Wolf Conservation Center Improves Data Integrity While Saving Hours of IT Staff Time with Omatic Cloud

Organization Background

The Wolf Conservation Center is a nonprofit organization that advances the survival of wolves through education, advocacy, research, and recovery. The center relies on donations, including its popular adopt-a-wolf program, to care for wolves, and, when possible, re-release them into the wild. We spoke with Topher Lovell, the center’s IT Operations Manager, about their switch from ImportOmatic to Omatic Cloud.

Challenge

As a one-person department overseeing both information technology and database management for the organization, Topher Lovell knows the value of time savings. The hours they spent each week using the ImportOmatic plugin to move data between Luminate Online giving forms into Raiser’s Edge NXT could have been time better spent on strategic IT projects. This desire for efficiency led Topher to seek a demonstration of Omatic Cloud, Omatic’s solution for automatically connecting data between any third-party platform and Raiser’s Edge NXT.

The Wolf Conservation Center implemented Omatic Cloud to resolve the following challenges:

• Time-Intensive Process for Moving Data Between Systems
  Refreshing constituent data in Raiser’s Edge NXT was a time-consuming, but important part of Topher Lovell’s role. Topher intended to transfer data from Luminate Online giving forms into Raiser’s Edge NXT two or three times each week, but completing those frequent data transfers meant less time for other important tasks. As the organization grew, the handful of data imports each week were no longer sufficient. Real-time data refreshes were the goal—automation was the only way to make it happen without increasing staff.

“I was spending somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 hours a week running imports with the ImportOmatic plugin. That took time away from handling larger IT projects.” – Topher Lovell

• Delayed Imports and Stale Data Slowed Down Fundraising
  As a one-person team overseeing all Wolf Conservation Center’s IT and database administration responsibilities, changes to Topher’s schedule meant delays for refreshing data. Anything from an IT emergency to a planned vacation could compromise the organization’s data imports, an unsustainable solution for development officers and prospect researchers who relied on accurate data to do their work. Topher sought a solution that could move data between systems with limited staff intervention.

“I’m a department of one. So, if I was out, that data wasn’t moving.”

• Evolving Tech Stack Added Complexity to Data Imports
  The need for a data integration tool became especially important when the center added Shopify to its tech stack to process transactions for the popular adopt-a-wolf program. This new system, with its own formatting customs and valuable donation information, needed to be integrated with Raiser’s Edge NXT.

Solution

The Wolf Conservation Center was ready for a solution that could help them effectively connect all their systems and transfer data more frequently, leading them to adopt Omatic Cloud for:

• Seamless Integration Across Raiser’s Edge NXT, Luminate Online, and Shopify
  Adding or changing platforms for fundraising, credit card processing, or other essential nonprofit functions is no longer the data headache it once was for the center. By implementing Omatic Cloud, the center could add information from any system into Raiser’s Edge NXT automatically after a simple, code-free setup process.
• Regularly Scheduled Data Transfers
  The automation capabilities of Omatic Cloud have made a dramatic difference for the Wolf Conservation Center. Instead of manually performing two or three import sessions during a week, Topher can schedule daily syncs across all systems. Automatic data transfers no longer depend on anyone’s schedule. Additionally, Topher can run multiple imports simultaneously while a fundraising staff member reviews any flagged records within Omatic Cloud allowing Topher to focus on other tasks while data moves seamlessly in the background.

“Being able to run those automations on a schedule in Omatic Cloud has been a huge help.”

Results

After implementing Omatic Cloud, the Wolf Conservation Center had greater visibility into their supporter base leading to:

• Significant Time Savings While Improving Data Integrity
  Upgrading to Omatic Cloud has not only made the Wolf Conservation Center’s data fresher and improved data integrity, but has also saved hours of time each week for the IT manager. Omatic Cloud’s advanced mapping features make quality control easy. Capitalization standards, mailing address conventions, and other important formatting choices are automatically reviewed and corrected within Omatic Cloud during imports. After the one-time mapping selections during implementation, data flows into Raiser’s Edge NXT smoothly by flagging any problematic records or duplicates without interfering with an import.
• Improved Insights and Strategy
  Having fresh, reliable, and standardized data within Raiser’s Edge NXT has been critical for the center. Team members are confident that reports are accurate. More data from Shopify, Luminate Online, and other third-party platforms makes it to Raiser’s Edge NXT, so the organization has more information on donor prospects. Now, the Wolf Conservation Center can make strategic decisions based on this complete data, conduct more accurate forecasting, and improve fundraising campaigns.

The Wolf Conservation Center is thrilled with the results they’ve seen after switching to Omatic Cloud.

“I think the biggest improvement of Omatic Cloud over ImportOmatic is the ability to let imports run automatically. Being able to go into Raiser’s Edge NXT and find everything without figuring out what system it’s in has been great.”