Name: Connecting Salesforce and Blackbaud with SmartSALESFORCE by SmartTHING
Uploaded: 2025-04-30T14:00:16.971Z
Duration: 33 min 32 s
Description: Connecting Salesforce and Blackbaud with SmartSALESFORCE by SmartTHING

Transcript for "Connecting Salesforce and Blackbaud with SmartSALESFORCE by SmartTHING": Good afternoon or good morning from wherever it is that you're joining us around the world. Thank you so much for joining me today for the very first in a brand new series, which is going to be highlighting some of our incredible partners here at Blackbaud and the amazing work that they do that brings your data from any given place and brings it under the roof of Raiser's Edge NXT. I'm thrilled to say that the first of this session, first of these sessions of this webinar program is going to be, with our friends at SmartTHING who are going to be talking us through everything smart Salesforce and how you can bring that Salesforce data into Raiser's Edge NXT. I'm just going to very quickly jump to a couple of thoughts on, some webinar house keeping. Just before we get into the meat of today's sandwich, let's get into it. So the audio for today's, session is gonna be broadcast through your computer speakers. If you've got a headset already connected to your computer, that should automatically, sort itself out for you. If there's any audio problems at all, then you won't have heard a thing I've said. But you can refresh your browser for audio or technical issues at all. And there is a cogwheel down the bottom as well, which is good for adjusting your settings, handling noise suppression, anything like that. We have a q and a section on the right hand side for you just over here. If you have any questions for us today throughout the session, please do drop them in there. We might be tight for time. So if we've got time to get to the questions at the end, we absolutely will. If not, we'll take them away, and we'll come back to you straight away. Please use the q and a for that, though, because I can, pull a report on the q and a. I cannot on the chat. The chat is there for you to say hello. So let me know where you're from, who's here, where you're from, have you got a cup of tea with you, have you got a pet with you. It's always nice to know who's there. Also, in the right hand tile as well, you should see a documents tab. Now in the documents tab today, we've got a link off to our partner's website, SmartTHING. We've also got a link to their marketplace, collection and some resources and slides from today. So if you've got any questions or anything you want to kind of run through, if there's any thoughts that you want to follow-up on, please make sure you click on those links, and resources before the end of today's session. And finally, your feedback is incredibly important. Before we finish, I will set a, a survey up for you all. That's gonna pop up over the chat box just before the end of the, the session today. Be lovely if you could give some feedback, and that would be a great place as well for you to drop your contact details for us to follow-up with you if you'd like to know more about this, integration. So hello to everyone who's saying hello in the chat. Lovely to see folks from all around the world joining in. So that is our webinar house keeping. Nice and straightforward. Nothing particularly exciting to share. Just to say, if you've got any problems, technically, refresh your browser and that should solve it. And I'll be here throughout the session just to make sure that all goes well. Now here's where it gets interesting, and here's where it gets fun. We're gonna hand over to our friends at SmartTHING, and Warren from SmartTHING is gonna be running us through what's possible with bringing your Salesforce data into Raiser’s Edge NXT. Warren is here. There is a possibility towards the end. We've got some good times. Hi, Kate as well from SmartTHING. We've got some folks from SmartTHING in the chat. We will towards the end, there'll be a we should have the option for you to raise your hands, and you can come on screen with me as well. So we should get to that point very soon. Anyway, Warren's gonna take us on, and lead us into the next set, section. So sit back and enjoy, a lovely little conversation about what's possible with Salesforce integrations into Razer's Edge NXT with SmartTHING. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this webinar, illustrating our integration solution for Blackbaud and Salesforce. For those who haven't encountered us before, we're SmartTHING. Been working with Blackbaud since before 02/2009, 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 Schurker. I'm the founder and CEO here at SmartTHING. I've spent, over twenty years, working with nonprofits and backhaul products. I'm a place 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 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 Durham system for nonprofits, where where you might encounter limitations with fundraising features or regional tax compliance, if you try and use that, the systems aren't dedicated to to nonprofit area in that. 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 Smart 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 show you the system in in use and how it can really impact your your daily tasks. I know there will be a section at the end for a q and a, so, please do, keep your have questions in mind and, at that point, you'll be able to get some answers for anything that pops up during the presentation. Hi there. 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. 