Name: Bringing together Microsoft Dynamics and Blackbaud with SmartMSDYNAMICS by SmartTHING
Uploaded: 2025-05-08T02:30:58.413Z
Duration: 28 min 24 s
Description: Bringing together Microsoft Dynamics and Blackbaud with SmartMSDYNAMICS by SmartTHING

Transcript for "Bringing together Microsoft Dynamics and Blackbaud with SmartMSDYNAMICS by SmartTHING": Welcome, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us for the second session of Blackbaud Pacific brand new webinar series on visualizing your single source of truth. So this series is all about helping you connect your data in more visible, actual ways by showcasing powerful integrations available available through Blackbaud extensive partner network. So today's session is on Smart Dynamics by SmartTHING, which showcases how you can bring your Microsoft Dynamics data into your Blackbaud solutions. So we'll be joined shortly by our partners at SmartThings who will take you through the features, benefits, and demonstrate what the integration looks like. So before we dive in, I think we need to go through some much needed housekeeping. So for those of you who haven't joined the Gold House platform before, which we are currently streaming on, you are able to adjust your settings by the cogwheel, button below. There is also a documents tab next to the chat tab where you can see all the resources for today's session attached. Feel free to click on them, open them in a new tab, save them, but, yes, please do check them out. There is also a q and a section, but, of course, you're welcome to pop any questions in the chat if you'd like. Now if you have any audio issues or the screen freezes or anything like that, please refresh your browser. Worst case scenario, you may need to log out of the Goldcast platform and log back in. Okay. So we might not actually have time to do a live q and a, but please do pop your questions in the chat as you come along, as you go along with today's session. I will be collating them all, and I can answer them in a follow-up email. Okay. So I think I've done pretty much everything for the housekeeping. So I hope you all enjoy today's enjoy today's session. And I'm going to hand it over to SmartTHING. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining the webinar. As you can see, today, we're gonna take a look at our Microsoft Dynamics integration, solution, which, can integrate your Blackbaud, Razer's Edge NXT or Blackbaud CRM, into Microsoft Dynamics, and this is powered by our Smart Sync solution. If you're not familiar with us, we're a long term partner of Blackbaud, since before 02/2009. Our focus has been on creating affordable add ons and integrations, tools to design tools designed to streamline your work, and automate those manual tasks. Our priority is to make things more secure, efficient, and cost effective for your not for profit organization. My name is Dan Stevens. I'm the integration lead here at SmartThing. Myself, I've worked with, not for inside not for profits, having hands on experience of Blackbaud products mainly raises edge. Yeah. Through through our experience, the team at SmartTHING, we recognize the need for practical, transparent, and affordable solutions. And these solutions should seamlessly connect your systems and simplify your data management. And that's at the very core of what inspired the establishment of, of SmartTHING. In terms of today, today's agenda, our focus is gonna be on integrating Blackbaud and Microsoft Dynamics, Razer's Edge or Blackbaud CRM. During the session, we'll address several key areas. First, we'll explore the challenges of relying on a single customer relationship system for not for profits. You might encounter limitations with fundraising features or regional tax compliance if the CRM isn't specifically designed for a not for profit sector. We'll specifically examine Blackbaud and Microsoft Dynamics in this context. Any reference to Blackbaud when I say Blackbaud, I mean here, Razer Gen XT or Blackbaud CRM, although we can support other Blackbaud applications. Next, we'll introduce our solution, SmartTHING Dynamics. The central idea here is to provide a seamless automated data synchronization between Blackbaud and Microsoft Dynamics in real time. This enables your organization to maximize the strengths of both platforms. Finally, we'll illustrate the practical benefits for a short video demonstration by our CEO and lead developer, Warren. This will show you the system in action and highlight its impact on your daily tasks. Hopefully, we'll have a q and a session at the end. We'll have hopefully, we have time for that. So, yeah, please do keep any questions you have in mind. So in terms of the change, data silos, so let's dive into some of the common challenges when considering your organization's CRMs. Two frequent questions we hear. We use two CRMs, but what if they don't communicate? And can't we just have one system for everything? We'll explore these questions. Let's