The Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce Data Conversion

CRM Switch provides The Raiser’s Edge® to Salesforce data conversion services. Many nonprofits are looking to move from traditional client/server applications such as RE to Salesforce’s cloud-based solution, as Salesforce allows for secure access to information from anywhere, on any device.

Salesforce also eliminates the need to manage in-house servers and continually ensure desktop client compatibility and functionality.

Point-and-click data migration tools represent only a partial solution for a smooth transition to Salesforce. Our professional services team understands The Raiser’s Edge’s complex schema and knows how to transform and map all data to Salesforce properly.

An interview with Thomas Groden about RE to SF data migration.

Preserving The Raiser’s Edge’s Functionality in Salesforce

In addition to the data migration itself, decisions need to be made about which Salesforce products to use and how to configure them in order to ensure the continuity of key functionality after a transition. For example, does it make sense to use the Salesforce Foundation’s free Nonprofit Success Pack (set of managed packages)? Should ExactTarget and/or Pardot, both salesforce.com products, be deployed? What is the best option for an integrated online donation form?

There are also specific areas to consider in terms of data. Attributes related to Gifts and Constituents need to be transformed. Fund, Campaign, and Appeal tables need to be mapped to specific objects in Salesforce and equivalent functionality needs to be provided.

To preserve full salutations and other mailing preferences, specific customizations in Salesforce are required.It’s easy to extract contacts and companies from any system and move these records to a new platform. The more involved part is extracting linked data in such a way that relationships to donations and other transactions are preserved in the new CRM system.

Automated data migration tools fall short by as much as 50% in overall performance because The Raiser’s Edge was designed to be very flexible regarding attributes and mailing preferences. Every Raiser’s Edge customer has had their system configured uniquely, which means that data conversion can’t be fully automated.