The Challenges of Moving From a Custom Built Database
Along with Eric Leland of Leland Design and Matthew Scholtz, an independent consultant who is also on staff at ONE/Northwest, Laura participated in a discussion of the current database options sponsored by the Fund for the City of New York. We created a transcript of the conversation, and the participants were kind enough to let us publish some excerpts – this is the first of four excerpts.
Fund for the City of New York: It sounds like there’s a number of organizations that are still using homegrown Access or Filemaker Pro databases, or a tool like eBase, and are kind of unhappy with them, but don't seem to want to migrate to something new. What do you think are the biggest hurdles to organizations? What keeps them from moving to a tool that will work better for them?
Eric: I get a lot of clients that are in these systems, and they usually start out with a preference to stay in the system them have. In many cases, they've become accustomed to them, and they feel they’re good enough to get out the information that they need when they need it. They're able to pull a report with the exact information they want, or a query with the right fields, and view that really easily. If they need to be able to change a field on a form, or create a new form, they can call their trusty consultant and get that added, and the cost at any given moment doesn’t seem too incredibly high.
There's flexibility with an Access or Filemaker Pro system that’s appealing, and when they read about other systems, and it seems like there’s a lot you can’t change, it feels like there’s a lock on what they’ll be able to do. They feel like they’d be losing control of their data.
I think another factor is plain old user interface differences. Often these custom databases are very specifically designed to the culture and desires of one particular client. There’s not always an entirely rational business process behind the way it works. However, it's worked well for that organization and they've become very accustomed to it. When they move to a new system which has been designed for a larger community, they need to unlearn and relearn a lot of rules about how databases work. This can make it more difficult for folks to learn a new system, and to understand whether it's good for them, or why it would be good for them.
Matthew: I agree with everything Eric just said. I'm often asked to advise clients on whether or not they should move to another system and, if so, which one, and for a lot of the reasons Eric just said and others, I sometimes end up recommending that they stay where they are. Because it's not just perceived risk. There is a lot of expense and relearning effort. Those are all real costs, and if you're not going to end up with something that's significantly better than what you have now, sometimes it's not yet worth it.
Fund for the City of New York: But it also seems like a lot of clients are in positions where the clock is ticking on the system that they're using. They’re going to have to move sometime, though it might not be today, it might not be next year... How do you deal with that?
Eric: I'm often doing essentially a triage for non-profits. I say, let's take the time to look at your options. If you need a significant change to your existing database it's going to cost a lot regardless. But there’s also going to be time and effort involved in moving off the system to something new. So I'm often coming in just to help them make that decision. It involves looking at not just their database, but also at their network and their staffing and support structures too, and giving them a quick reality check on what's involved.
The decision they make depends a lot on where the barriers lie for a particular organization. Some organizations feel that they don’t have much money, but have a lot of human power, and they feel okay with putting more effort into the human side of things to move to a new system and migrate the data. Whereas somebody else might have a lot of money and feel comfortable hiring a consultant to move over to Salesforce.
Fund for the City of New York: It sounds like there’s a number of organizations that are still using homegrown Access or Filemaker Pro databases, or a tool like eBase, and are kind of unhappy with them, but don't seem to want to migrate to something new. What do you think are the biggest hurdles to organizations? What keeps them from moving to a tool that will work better for them?
Eric: I get a lot of clients that are in these systems, and they usually start out with a preference to stay in the system them have. In many cases, they've become accustomed to them, and they feel they’re good enough to get out the information that they need when they need it. They're able to pull a report with the exact information they want, or a query with the right fields, and view that really easily. If they need to be able to change a field on a form, or create a new form, they can call their trusty consultant and get that added, and the cost at any given moment doesn’t seem too incredibly high.
There's flexibility with an Access or Filemaker Pro system that’s appealing, and when they read about other systems, and it seems like there’s a lot you can’t change, it feels like there’s a lock on what they’ll be able to do. They feel like they’d be losing control of their data.
I think another factor is plain old user interface differences. Often these custom databases are very specifically designed to the culture and desires of one particular client. There’s not always an entirely rational business process behind the way it works. However, it's worked well for that organization and they've become very accustomed to it. When they move to a new system which has been designed for a larger community, they need to unlearn and relearn a lot of rules about how databases work. This can make it more difficult for folks to learn a new system, and to understand whether it's good for them, or why it would be good for them.
Matthew: I agree with everything Eric just said. I'm often asked to advise clients on whether or not they should move to another system and, if so, which one, and for a lot of the reasons Eric just said and others, I sometimes end up recommending that they stay where they are. Because it's not just perceived risk. There is a lot of expense and relearning effort. Those are all real costs, and if you're not going to end up with something that's significantly better than what you have now, sometimes it's not yet worth it.
Fund for the City of New York: But it also seems like a lot of clients are in positions where the clock is ticking on the system that they're using. They’re going to have to move sometime, though it might not be today, it might not be next year... How do you deal with that?
Eric: I'm often doing essentially a triage for non-profits. I say, let's take the time to look at your options. If you need a significant change to your existing database it's going to cost a lot regardless. But there’s also going to be time and effort involved in moving off the system to something new. So I'm often coming in just to help them make that decision. It involves looking at not just their database, but also at their network and their staffing and support structures too, and giving them a quick reality check on what's involved.
The decision they make depends a lot on where the barriers lie for a particular organization. Some organizations feel that they don’t have much money, but have a lot of human power, and they feel okay with putting more effort into the human side of things to move to a new system and migrate the data. Whereas somebody else might have a lot of money and feel comfortable hiring a consultant to move over to Salesforce.
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1 Comments:
Thnaks for the great discussion on some very useful perspectives. In my professional fundraising life before coming here to Mission Research, I worked in a small performing arts npo. They used a homegrown access-based "donor" database.
In actuality, the donor database was almost exclusively a masiling tool...the depth of donor detail was nill. When I asked about actual donor information , I was directed to the proverbial cardboard box.
I think the danger of "limited perspective" is one of the greatest challenges to building and maintaining a fundaraising database solution of your own design.
Staff turnover is a chilling reality that simply complicates this issue immensely.
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