first consider the situation where two sir CRMs, specifically Blackbaud and Microsoft Dynamics, aren't integrated. Blackbaud is often used to store your financial data related to donations, prospect information, and other fundraising data. Microsoft Dynamics, particularly in larger organizations, might be dedicated to marketing and sales efforts. The common daily task involves reporting on the data within these systems. So, clearly, if the data in Blackbaud and Microsoft Dynamics isn't shared, reporting becomes fragmented. You also lack a complete view of your constituents. So for instance, if a constituent's giving history isn't visible in Microsoft Dynamics, you can't make informed decision decisions there. Separate data systems leads to gaps and incomplete information. So, ultimately, having two isolated systems significantly reduces your efficiency. Your staff spend valuable time on manual data tasks, data retrieval, instead of focusing on your core mission. Inconsistent and conflicting data can lead to errors, erode trust with your supporters, and hinder effective decision making. Overall productivity suffers due to the lack of a single accurate view of your constituents and their complete interactions. Therefore, we at SmartTHING think synchronizing the data between these systems is crucial. But what about relying on staff, for example, for manual synchronization? This is also problematic. It leads to delays and potential errors. Manual data synchronization isn't a twenty four seven process. It only happens when staff are available. This raises questions like, when can I generate my data, and who do I need to check with first? Furthermore, with manual processing, you can't guarantee that your business rules are consistently applied. Errors can occur despite best efforts. So the challenge. Let's address the second question. Can we just use one system for everything? While this would eliminate synchronization needs and seems sensible, fundraisers and development teams have different needs than other organizational users. The dedicated fundraising CRM, like Blackbaud Raises Edge or Blackbaud CRM, can handle online donation forms and portals, gift aid and tax receipts, gift acknowledgments, prebuilt fundraising reports, soft credits, stock gifts, tributes, and much more. You could customize a generic CRM, like Microsoft Dynamics, for example, to handle this information, but it requires significant effort. These customizations might complicate the user experience for other teams. Plus, it demands ongoing IT support for maintenance updates and add and adding new features. It's likely that these customizations won't fully replicate the out of the box functionality of systems like Blackbaud. Consider also less obvious effects such as recruitment. Instead of hiring from arch pool of fundraisers, already familiar with Blackbaud, you'd need to train new staff on your customized system, delaying their effectiveness effectiveness and limiting your recruitment options. Consider these points, considering these points, it becomes clear that for efficiency and productivity, running both Blackbaud and Microsoft Dynamics is often necessary. However, it needs to be synchronized to enable seamless and efficient workflows. So introducing SmartMS Dynamics. So what is SmartMS Dynamics? Simply put, it's an integrated application. It acts as a bridge between Blackbaud and Microsoft Dynamics. It's not a standalone one off solution. Instead, it's part of a broader suite of integrations offered by our SmartSync platform. This platform has a long track record with Smart MS Dynamics as a newer addition. The underlying platform ensures a robust and flexible solution. We'll touch on on more platform benefits later. Importantly, SmartSYNC can connect to virtually any application. This means you can extend its use to create an integration hub for all of your systems. Now let's examine how Smart Dynamics works and the real difference it can make. We'll focus on five key areas. Automation. It's all about saving you time. SmartBook MS Dynamics automates your data's information twenty four seven. It works quietly in the background using your business rules to continuously push and pull data. Data quality. We don't just move data. We ensure its integrity. As data transfers between systems, Smart MS Dynamics applies validation rules, cleanses the data, and ensures accuracy before it reaches the other system. Accuracy. Your data, regardless of where you view it, is always synchronized with the latest information available to your organization. This empowers your teams to make better, more informed decisions based on current data. Efficiency. Less time spent on administrative tasks and the overhead of manually moving data. SmartMS Analytics handles this for you, freeing up your staff time to focus on your core objectives. Consistency, your reporting, regardless of the system you use, will be based on the latest accurate data. You don't need to rely on