Name: Connecting Salesforce and Blackbaud with SmartSALESFORCE by SmartTHING
Uploaded: 2025-05-01T02:30:40.292Z
Duration: 27 min
Description: Connecting Salesforce and Blackbaud with SmartSALESFORCE by SmartTHING

Transcript for "Connecting Salesforce and Blackbaud with SmartSALESFORCE by SmartTHING": Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's session. Thank you for joining us for the first session on Blackbaud Pacific's brand new webinar series, visualizing your single source of truth. This series is all about helping you connect your data in more visible, actionable ways by showcasing powerful integrations available through Blackbaud extensive partner network. Today's session is on Smart Salesforce by SmartTHING, a seamless integration that brings together the power of Blackbaud solutions and Salesforce to eliminate any double double handle handling and provide a unified view of your data. We'll be joined shortly by our partners at SmartTHING who will walk you through the features, benefits, and a demonstration of what the integration looks like. Before we dive in, just a quick note that this session is being recorded. So if you need to jump off at any time, or revisit the the content later, feel free to drop out, and you'll get a recording in about twenty four hours. Just some housekeeping before we begin. So this webinar is being broadcast through your computer speakers. So if you have any issues with the audio or the screen freezing, please refresh your browser. You also may need to log out of the, the Goldcast platform and log back in. There is also a cogwheel down the bottom of your screen where you can adjust your settings if you need to or put Goldcast into light mode, which really helps with the quality of the webinar. Okay. Let's kick things off over to you, Warren. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this webinar in a space to your integration solution of Blackbaud and Salesforce. Those who haven't encountered us before, we're SmartTHING. We've been working with Blackbaud since before 2,009, building, low cost add ons and integrations, basic tools that help streamline your work and automate those your daily tasks. Our focus is on making things more secure and efficient and affordable for you as a as a nonprofit organization. I'm Warren Shericka. I'm the founder and CEO here at SmartTHING. I've spent, over twenty years, working with nonprofits and backhaul products. I'm pleased to work with thousands of nonprofit organizations around the world. And in this work, I've seen the need, for practical, transparent, and and low cost solutions to to connect to all your systems and simplify the way that you handle data. That's why I set up SmartTHING in the first place. Now, today's, topic for the webinar is integration of Blackbaud and Salesforce. So, during the session, we're gonna cover a few key points. Firstly, we'll look at the challenges that can arise from relying solely on one CRM system for nonprofits, where where you might encounter limitations with fundraising features or regional tax compliance. If you try and use that for systems that aren't dedicated to to nonprofit area, you know, and we'll look especially at Blackbaud and Salesforce in this in this context. We'll introduce you to our solution for this, which is Salesforce. The core idea is that it provides a seamless automated data synchronization between Blackbaud and Salesforce. It's in in real time, which enables your organization to get the best of both worlds. And finally, we'll demonstrate the practical benefits, through some through an example video where we'll we'll show you the system in in use and how it can really impact your your daily tasks. And then there will be a section at the end for q and a, so, please do, keep your questions in mind and, at that point, you'll be able to get some answers for anything that pops up during the presentation. Alright then. So let's have a proper look at some of the snags you hit when you're thinking about your organization CRMs. Two two big questions that we often hear are, we use two CRMs, but what happens if they don't talk to each other? And conversely, can't we just use one system for everything? So we'll we'll look at for those for the next five minutes or so. So let's first take the question, of the two CRM situation when they're not talking to each other. We'll consider that board in Salesforce. So, Blackbaud is often used to hold your financial and giving data, or all the financial data relating to giving giving, plus your, you know, index prospects and and other fundraising related data. And Salesforce, if it's used in a larger organization, might be dedicated towards marketing sales efforts. One of your daily tasks that you would have with these systems is that you're trying to report on the data within them. Obviously, if you've got data within that role and Salesforce and they're not being shared, reporting can be fragmented. And you're also missing your overall view of your constituents. So if a constituent is has some information on their giving and you're not seeing that within Salesforce, you can't make your decisions in an informed way. So as we say, data in separate systems, you you gives you gaps and and incomplete data. The bottom line is that having two systems operating in isolation significantly impacts your efficiency. Your staff are spending valuable time on manual data retrieval tasks instead of focusing on what your core mission is. Inconsistent and, again, conflicting data leads to errors that allows trust from supporters and hinders effective decision making. And overall productivity takes