A number of nonprofit colleagues have asked me about Third Sector New England's search for an integrated financial software solution.

Here's the short answer:  Soft Trac (value-added reseller), MIP (financial application), and Microix (workflow management application).

We went through a rigorous second round of demos with teams from BlackBaud (who showed us Financial Edge), JMT Consulting (who showed us Serenic Navigator), and Queue Associates (who showed us Microsoft Business Solutions), and Soft Trac.

All four teams showed us options that would work, but when the software selection committee sat down to choose two finalists for a third round, the only option that we all wanted to try was Soft Trac's.  I had a hard time steeling myself to break the news to the vendors who didn't make the cut in this round; I like them all tremendously.

Soft Trac and Third Sector New England are now preparing for a trial implementation of MIP and Microix with live data; if it goes well, the next step will be a full migration.  Beyond that, we foresee the possibility of integrating these two applications with View Wise document management.

This process is an opportunity to learn all over again that there isn't a simple formula for determining which is the best specialized application; it's really a matter of discovering which is the best under an organization's unique circumstances.  With Third Sector New England, the most pressing concerns about a product are high security and ease in generating financial reports for a large number of fiscal sponsorship client organizations, and the most pressing concern about a value-added reseller is demonstrated ability to listen and respond appropriately. We had to look hard at these qualities - it wasn't enough to filter for the more routine issues such as specifications, timeline, and budget.