The Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce Data Conversion
CRM Switch provides The Raiser’s Edge® to Salesforce data conversion services. Many nonprofits are looking to move from traditional client/server applications such as RE to Salesforce’s cloud-based solution, as Salesforce allows for secure access to information from anywhere, on any device.
Salesforce also eliminates the need for managing in-house servers and continually ensuring desktop client compatibility and functionality.
Point and click data migration tools represent only a partial solution for a smooth transition to Salesforce. Our professional services team understands The Raiser’s Edge’s complex schema and knows how to properly transform and map all data to Salesforce.
Preserving The Raiser’s Edge’s Functionality in Salesforce
In addition to the data migration itself, decisions need to be made about which Salesforce products to use and how to configure them in order to ensure continuity of key functionality after a transition. For example, does it make sense to use the Salesforce Foundation’s free Nonprofit Success Pack (set of managed packages)? Should ExactTarget and/or Pardot, both salesforce.com products, be deployed? What is the best option for an integrated, online donation form?
There are also specific areas to consider in terms of data. Attributes related to Gifts and Constituents need to be transformed. Fund, Campaign and Appeal tables need to be mapped to specific objects in Salesforce and equivalent functionality needs to be provided. In order to preserve full salutations and other mailing preferences, specific customizations in Salesforce are required.
It’s easy to extract contacts and companies from any system and move these records to a new platform. The more involved part is extracting linked data in such a way that relationships to donations and other transactions are preserved in the new CRM system.
Automated data migration tools fall short by as much as 50% in overall performance because The Raiser’s Edge was designed to be very flexible in terms of attributes and mailing preferences. Every Raiser’s edge customer has had their system configured in a unique way, which means that data conversion can’t be fully automated.