manual uploads. The data is already there. So how flexible is SmartTHING MS Dynamics? It's highly versatile. It can synchronize various types of data between the systems. With Microsoft Dynamics, we can access all entities, including custom data, contacts, accounts, leads, opportunities, and your custom fields. You might even add new fields due to the synchronization, such as cumulative giving field, allowing you to see the total donations from an individual within Microsoft Dynamics. Regarding Blackbaud CRM, we cover all the relevant entities, constituents, gifts, and educations. We can push and pull this data or summarize it and transfer information to or from Microsoft Dynamics. The The same applies to Raiser's Edge NXT, where we support constituents, this educations, and event participation. The list continues to grow as Blackbaud adds more features. So before we dive into setting up smart analytics, let's quickly touch on some of the key things for any integration, especially connecting Blackbaud and Dynamics three six five. A little thought upfront makes things much smoother. There are lots of things to remember, but three of the most important in our experience are identity and the the data to synchronize. Clearly identified information you must synchronize. Think carefully here and only synchronize the information you really need to see in both systems. Look to phase implementation if you're integrating a systems. Look to phase implementation if you're integrating a large priority of data. It makes design, testing, deployment easier for everyone. Limit the records that you synchronize. Again, you do not want to synchronize information for records you don't want to use. They just fill up your other system and may lead to additional license costs. Manually align your systems. Before the integration goes live, you can spend time aligning the data in both systems. This might be where data is going to be stored, matching drop downs, or making mappings between the values, making records with the other systems' IDs to ensure one to one matching. This ensures the systems are ready to go live and also allows you to see how the end solution will look so so you can iterate before everything is in stone. Keeping these things in mind really does help your integration succeed. So let's look at how SmartTHING handles setting up SmartTHING. Okay. So let's say you're interested in setting up SmartTHING. What's involved, and what does a go live process look like? Our team has expertise in both Blackbaud and Microsoft. We'll work closely with you to design your ideal integration. We'll discuss hosting requirements, whether a shared or dedicated hosting solution suits your record volume. Next, we'll set up a test environment and conduct thorough testing to know the systems function correctly. This test environment can utilize your existing Microsoft and MS Dynamics and NXT test environments or a subset of your live data, perhaps focusing on records with staff email addresses for internal testing. We offer flexibility in setting up these test environments. Throughout this process, we'll collaborate with you and your team to ensure the integration meets your specific needs. Our support doesn't end after you go live. Unlike some services, we actively monitor the integration to ensure a smooth, continuous operation. In terms of day to day use, MS Dynamics provides a user friendly dashboard for monitoring your data flows. However, its core design is to be seamless, managed service that operates efficiently in the background. Our smart sync team continuously monitors the service, addresses any minor issues, and proactively informs you of anything requiring your attention. We take pride in delivering integrations that simply work. Our pricing is straightforward and affordable. We offer transparent, low cost yearly plans. You can opt for a plan specifically for MS Dynamics, or you can leverage Smart Sync as a central integration hub, as mentioned earlier, with three app and enterprise bundles available. Whether using Smart Sync as your integration hub or just utilizing MS Dynamics feat feature, benefit from a wide range of benefits of the platform. Security is paramount. We hold ISO nine zero zero one and two seven zero zero one accreditations, which have guided the development of the smart platform. We offer regional service to put service server deployment if needed. Our platform also includes AI features that can be integrated into your data processing. These act like virtual data experts capable of summarizing or manipulating your data. The platform has extensive connectivity, integrating with almost any system, from email platforms and portals to web forms and file imports. We have over 70 prebuilt integration solutions available for purchase, generic connectors for thousands of other applications, and we can also create custom solutions tailored to your unique requirements. That's not all. The Smart Sync platform is constantly