Ravenna is an admissions and K-12 Student Management system. It replaces the former inRESONANCE SIS, and BigSIS cloud-based school management and student information system, from VenturEd Solutions.
Well suited to having the ability to import information when there are large numbers of scholars to be updated, such as graduations or moving up a grade. On the other hand, the program is geared towards a school and we are not a school so we had to do a lot of tweaking for our purposes.
There are a lot of terms used for different information in the database. It would be nice if that could be streamlined somehow and more intuitive for the users.
There are a lot of details to go through to make custom list or create reports. If you don't do these processes regularly, it seems you are always relearning the process.
There was a point when data changes needed to be done in two different places, but I think we may have resolved that issue.
Brian, our representative, as been tremendous. His response time is outstanding - and if he is able to alter the tool on the spot, he will. We've been able to do more sophisticated maneuvers because of his willingness to problem-solve with us. When the functionality isn't there, it is also a very honest conversation and we know when we have to work outside of the tool.
We were using the CRM database system, however it was too proprietary and when we wanted to make changes or customize we were continually paying an outside consultant to get things done. With inRESONANCE, we are able to make the updates, and customize as we need to internally. It has saved us a significant amount of money in this regard.
Annual fund tracking is very easy and pulling simple things like donors/non-donors is easy. Fine for a straight-forward appeal.
If you are going with a comprehensive/combine ask - this is not the tool for you. There's no way to split gifts with % allocation. We're losing money in spending time trying to figure out how to configure pledges in accordance with the software.