Personify

We've been on Personify for 10 years. The year we launched was when TMA Resources was bought by Personify. Everything went down hill since then. In fairness, the system was probably too large for our needs, but this doesn't excuse the lack of responsiveness for addressing tickets. Our contract doesn't allow them to reclassify severity, thought they do this all of the time to buy more time (we are very diligent about not overstating severity). This protection apparently doesn't exist in newer contracts, so we constantly have to point to the clause in our contract to get them to do something in a timely fashion (and still this doesn't work so well). More recently they announced the move to a web client and will be discontinuing the desk top client. They insist we upgrade to another desktop client version before moving to the web client (huge spend) even though we can access the web client now. They have avoid answered the question why (from a technical aspect) this is required. They also plan to increase our annual spend (which is very high already) by 60%!  We thought about leaving Personify 5 years ago, but decided we weren't in the position to take another financial hit on implementation costs, so held our nose and stayed with them. Not this time, however. Goodbye and good riddance.  

The version of Personify that we use has been around a long time.  This review is not for their most current product, which we do not have and cannot review.  If you are looking for a review of Personify Cloud, this may be marginally helpful.

It performs traditional and core AMS features in a generally robust and reliable manner, albeit with complexity, and in the version we have, it's pretty stale.  Basic things do what you expect them to do and if you want to customize or configure, the system is designed for that.  Once encouraging customers to do their own customizations (long ago), Personify has done a 360 on that and not only encourages staying close to base as a concept, but also prefers/advises/requires that you use their professional services to ensure quality control and effective support.  There is something to be said for that philosophy, although the lack of open environment, development/partner network and choice leads to very high costs to customizations.

The eBusiness provides flexibility to run on a select number of CMS systems, which we leverage.  Again, however, the architecture on our version is stale, there are complexities involved and it's expensive to modify/customize and slow to compile.   Their eBusiness needs a major overhaul to be feature competitive with modern, natively cloud-based eCommerce systems.

The analytics and reporting is also pretty stale...again, our version is stale, so this is not reflective of their most current product.  After an attempt to enter the Business Intelligence market some years ago, Personify abandoned that effort.  There are no BI capabilities, although some of the major BI players in the association space have existing integrations into Personify, which is a better model IMO.  While I don't think an AMS needs to have BI capabilities, the Data Analyzer tool for self-help ad-hoc reporting is margially adequate.

Other modules like Meetings, Committees, Advertisiing, Credentialing and Fundraising work at somewhat adequate levels, generally strong in the database/back-end feature set, but lacking in the online toolset.  There are superior tools available in the marketplace for all of them, if you are willing to abandon the "all-in-one" AMS model for them.  

Personify does offer the Shuffle Exchange iPaaS to ease integrations between systems, which we have adapted to great success.

Customer Service and Account Management are hit-or-miss, with more misses than hits.   If you are looking for someone to manage their relationship and stay on top of what their client's need, I don't know that Personify will meet the bill.  My experience is that when I'm not actively managing the strategic relationship, we are forgotton.  Personify has tried different models over the years, and to their credit, each new Management Team tries to remedy the problem, but nothing has really worked well for a long time, IMO.

Personify has a pathway to their Cloud version, which is more aligned with SaaS and has a fresh, browser interface with a new set of APIs and other foundational technology.  Again, I cannot speak to their new version with any creditibility or experience.    Simiarly, Personify has acquired new products over the recent years, Wild Apricot, MemberClicks and A2Z.  If you are using, or plan to use one or more of those products, there might be synergies for you, I'm not sure.  We don't have any of those, so their introduction into the Personify family has had limited value to us as a customer.  YMMV.

 

Personify does what it says it'll do, but even the smallest organization is going to need at least 1 IT or IT-minded staffer to know it inside and out or else you'll be asking for help every time you want something more than a new product added. Support is inconsistent at best, non-existent at its worst. If you know who to talk you your tickets are expedited. Otherwise you'll be waiting at least 1 business day for a ticket whether it's Low, Medium, or High urgency. The focus is now on their SaaS product, which is great for the future but it seems a lot like their passion for the desktop software versions that most of us are using is gone.   

