Salsa CRM

Essential Operating Tool

Vorteile:

Salsa CRM has been essential in making sure that our organization has run smoothly since inception. The product allows us to grow into new features as we grow as an org.

Nachteile:

Reporting and corresponding can be tedious at times but improvements to both have been made over time.

Good, but needs fine tuning

Kommentare: Overall I have enjoyed setting up and implementing Salsa. My biggest complaint (other than the alphebetical order issue) is that the person inputting the data should have more of an understanding as to the inner working and fields available in Salsa. There are many fields that I have (and still am) currently modifying/getting rid of because the fields already existed in the system so I am moving the data. All someoned needed to request was to use the existing field to upload against but I was never told or given the option. I can see the issue possibly being from me not seeing the fields but in my mind, you all are the experts and are helping implement the system the best way possible.

Vorteile:

The options in the reporting system are great and I find it superior to most query/reporting tools.

Nachteile:

The fact that NOTHING is in alphabetical order. Why and how this has happened is ridiculous.

Data Migration Less Than Desirable

Kommentare: During conversion, you cannot actually speak with a person unless you have paid. You have to email ALL your questions.

Vorteile:

It is way more user friendly that what we were using before = ETapestry but then, it's ETap so go figure.

Nachteile:

We are in process of conversion and here are my initial thoughts: 1) pay the extra money and have someone help you unless, you don't have that many constituents. 2) I was extremely disappointed. When migrating business or organizational contacts over, you will lose multiple contact names, period. They only let you migrate ONE name over which is contained in ONE text field box. This means if you ever want to do a mailing, there will be NO way to address a letter as Dear Ms FIRST NAME. This is so dumb. 3) You don't get to decide which accounts you want to split or keep intact. Once you send over your conversion template, any and all names that contain an "&" or "AND" get automatically split into two accounts. This includes organization contacts. So if you have a business IE: Brown & Smith Attorney at Law, you are SOL. 4) I could not figure out why they had Organziation TYPE and Individual TYPE on each account. In my experience, and account is either an ORG or an IND period but, here is the rub. YOU CANNOT add contact names to an existing ORG record. You have to create a seperate record and then link each IND to that ORG. So for multiple organizational contacts, they will be set up as INDIVIDUALS. The only way to sort out this mess, is to use the TYPE or ORG or IND. This is where you will list your indivuduals as say, BUSINESS CONTACT, CHURCH CONTACT, etc. This is a huge cluster &^#. Now I get why they don't let you sample the database before buying.

The Highlights of Salsa CRM

Kommentare: I loved it, and my organization could benefit from it.

Vorteile:

I love how its reports was the most accurate with numbers when compared to Card pointe Monthly statements.

Nachteile:

That the data is no longer available after 2 years.

Overall, a useful product

Kommentare: As my review title states: overall, a useful product, but it's definitely got room for macro design improvements.

Vorteile:

There are unlimited capabilities with the software. Salsa CRM offers everything you could possibly desire in a CRM designed for a nonprofit. In fact, there's so much functionality, that after six months of having used the software, I still feel like I'm only 25% of the way there with fully knowing it inside and out. Constituent profiles are clean and easy-to-navigate, and they help unearth stats that can ultimately help you recapture lapsed donors and sustain their commitment to the org. Additionally, customer support is always there to help you navigate the software should you ever get lost.

Nachteile:

The training is not exactly exciting or something an audio-visual-hands-on combo type of learner with ADD is going to find very useful. I think it's unfortunate that the product vocabulary has to be all "startup-y." I'm still trying to understand the reporting systems. I've also been faced with buggy moments that typically require restarting the software which causes delays in getting work done.