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 both of 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 Blackbaud and Salesforce. So, Blackbaud is often used to hold your financial ranking data, or or 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 and sales efforts. One of your daily tasks that you would have with these systems is that you're trying to report on 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 overview 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 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 and focusing on on what your core mission is. Inconsistent and, again, conflicting data leads to errors. It erodes trust from supporters and hinders effective decision making. And overall productivity takes a hit because you lack a single accurate view of your constituents and their complete interactions with your your organization. So we do need to synchronize the data between the systems. But what about relying on man the staff to manually synchronize that data? Well, that can lead to delays and potential errors. Manual data synchronization only happens when staff are there, not not 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 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 donation forms and portals, gift aid and tax proceeds, gift stacks. There's already prebuilt reports on all the breakdowns that are fundraisers with me to know about. And soft credits, stock gifts, tributes, list goes on. Now you could 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 their customizations are, maintaining them, building upon them. And as as new features come out, add into them. It's highly unlikely that the eventual systems customizations will not cover the full breadth of functionality that something like Blackbaud has out of the box. And then what what about the next topic of x? Let's consider recruitment. Rather than being able to recruit, from a large number of fundraisers, that are 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 limits the the pool of recruitment that you can go to. So so taking these two, you know, these two questions, we're now looks as if 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 basics and and about our solutions at Smart Salesforce. So what is Smart Salesforce? 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 bit of 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 SmartSync'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 can 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 that we 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. Work your way in the background and using your business rules, 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 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 overheads, just 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 Salesforce? Well, it's pretty versatile. It can handle syncing all sorts of data between the systems. So with Salesforce, we can get towards the different entities in Salesforce, see if there are custom data. So contacts, accounts, leads, opportunities, and and more on 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 via the Blackbaud system. In terms of Blackbaud, so with Blackbaud CRM, we've got all of the entities covered there as well. Consituents get your education to it. So we can push and pull all this data or summarize it and push information to the to Salesforce or from Salesforce. And the same with MesoGenics too. So, we've got coverage of all the different fields there, like, good conditions, gifts, education, zip into participation. And that that is actually growing as Blackbaud add more features to to Xt. So okay. Let's say you want to go ahead with with setting up smart salesforce. 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 or it can be on a subset of data within your systems. And maybe only records with virtual have email addresses in your domain, your your organization's domain, so any of your 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 your 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 that brings us into our day to day, use of Salesforce. So for everyday use, Salesforce comes with a handy 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 smart sync team are always there, monitoring the there's a it's in 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 Salesforce 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 it briefly before, but I just like to explain a bit more about the platform. So Salesforce is 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 Smart City platform. We've got regional service, so we can put service in your region of the world. 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. If you look at the data, summarize it, or manipulates it in some way. It connects to everything. That's a bit broad that, but, you know, our platform can connect to almost every system out there from email platforms to portals to web forms to file imports, everything. So we've already prebuilt 70 custom builds of 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 anyway. So we've now talked about how smart Salesforce works. Now let's walk through a real time. 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 Smart Salesforce works in practice. We're gonna use a scenario here. In this case, we're looking 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 Raiser's, 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 Blackbaud, 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, Albertville 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 Blackbaud. 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 was some data in Salesforce of a contact's address, and then phone number, and then that pushed through to Raising Edge, 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 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. We've made one wrong keystroke and you've got a problem. SmartTHING takes away that risk, ultimately means better data, better connections with your constituents. Now let's focus on what makes SmartTHING 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 from Salesforce, and your marketing team in Salesforce can see essential giving information from Blackbaud, all while respecting data access permissions naturally. This leads to streamlined fundraising processes. A new donation in Blackbaud, SmartTHING Salesforce can automatically push that into Salesforce, triggering thank you emails or campaign updates. No manual intervention needed. Similarly, contact updates in Salesforce update Blackbaud. Your mainliness are always spot on. And there's enhanced marketing effectiveness. Having given dating data from both in Salesforce lets you create targeted personalized campaigns, segment your audience based on giving history, tailor your messaging, and you and you'll increase engagement and give you're managing sales in Salesforce, smart Salesforce keeps that that aligned with Blackbaud, track product sales in Salesforce, and have summaries in Blackbaud, a complete view of your support as 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 are 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 hand to help you get the most out of smart salesforce. So if you're ready to see it in action, you can 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 