Advice on upgrading from organizations who are now on 4.0
Published
Hi Community!
A special thank you to the organizations upgrade teams who have shared their advice with us on the surveys. This wouldn’t be possible without you. We continue to learn from the information we receive and wanted to share some of your learnings for the benefit of all your peers.
After a completed upgrade to 4.0, select upgrade team members at organizations receive the BBCRM upgrade survey.
One of the questions we ask is:
“What advice would you give to other organizations who are considering upgrading?”
Across versions of BBCRM the advice is very similar.…
Work closely with Blackbaud, utilize the resources available through Blackbaud such as webinars and documentation, have a plan, train your users, and test thoroughly.
To quote a few directly:
“Plan, test, and work closely with Blackbaud staff. We also worked closely with our IT project manager who really helped us to stay on task and on timeline. It all really should be a no-brainer - better ability to handle the data (enter, edit, report), greater visibility on work accomplished, and greater self-sufficiency of staff.”
“Nothing new - Build a good partnership with your Blackbaud TAM and avail yourself of the documentation and upgrade documentation and resources that are available through Blackbaud.”
“Get your users into a test environment in an organized fashion as early as possible.”
“Test, test, test and test when you apply service packs. In project plan, allow several months after initial test to resolve issues (takes time to get Blackbaud fixes/service packs) Estimate time to upgrade customizations ahead of testing, helps to determine how long before users can test. Plan and do walk-throughs of your cut-over plan until everyone is comfortable, include who is responsible and estimates/approximate start times for each. Train your users and keep them informed. If self-hosted, recommend buying another server and doing the install/cut-over there, allows you to keep the current system up in "read-only" during cut-over, allows for realistic performance testing (on new server) and any easy "fall-back" if problems occur with the upgrade. Also, it is helpful to be able to review the old system as part of issue resolution post-go live. Have a plan for how you will set the new security permissions. We did it in a Test environment and then migrated to production at cut-over. Have check-ins periodically during your cut-over weekend. Consider group text as a way to keep everyone informed, text updates as activities are completed.”
“Consider using the built in functionality within 4.0 and changing business processes on campus versus simply re-writing existing customizations.”
Another question we ask is what is the biggest yay! moment with the upgrade, most of the responses focus on: a successful upgrade. We know that upgrading can be a busy and stressful time, but hope that the advice from others who have already upgraded will help. For additional upgrade information, visit the BBCRM upgrade resources page https://www.blackbaud.com/howto/bbcrmresources.
To quote a few directly:
“Plan, test, and work closely with Blackbaud staff. We also worked closely with our IT project manager who really helped us to stay on task and on timeline. It all really should be a no-brainer - better ability to handle the data (enter, edit, report), greater visibility on work accomplished, and greater self-sufficiency of staff.”
“Nothing new - Build a good partnership with your Blackbaud TAM and avail yourself of the documentation and upgrade documentation and resources that are available through Blackbaud.”
“Get your users into a test environment in an organized fashion as early as possible.”
“Test, test, test and test when you apply service packs. In project plan, allow several months after initial test to resolve issues (takes time to get Blackbaud fixes/service packs) Estimate time to upgrade customizations ahead of testing, helps to determine how long before users can test. Plan and do walk-throughs of your cut-over plan until everyone is comfortable, include who is responsible and estimates/approximate start times for each. Train your users and keep them informed. If self-hosted, recommend buying another server and doing the install/cut-over there, allows you to keep the current system up in "read-only" during cut-over, allows for realistic performance testing (on new server) and any easy "fall-back" if problems occur with the upgrade. Also, it is helpful to be able to review the old system as part of issue resolution post-go live. Have a plan for how you will set the new security permissions. We did it in a Test environment and then migrated to production at cut-over. Have check-ins periodically during your cut-over weekend. Consider group text as a way to keep everyone informed, text updates as activities are completed.”
“Consider using the built in functionality within 4.0 and changing business processes on campus versus simply re-writing existing customizations.”
Another question we ask is what is the biggest yay! moment with the upgrade, most of the responses focus on: a successful upgrade. We know that upgrading can be a busy and stressful time, but hope that the advice from others who have already upgraded will help. For additional upgrade information, visit the BBCRM upgrade resources page https://www.blackbaud.com/howto/bbcrmresources.
News
Blackbaud CRM™ and Blackbaud Internet Solutions™ Blog
10/26/2015 4:48pm EDT
Leave a Comment