evolving. We're committed to its continuous innovation. Over the last couple of months alone, we have launched an improved stats and tags option for Smart Mailchimp and SmartBot Digital, improved our Blackbaud CRM and NXT Connectors with more advanced record finding capabilities, improved one off and recurring gift processing and regional features such as such as the addition of suburb handling for New Zealand addresses. We've built out new innovative features, such as name guessing, which takes an email address and any name components together with an open source name database to determine the title, first name, middle name, and last name of a person. This has been applied to our Stripe connector to identify accurately the donor for gift records that we can then push into CRMs. Our email validator uses multiple levels of checking to validate email addresses from formatting checks to MX record validation. Now you can even use external services to check records against spam registers. Some of these features automatically enhance your services within Smart Sync. Some we would work with you to see whether you wish to adopt any of them. Constant drive to improve the platform ensures you have access to the latest and best integration features out there. So don't just take our word for it. We're trusted by not for profit organizations across the world. You can see some of them here on this slide, who who the smart platform has made a real difference, to these clients, all over the world. So now we're gonna look at a video demo. Our our CEO Lauren, Lauren, in in AI form, will be leading you through this, quick demo. In this quick demo, I will show you how near real time data synchronization can benefit your organization. We're going to use a scenario here. In this case, we're looking for someone in a marketing role who works with Dynamics CRM. 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 NXT here. However, you don't need to worry about that. You are using Dynamics and are simply updating the address. So let's say it's Jim's record. It's a sample record in our database. We will say that his address is now 60 Grove Park Sunrise, and we'll also change the ZIP code. Finally, we will change the phone number slightly. We'll change it to end in 456. Okay. We'll now save that, and you can see it has been updated. If we pop over to NXT, you'll see it's showing old information there. That's to be expected as the sync will take a few minutes to see these changes and push them over. So let's wait a couple of minutes. One thing to note in the meantime is the Dynamics alias. This will populate as part of your onboarding, and any record with Dynamics ID will tie back to a record in Dynamics. We will skip a few minutes in the video to see the updated record. It actually took three minutes in this case, but it can take a few more minutes sometimes. You can see the new address, 60 Grove Park Sunrise with the new ZIP code, and you can see our phone number is also updated to end 456. So that's quite powerful. Your users, wherever they are, whatever system they use, always have the latest data 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 name contact information in both directions. You have seen some of this in this demo. However, we can and often do synchronize more. As an example, we're going to add a gift record to Jim's record in Blackbaud NXT and want that to be pushed through to Dynamics. However, we'll push through some summary information rather than the full gift record. We have created a section within the Dynamics contact record to house this Blackbaud data. You can see the three fields, lifetime giving, last gift value, and last gift date. So to demonstrate the use of these fields and the two way sync capabilities, let's add the gift record and update Jim's address in Raizer's Edge. We set his address to 5 Pike Lane, Washington with a new ZIP code. Okay. That's the address updated, and we'll also add a gift. Let's make it £10 to one of our test funds. There we go. So we've added the gift, and we've updated the address. We skipped a little time in the video here to allow the changes to be pushed through. It's fifteen minutes in this case. Now in Dynamics, you can see that we've got the updated address and this Blackbaud sourced financial summary. Because this data is actually within Dynamics, you can use it to create email sections, trigger workflows, or report straight from within Dynamics. So you've seen how the system can synchronize data in two directions, synchronizing commonly used and custom data. This gives us the tools to build your ideal synchronization solution as part of our onboarding process. Thanks for your time today. This has been a quick demo of the capabilities of our SmartMS Dynamics product. It showed how real time integrations can revolutionize your work and help your teams achieve their goals efficiently. So, yeah, just to just summarizing what we saw on the video, the main points. There was an