Salesforce, and, hopefully, you've got a clear picture of how it can streamline your data and improve your Wi Fi. I'm sure you've got some questions, and we're keen to answer them. So I'm gonna hand back over to our host, who'll be moderating the q and a sessions. On screen, you can see a few of the ways that you can get in contact with us, But I'm sure there'll be, rings located after the webinar too. Okay. There we go. Thank you so much, Warren, and, everyone from the SmartTHING team. Hopefully, we've got some, good ideas, and there might be a couple of questions for you. Totally fine if you need to run. Thanks so much for coming, Sandra. Now I am going to, just leave the q and a box open, but I am gonna pop open our little survey as well just as we run to questions. Warren or anyone from the SmartTHING team, if you'd like to raise your hand, I can let you up on screen. You can come and join us. We've got a couple of questions if you'd like to join. Here we go. Hi, Warren. Warren's coming on board. Here we go. Hi, Warren. Hi. Lovely stuff. Thank you so much for the presentation today. Hope all is good. Yep. Not a problem. Yeah. Thanks for the time. Good. Good. Good. Now there's a couple of little questions that have come through, and a couple of things that you've kind of covered in there. Things like your, data security and those security measures, your ISO, your ISO settings and things. I don't know if you'd like to just kind of very quickly speak to that. That's protection of your sensitive information. That's always a a key method for folks. Yeah. So, we do, yeah, we do as I said in the presentation, we do take it quite seriously. We've got, which is unusual for, the providers, ISO nine thousand and one and twenty seven thousand one, which are security standards worldwide on how we treat data, how we run our business, all of the internal processes around safeguarding information. What we also mentioned was that there's there's dedicated server options. So you can have a server that is your own server for just your organization, and and we can put that within your IT infrastructure, which answers quite a lot of the security questions that sometimes we're asked around, getting approvals through for, using, an integration platform. Excellent. That's really, really helpful. Thank you very much. And another one that oh, I think it was always very nice to know. So could you tell us a little bit more about kind of support that you provide after implementation? Is this something where we're gonna be left alone after it's up and running? Yeah. So, yeah, that that is one of the things where we we do differ quite a lot from other providers, and it's, we we don't leave, our clients alone after we put them live. We we keep in touch, and we also monitor their services. So, we'll we keep an eye on all of the integrations. And if there's anything that go that doesn't work, we'll get notified straight away. Often, we'll we'll see that and solve the, the problem before the client actually gets to, know that there was anything wrong in the first place. But, If there is something that needs input from the client, we will contact them and and work with them on that. But, yeah, just it's as I said, set and forget. The idea is that the integration just works in the background going along, and we're there to smooth the process. Amazing stuff. Always lovely to know. I it's it's one of my favorite answers to be able to give. You know, there's a lot of great support, and and, genuinely, there is a lot of great support. It's what we really love about the, the efforts that you provide, to our to our partnership, which is lovely. I'm gonna go for one more. We're kind of close to time. But let's go with one more. Can you tell us, as always the important question, on cost, are there any hidden costs? Anything that we should be aware of? Could you tell us a bit more about what's included in the yearly plan, and what about considered add ons? Yeah. So, yes. Again, we've kept it simple. There is a set cost per year, and that cost, will we've got on our website for people to look at. We we also, you know, tailor that to whatever the client needs. But that cost will include everything from the service, the support during the year, any upgrades that we make to the service, and changes to configuration up to a yep. There is a hourly hour limit. But, yeah, usually, that covers just about everything that a client will need. So there's no hidden cost during the year. There's a year annual cost, and that's that's what they're gonna expect to pay. Fantastic. Grant. Right. We're gonna leave that there for time, but really, really lovely. Thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you, Warren, for stepping on stage and for the rest of the SmartTHING folks in the background as well. All is to say, as I say, a very big thank you for for joining us. If you have any questions just kind of coming out of this, if you'd like to touch base with us here at Blackbaud, anymore about some of the content that we have shared today, then you can contact myself. That's David Upcraft. That's the first email on that list. And if you're watching back to this session, there's quite a few, signed up that I know haven't been able to make it live, and these sessions are gonna be available on demand, for anyone watching back. So if you're one of those folks watching back, if you are in The UK or Europe or Canada, you can contact me. That's david.craft@blackboard.co.uk. And if you're joining us from, Blackbaud Pacific anywhere in kind of Asia, Australia, New Zealand, you can contact my lovely colleague, Penny, and Penny will be in touch with you afterwards. So please do if you've, dropped your name and contact details into the survey, we'll be following up with you very shortly. And if you are interested in any more of our webinar program, we are running every Wednesday, at this time for quite a long time now. And, actually, next week, we'll be joined by Warren and the smart t smart thing team. There we go. Again, as we look at integrating with SmartMS Dynamics and how you can look at, Microsoft Dynamics into raising edge NXT as well. So we'll see you again next week, Warren, and the rest of the SmartTHING team, and hopefully see plenty of you again on another one of these webinars again very soon. Thanks so much for coming, everyone, and we'll see you soon. Take care. Thanks, everyone. Cheers.