ImportOmatic

Nicole Duffey

I'm evaulating ImportOmatic software and I'm looking for the good, the bad, and the ugly. From the information I've recieved already I don't see a downside (other than the pricing). Am I missing something? Is it worth the price? Did you have any surprises good/bad when you started using the product? What are your favorite things to use it for? Has anyone done a post-sale ROI analysis?



I'm looking for it all!



Thanks!

Jenny Kleintop

We used it to covert our data when we implemented Raiser's Edge about 3 years ago.  Since then we've used it daily to bring in our ratings from wealth screenings, bi-weekly to bring in prospects, quarterly to do employee and medical staff updates and ad-hoc as needed.  Love the feature that you can match on Alias as we store IDs from other systems like med staff to match up to.  Also like the feature on dictionaries where you can have many different values match up to the correct value that's in Raiser's Edge.  Starting off I'd recommend you ask for some training on the product, I wish I had more background and would have taken more time to dig into all it has to offer.  Their support is friendly and helpful if you do run into trouble.  All in all I say it's worth it, it's like having an extra set of hands helping with the work load and who wouldn't want another set of hands to help out.  Good luck.

Tiffany Carr

I use this tool as well. I actually love it. But I can say the down fall for me has only been logging into the forum when its time to update the software. There's always an issue with downloading the latest. The work around for that was to get the app o matic. Very Useful!

Marie Stark

We use it for a lot of things - adding gifts,constituents, actions, attributes, updating addresses, email preferences, and adressee/salutations.

I would say there is a definite learning curve. It took me a while to learn the product well, but I think it's great,

Going along with what Jenny said, their support team has been very helpfu.

Julie Hiland

Jenny Kleintop:

We used it to covert our data when we implemented Raiser's Edge about 3 years ago.  Since then we've used it daily to bring in our ratings from wealth screenings, bi-weekly to bring in prospects, quarterly to do employee and medical staff updates and ad-hoc as needed.  Love the feature that you can match on Alias as we store IDs from other systems like med staff to match up to.  Also like the feature on dictionaries where you can have many different values match up to the correct value that's in Raiser's Edge.  Starting off I'd recommend you ask for some training on the product, I wish I had more background and would have taken more time to dig into all it has to offer.  Their support is friendly and helpful if you do run into trouble.  All in all I say it's worth it, it's like having an extra set of hands helping with the work load and who wouldn't want another set of hands to help out.  Good luck.

Jenny, I would LOVE to see the IO profile that you use to update your employees and medical staff.  I'm new to healthcare fundraising, and I work for a large healthcare system, so this is something I need to figure out how to do! Our constituency data is currently so out of date and I don't know where to start.  My email: julie.hiland@piedmont.org 

Madeleine Holdsworth

If you get it, use it and make sure that you cross train other staff - I inherited the product from my predecessor in this position, who bought it but didn't use it.  Knowing nothing about it, I downloaded their basic tutorial, but I found the tutorial a little hard to use.  Omatic doesn't let you use their "library" unless you pay for it.  Also even though we have their maintenance and support with our contract, when I talked to Omatic (just last week) about getting training (I explained our situation that we have the product but I have never used it) I was told they would charge me $2,000 for training; they said that the support doesn't cover training.  A bit pricey.  They did send me a link to a video but that was it.  So my initial "support" experience has been quite different.  I use the RE import; it's a little quirky but once you figure it out it works okay.

Michelle Kolak

We recently got ImportOmatic and I love it!  I still have to do a lot of clean-up prior to importing the files, because the databases I get my external data from are not audited like they should be.  I have also found it helpful to split up my files into different segements. For instance, I have templates for imports with or without spouses, with or without org info, and participant templates for those without guests, those with guests with names and those with unnamed guests.  

The duplicate search in ImportOmatic is very good. We have definitely cut down on the number of dupes being imported into RE. It looks at previous address history and aliases to help find matches.  You also don't need all of the columns normally needed for an RE import.  The virtual fields take care of that.  I can import a file with multiple relationships and phones in one import instead of having to create import IDs outside of RE in order to link the separate import files. 

A couple of issues I have found is with attributes and phones.  If an attribute is not set as a unique attribute, it can sometimes add the attribute again.  The phones/emails have to have a type associated with it, so if you have that phone already as a different type, it will import the phone/email as the new type.  I have found work-arounds for any issues I have found, so I still save quite a bit of time using ImportOmatic.

Potique Johnson

@Michelle Kolak
Hello,

I am attempting to build a case to purchase the OMATIC plug in to help us manage our

Grateful Patient program we just purchased from Blackbaud.

With this plug in, can we use workflows and automatic e-mails from NXT like we do with normal constituents? We do not have an “outside” e-mail platform. All of our e-mail goes through NXT.

Also, can you “query” inside of Raiser's Edge on these non-constituents just like your regular constituents?

Thanks

Tiki

Potique Johnson

@Madeleine Holdsworth
Hello,

I am attempting to build a case to purchase the OMATIC plug in to help us manage our

Grateful Patient program we just purchased from Blackbaud.

With this plug in, can we use workflows and automatic e-mails from NXT like we do with normal constituents? We do not have an “outside” e-mail platform. All of our e-mail goes through NXT.

Also, can you “query” inside of Raiser's Edge on these non-constituents just like your regular constituents?

Thanks

Tiki

Potique Johnson

@Julie Hiland
Hello,

I am attempting to build a case to purchase the OMATIC plug in to help us manage our

Grateful Patient program we just purchased from Blackbaud.

With this plug in, can we use workflows and automatic e-mails from NXT like we do with normal constituents? We do not have an “outside” e-mail platform. All of our e-mail goes through NXT.

Also, can you “query” inside of Raiser's Edge on these non-constituents just like your regular constituents?

Thanks

Tiki

Potique Johnson

@Marie Stark
Hello,

I am attempting to build a case to purchase the OMATIC plug in to help us manage our

Grateful Patient program we just purchased from Blackbaud.

With this plug in, can we use workflows and automatic e-mails from NXT like we do with normal constituents? We do not have an “outside” e-mail platform. All of our e-mail goes through NXT.

Also, can you “query” inside of Raiser's Edge on these non-constituents just like your regular constituents?

Thanks

Tiki

Potique Johnson

@Tiffany Carr
Hello,

I am attempting to build a case to purchase the OMATIC plug in to help us manage our

Grateful Patient program we just purchased from Blackbaud.

With this plug in, can we use workflows and automatic e-mails from NXT like we do with normal constituents? We do not have an “outside” e-mail platform. All of our e-mail goes through NXT.

Also, can you “query” inside of Raiser's Edge on these non-constituents just like your regular constituents?

Thanks

Tiki