confusing, expensive and challenging project.

Did you know that most consulting firms have a financial relationshop with one or more software vendors? Many of those that don’t, have a bench of implementation resources that are trained to implement one of more of the leading CRM packages. TSI has neither since that would create an implicity bias and negate the fiduciary responsibility we have to our clients to advise our clients and make an unbiased and objective software selection.

Sadly, many consulting firms receive commissions from software vendors. What is even more troubling is that we have found consulting firms who say they are independent, yet they receive commissions from software vendors as well.

TSI is completely independent. We do not receive any type of commission or compensation from software vendors. We never have and never will. As a result, we are one of the only firms that specialize in objectively assessing an organization’s critical business, financial, and operational systems.

Advancement CRM Software Evaluation and Selection projects are critical and start with a sound process of defining requirements, sorting through feasible vendors, critically evaluating them, and finally picking the one that is the best fit for your organization. This can be daunting and challenging since the work effort is high as well as the pressure to get it right. Most organizations and IT professionals are involved with one, on average, every 7-10 years. TSI is a Software Evaluation and Selection Expert; we complete a Software Evaluation and Selection project on average, once a month.

Our Software Evaluation and Selection services allow us to work closely with your stakeholders to evaluate software vendors and choose a new system or systems to meet your business needs and strategic priorities. Our software evaluation and selection projects often include:

Why Work With Us on Advancement CRM Software Evaluation and Selection Projects?

Since TSI does not have software to sell or partnerships with any software vendors, we are unbiased and don’t have a conflict of interest to fabricate a business case involving the acquisition of software if tangible benefits do not truly exist. Defining what is really needed to support the business now and in the future, in contrast to “bells and whistles” features, is often a complicated task, even for people who know their business well. Additionally, there have been countless mergers and acquisitions of software vendors while others remain in survival mode. These trends make the challenge of selecting the right software package even more daunting.

Our process is pragmatic, yet thorough. We help define the key scenarios that represent your unique and/or complex requirements and develop incisive questions that will help you differentiate vendor solutions.  We focus on how processes can be simplified, automated, or standardized and ensuring that complex processes can be supported through flexible, configurable, and integrated solutions. Our consultants will be with you every step of the way through your software evaluation and selection process.

See here for a case study about a recent software evaluation and selection project, or click here for more information on selecting the right software.

What We Do

Ultimately TSI works closely with our clients to evaluate and select the right software product(s) for their organization. At times, our work starts with the need to define a business case, requirements, and evaluation criteria for a new system. This typically moves into developing a shortlist of the feasible software vendor and product options. Finally, TSI leads the proper review of the software vendor products so that a fact-based decision is made with input and buy-in from all parts of your organization.

Our clients tell us that we add value by making a complex topic digestible and easy to process.

TSI is ready to partner with your organization to assist with the following:

Foster Buy-In TSI will engage with subject matter experts and other staff at your organization throughout the process to build trust. 

Business Case TSI will help your organization develop a business case to justify the pursual and implementation of a new software solution. Our consultants will host voice of the constituent and constituent experience sessions to learn more about pain points and points of pride for your legacy system, and justify why the legacy system no longer fits your business needs.

Requirements Gathering Sessions Transforming Solutions has a set of boilerplate requirements that are used as a foundation for the system selection. We will then host requirements gathering sessions to gain insight into your organization’s unique desired functional and technical requirements that will help you meet your business needs. We also gather requirements during business process improvement sessions with stakeholders.

Business Process Improvement Sessions TSI will help map and analyze your current and future state business processes so that they are reflective of how you want your processes to function in the future using a new system. 

Developing Requests for Proposals TSI will help you develop a request for proposal that will encompass the desired project scope and requirements to meet your business objectives. We will help define evaluation criteria or a selection scorecard to ensure finalist vendors align with your organization’s mission and goals. TSI can also work with your organization’s procurement team to facilitate the selection process. 

Demonstration Narrative or Script Development TSI will assist in developing narratives of scripts for vendors to demonstrate their functionality that highlight critical operating scenarios. This will help stakeholders evaluate the functionality and user experience for a solution.

Evaluate Vendors Demonstrations TSI will help you analyze vendor responses and demonstrations so that you can select the software that is best for your organization. 

Contract Negotiation  Once a vendor or vendors are selected, TSI will help facilitate the contract negotiation process to ensure compliance. 

Implementation TSI will assist during the implementation phase, depending on your resources and needs, with project management, technical implementation, change management and use case/test case support.

Tools We Use