update in Microsoft Dynamics of the contact's address and phone number. This flowed through to Razer's Edge NXT within a few minutes. We then updated an address and added a gift or a zed n x t. This flowed through to Microsoft as an updated address and the update giving summary that you saw. So the sync may be bidirectional and cover both standard and custom pieces of information. So the benefits. Let's quickly recap the benefits and impacts of using Smart Sync and Microsoft. These are real, tangible improvements, not just marketing jargon. Firstly, what do you gain with our Smart MS Dynamics integration? Why integrate at all? It's about saving time and boosting efficiency, so you can buy to manual data transfer between systems. Automation frees up valuable time from administrative tasks, allowing you to focus on what truly matters. You'll experience improved data accuracy and reliability. Manual data entry is prone to errors. SmartSYNC eliminates this, ensuring consistent data across all of your systems. This, in turn, enhances your reporting and decision making. Working with accurate, up to date data empowers you to make informed choices. And, of course, it reduces the risk risk of human error. We've all made typos. Smart sync removes that risk. Ultimately, it leads to better data and stronger connections with your constituents. Now let's focus on what makes SmartMS Dynamics so valuable. Here's the key benefit. You get the best of both worlds. No need to choose between Blackbaud and Microsoft. Have both. One of the biggest advantages is a unified constituent view. We break down data silos. Imagine your fundraising team in Blackbaud seeing engagement activities from your Microsoft Dynamics and your marketing team in Microsoft Dynamics, viewing your key giving information from Blackbaud, all while respecting data access permissions. This streamlines fundraising processes. A new donation in Blackbaud, SmartTHING Microsoft Dynamics can automatically push that into Microsoft Dynamics, triggering thank you emails or campaign updates without manual intervention. Similarly, contact updates on Microsoft Dynamics update Blackbaud, ensuring your records are always accurate. This also enhances marketing effectiveness. Having giving data from Blackbaud in Microsoft Dynamics allows you to create targeted personalized campaigns, segment your audience based on your own giving history, for example, tailoring your messaging and increasing your engagement and giving. If you manage sales in Microsoft Dynamics, SmartMS Dynamics keeps it aligned with Blackbaud, tracking product sales in Microsoft Dynamics and providing summaries in Blackbaud, a complete view of your supporters' involvement. And it's all designed for scalability and flexibility. You configure the system to sync the data most important to you and adjust the rules as your needs evolve. Finally, a word on security and support. We take these seriously. We are ISO two seven zero zero one and nine zero zero one certified. We offer regional service and server options. For extra control, you can either have your own server within your infrastructure. And our dedicated support team is always ready to help you to maximize the benefits of SmartMS Dynamics. If you're ready to see it in action, you can book a personalized demo from our website. So in terms of next steps, that concludes the session. We've highlighted the key benefits of SmartImageDynamics. We hope you've got a clear understanding of how it can streamline your data and improve your work. If you're interested in finding out more about other integrations, do check out our our other webinars in the series. If you've got any questions, we're keen to answer them. I'll I'll now I'll now hand back to our hosts, who will moderate the q and a session. You obviously, you can see our contact information on the screen. So, yeah, take a note of that, and feel free to get in touch. So a big thank you to our partners at SmartThings for sharing insights into how Smart Dynamics is helping organizations break down data silos and increase visibility across platforms. I really, really hope you guys found that, session today useful. If you have any questions, feel free to email me directly. Of course, you can also reach out to SmartTHING, directly if you have any specific questions. That brings us to the end of today's session. Thank you all so much for joining. This has been our second, see, video of today's series, single source of truth series. If you found this session today valuable, do keep an eye out for the rest of our series where we'll be highlighting integrations with our partners such as Redarc, Zeithman, Rastafy, and, many more partners covering anything from donor management, marketing automation, as well as case management, which is a new thing we're looking to integrate. So thank you again for being here. We really appreciate your time, and I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your day. Thanks, everyone.