a hit because you lack a single accurate view of your belligerence and their complete interactions with your your organization. So we do need to synchronize the data between the systems. But what about relying on ManSoft to manually synchronize that data? Well, that can lead to delays of potential errors. Manual data synchronization only happens when staff are there, not not on a twenty four seven basis. So you're you're coming across questions like, when can I generate my report? Who do I need to check with first? With manual processing also, you can't be sure that a % of the time your business rules are being applied. Errors can can leak in. With the best of the meaning best of efforts, it's still possible for manual errors to occur. So now going back to that second question, can't we just use one system for every everything? I mean, obviously, that would take out the synchronization needs, but, what and it sounds like a sensible approach, but fundraisers and alumni teams have very different needs compared to other organizational users. So dedicated fundraising CRM, like Blackbaud, can handle aspects like online nation forms and portals, gift aids and tax receipts, gift stacks. There's already prebuilt reports on all the breakdowns that a fundraiser would need to know about. And soft credits, soft gifts, tributes, list goes on. Now you build get a generic CRM like Salesforce and build out custom areas for this information. But it's a lot of work, and these customization customizations could affect the use of your other users, maybe overcomplicating their tasks. And, of course, it requires IT support in keeping the knowledge of what the customizations are, maintaining them, building upon them. And as as new features come out, adding to them, it's highly likely that the eventual systems customizations will not cover the full breadth of functionality that something like Blackbaud has to add to the box. And then what what about the less obvious effects? Let's consider recruitment. Rather than being able to recruit from a large number of fundraisers they're out there that already know how to use Blackbaud systems, you would have to train train your new fundraisers on your customized version of the system, which delays their their effective deployment on actual fundraising and emits the the pool of recruitment that that you can go to. So so taking these two, yeah, these two questions, we're and now it looks at their efficiency and productivity. We really need to run two systems, Blackbaud and Salesforce, but they need to be synchronized together, to allow you to work efficiently. And that's what we'll be looking at next. So let's cover the base fixing and about our solution, say, Smart Salesforce. So what is Smart Salesforce? In in simple terms, it's an integration application. It bridges what we put, the two systems, Blackbaud and Salesforce. Now it isn't a standalone one off with the kit that we've built for this. It's actually part of a much larger set of integrations provided by our Smart Sync platform. And this platform has been around for many years, And although Smart Salesforce is a relatively new member of it, the platform itself ensures that that's a robust, reliable, and flexible solution for you. It will cover some of the benefits of Smart Sync's platform later, but one thing to bear in mind is that it can connect to almost any application out there. So if you want to extend its use further than just Salesforce, you'd use it as an integration hub that connects all of your systems. Perfect. Let's dive into how smart Salesforce can really make a difference. These are the five key areas that that we think will need bring the point across to you. So automation, It's it's all about saving you time, isn't it? So Salesforce automates your data syncs twenty four seven, working away in the background and using your business rules to push and pull data all the time. Data quality. We're not just moving the data. We're making sure it's good data. So it as it moves the data between the systems, it applies validation, tidying of the data, making sure that it's all correct before it goes into the other systems. Accuracy. So for your your data, wherever you're looking at at it, it is already in sync with all the latest information that's available to your organization. That means your teams can make better and more informed decisions. They know that what they're looking at is the latest information. It's efficient. So less time is spent on admin tasks and overhead to moving data around. It does that for you, which means that your staff can do something more towards your core aims. And then consistency. So your reporting your reporting is going to be based, whichever system you're using, on the latest data. So it's all going to be accurate. You're not reliant on other people to come and to say that they've they've uploaded data ready for your report. It's already there. You know it's there. So how flexible is Smart Salesforce? Well, it's pretty versatile. It can handle syncing all sorts of data between the systems. So with Salesforce, we can get to all the different entities in Salesforce even if they have custom data. So contacts, accounts, leads, opportunities, and and more of all those custom fields that you might have built built out. In fact, you might add extra fields because of the synchronization. Like, you might want to add a, a cumulative giving field. So you can see within Salesforce the total amount of giving this person has given you within to via the Blackbaud system. In terms of Blackbaud, so with Blackbaud CRM, we've got all of the entities covered there