Over the years we have integrated The Raiser’s Edge with a number of different products. Some are for the wider community whereas others are for specific organisations. In this series of posts we shall be looking at how each third party application has been integrated with The Raiser’s Edge, what the challenges were, what made the project unique and what the consequences of the integration.

Each case is different. In some examples the vendor of the other product was directly involved in helping to shape the customisation. They may have sold it or bundled it as part of their application. In some case we decided to do the integration ourselves with no or little input from the vendor. Finally individual organisations were the driving force behind an integration.

We are firm believers in integration. Everybody is a winner. All of a sudden applications are no longer islands and can talk with other applications.  The definition of “talking” has also changed. Where it once meant an exchange of files it now means a direct interchange of data between the two applications without the need to save data in a file. The fewer steps the more efficient the process.

By highlighting some of the applications that we have worked with we hope to show just how much more productive work flows have become.