as well. Consistrants gives education there. So we can push and pull all this data or summarize it and push information to to Salesforce or from Salesforce. And the same with, like, Maze Agencies team. So, we've got coverage of all the different fields there, like, good constituents, gifts, education, zip into participation. And that that is actually growing as Blackbaud app more features to to Xt. So okay. Let's say you want to go ahead with with setting up smart sales. So what does that involve and how does the go live process work? Our team have expertise in both, Blackbaud and Salesforce, so we'll work with you to design your perfect integration. We'll chat with you about the hosting requirements, of the service, so where whether you want to have need need because of your record counts shared or dedicated hosting. And then we'll set up a test environment, and have a few goes with that to make sure that the system is working in the right way. And that test environment can either be with your test environments for, Salesforce and and Nextiva. It can be on a subset of data within your systems. And maybe only records with the the chart have email addresses in your domain, your your organization's domain, so any staff can test the the system. Yeah. We can we can be flexible on how to set up those test environments. And all the time we'll be working with the team to ensure it is still fitting your requirements. And then after you go live, we don't we don't just leave it there. That's that's a bit of a difference with with our service. We monitor the service after it's live, and we'll keep make sure that it's all always running smoothly for you. So it brings us into our day to day, use of Smart Salesforce. So for everyday use, Smart Salesforce comes with a hand dashboard where you can keep an eye on your data flows. But really, it's designed to be a set and forget and managed service that just ticks along nicely in the background. Our smarts and team are always there, monitoring the it's a fixing any little hiccups and letting you know if if anything actually needs your attention. Take a lot of pride in delivering integrations that just work. As for pricing, we've kept it simple, and cheap. We offer transparent and low cost yearly plans. You can grab a plan for just smart sales plus or you can use smart sync as a hub as as we mentioned earlier for integrations where we have three app and enterprise bundles available. So we mentioned briefly before, but I just like to explain a bit more about the platform. So Smart Salesforce is a is one of the systems that sits on our Smart Sync platform. But because of that, it also benefits from a lot of the properties of our platform, which are quite wide ranging. So security, we have ISO nine thousand and one and twenty seven thousand one accreditation as an organization, and we've used that when building with the smarts we have. We've got regional service, so we can put service in your your region of work. If you wish to, we've got AI features that you can use within your processing. So it's like a date virtual data experts can be part of the integration. They can look at the data, summarize it, or manipulate it in some way. It connects to everything. That's a bit broad on that. But, you know, our platform can connect to almost every system out there from email platforms to portals, to platforms, to file imports, everything. So we've already prebuilt 70 custom builds that are integrations that you can you can purchase or we can build custom ones to to your needs. I'll give you a flavor of the SmartSync platform here. So we've now talked about how smart Salesforce works. Now let's walk through a real time demo. If anyone's interested, this is in AI, you might want to note that this coming video features an AI avatar version of myself. Try it sound slightly different. Yeah. Here we go. In this quick demo, we'll show you how near real time data synchronization can benefit your organization. So let's walk you through a demo of how SmartTHING Salesforce works in practice. We're gonna use a scenario here. In this case, we're looking at someone in a marketing role who's working with Salesforce. They've had an update from someone who is also a key donor to the organization. Now that's important to your fundraisers. They use Blackbaud Raisers Edge NXT in this example. However, you don't need to worry about that. You are using Salesforce and are simply updating the address. So let's say it's Andy Young's record. We will say that his address is now 5 Park Avenue, Alberville with ZIP code 61000. Maybe we'll make another change as well. We'll change the phone number to 600123. Okay. So what we do now is we save that, and you can now see the updated record. If we pop over to NXT, you can see it's showing all the details currently. This is expected as the sync will take a few minutes to see the changes and push them over, so let's wait a couple of minutes. One thing to note in the meantime is the Salesforce ID alias. This is something that will populate as part of the onboarding, and any record with the Salesforce ID will tie back to a record in Salesforce. Now I'll skip forward a few minutes in the video so we can see the updated record. It actually took three minutes in this case, but it can take a few more minutes than that sometimes. There we go. You can now see the new address, 5 Park Avenue, Alberville with ZIP code 61000, and you can also see the new phone number came through. So this is quite powerful stuff. Your users, wherever they are and whatever system they use, always have the latest date to hand. More than that, your business rules have been applied throughout. Only the records you chose are synchronized, and it's all happening automatically in the background twenty four seven. You can synchronize other information in this demo's basic contact details. It can also be a bidirectional sync, pushing information to Salesforce when it is updated in NXT. For example, if I update the address in NXT, that will push through to Salesforce, or maybe a new gift is added in NXT, and we automatically update the summary information on the Salesforce record for total giving, last gift amount, and last gift date. All of that is possible with Smart Salesforce and will be covered during your onboarding. This has been a quick demo of the capabilities of our Smart Salesforce product. It showed how real time integrations can revolutionize your work and help your teams achieve their goals efficiently. So, so just summarizing the the main points from that video. There's an update to in Salesforce of the contact address, and then phone number, and then that pushed through to Blackbaud, and where after Smart Salesforce detected the change, and it appeared within a few minutes. And the sync can be bidirectional and can, cover a lot of different bits of information. Right. Let's have a quick recap of the benefits and impacts you'll see from using Smart Sync in Salesforce. So that real tangible improvements here, not just marketing buzzwords. But first up, what do you get with all of our Smart Salesforce integrations? Why integrate at all? Well, it's about time savings and increased efficiency. No more manual data transfer between systems. It's automated, which means less time wasted on admin and more time for the stuff that actually matters. You'll get improved data accuracy and reliability, manual data processing. That's where data errors creep in. SmartSYNC eliminates that, ensuring your data is consistent across your systems, and this in turn leads to enhanced reporting and decision making. You're working with accurate up to date data so you can make informed choices. And, of course, it reduces the risk of human error. We've all been there when we have one wrong keystroke and you've got a problem. Smart saying it takes away that risk ultimately means better data, better connections with your constituents. Now let's focus on what makes smart Salesforce so useful. And here's the key. It means you can get the best of both worlds. There's no need to choose between, Blackbaud or Salesforce. Have both. One of the biggest wins is the unified constituent view. You know, we're breaking down these data silos. Imagine your fundraising team in Blackbaud can see your engagement activities for Salesforce, and your marketing team in Salesforce can see essential giving information from that, all while respecting data exit permissions naturally. This leads to streamlined fundraising processes. A new donation in Blackbaud, Smart Salesforce can automatically push that into Salesforce, checking thank you emails or campaign updates. No manual intervention needed. Similarly, contact updates in Salesforce, update backboard. Your mainliness are always spot on. Then there's enhanced marketing effectiveness, having giving dating data from backboard and salesforce as you create targeted personalized campaigns. Segment your audience based on giving history, tailor your messaging, and you and you'll increase engagement in giving. If you're managing sales in Salesforce, SmartTHING Salesforce keeps that that aligned with Blackbaud, track product sales in Salesforce, and have summaries in Blackbaud. A complete view of your supporters involvement. And it's all designed for scalability and flexibility. You configure it to sync the data, that's most important to you and adjust the rules as your needs change. Finally, a word on security and support. We take these seriously. We're ISO nine twenty seven thousand one and nine thousand one certified. We offer regional service. You can even have your own server within your own Azure infrastructure if you need that level of extra control. And, of course, support our support team are always on end to help you get the most out of smart sales ops. So if you're ready to see it in action, you book a demo on our website that will walk you through, the the a demo specific to your needs. Right. So that that about wraps up our session. We've covered the key benefits of SmartTHING Salesforce, and hopefully, you've got a clear picture of how it can streamline your data and improve your workflow. I'm sure you've got some questions, and we're keen to ask them. So I hand back over to our host, and he'll be moderating the q and a sessions. And on screen, you can see a few of the ways that you can get in contact with us. I'm sure there'll be, links located after the webinar too. Thank you to our partners at SmartTHING for sharing insights into how Smart Salesforce is helping organizations break down data silos and increase visibility across platforms. That does bring us to the end of today's session. Thank you so much for joining us for this first installment in our single source of truth series. If you found today's session valuable, please keep an eye out for the rest of our series where we'll be highlighting integrations with partners such as Redarc, Ziedman, Rastafy, and more, covering everything from donor management to marketing automation and case management. I do have my email address in the chat. Feel free to reach out to me or directly, to SmartTHING if you have any questions or need any other information. But thank you all again for joining, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks all.