The training resources are fantastic, and the yearly user conference is easily the best we've been to.

If your organization is really dedicated to it on both financial and staffing levels, Personify can do wonderful things.

Pros:

Intuitive and easy to navigate
Uptime is fantastic
Dues rates, structures, changes, discounts are easy to implement and understand
Able to customize exactly what each staffer sees and has access to based on their role
Finance module is easy to understand

Cons: 

Customizations are very expensive and time-consuming to have built and implemented. Even creating new system notifications requires writing new stored procedures.
Many pre-built reports, but few are actually of use. We ended up writing our own.
Once your implementation is finished, it's near impossible to bulk-import any data other than a list of customers unless you have a developer on staff.
Customer Service and Support could be much more responsive.

This system provides everything you'll need to recor4d your members' activity. It is extremely configfurable and relatively easy to use even for non-techies. How their eBusiness module is a very poor complement. Use something else if you can.

For us, what sets Personify apart from the pack is reliability.  That comes at a cost, of course, which is that customizations are expensive, complex, and generally much less stable.  The platform is designed to meet certain needs and it does so quite well with decades of success in the industry.  It scales up — way up, by our measure — so while we wish it would be a more flexible architecture, we also   understand why it isn’t.  

We’ve been a bit disappointed by the narrowness and reported unreliability of the hosted solution, so we’re sticking with on-prem and hoping those issues are sorted by the time we’re forced to their cloud.

I just started using Personify (former netFORUM user) and have not had the greatest experience so far. The reporting options are clunky and not intituitive to navigate. Customizing fields is not easily accomplished unless Personify staff supports it - resulting in too many fields being left unused in our current set-up. The flow of information from PARENT record to a child record is also not intuitive, I have to dig deep to truly understand relationships across several locations/individuals. 

We have been using Personify for a number of years.  We are a large organization and have trained our staff to make necessary customizations, so we no longer rely much on Personify staff.  The greatest challenge has been service and support.  They have been very difficult to work with over the years,

We've been using Personify for the last 8 years, and over that time we've customized much of the system to service our diverse membership model.  Personify has improved the development suite within the software to allow us to tie into some of our specialized, home-grown applications like transcripts, peer-reviewer and chapter support.  Overall the base system has been very solid, especially on the finiancial transaction and order entry side of the system.  The one concern we have going forward is the robustness of their cloud platform, as the support for client-based application development is lacking.  If they can shore up this weakness, we're likely to remain clients for the long term, if not the search will be on.  

Personify might be a good fit for associations looking for a large-scale enterprise solution but it is far too cumbersome and complex for a mid-size group seeking a cloud-based solution.

I personally love Personify. I have been working in the database since before it was TIMSS. My staff and I can easily navigate Personify and it satisfies our membershp needs. We did have to customize pretty heavily but because of our business rules. Personify doesn't always have the best customer service support, but when they do take on an issue or project for us they see it through and are very responsive. The only thing I would recommend is if they would go more web based to make it mobile friendly, to offer a better reporting tool with dashboards, and provide updates that can be pushed into the database rather than going through painful upgrades. I would recommend Personify to other societies/associations/organizations.

Personify, in an effort to be backwards compatible will add columns and tables so they become very bloated and large. Similarly, the same data is found in many tables. For smaller organizations it may work fine but for large ones not so much. Finally, vast customization is possible, but it will have to be re-done with every upgrade and becomes expensive.

I have used Personify at two companies to date. The biggest problem with the system is the customization and reporting piece. You will need to spend a lot to get what you want tailored to you. The danger of doing this is that when your programmers begin to leave the company they take that knowledge with them which makes the structure of the program very difficult to use moving forward. We had many struggles with receiving accurate reports on our data and ensuring that we could have custom reports. I have seen the interface at my past company built out to look beautiful but again you will need skilled programmers to help with this piece.

The customer service at Personify is the most alarming. They will continue to sweep your concerns under the rug and will not address items that are sticking points. There is a high turn over rate at the company so when you do finally find someone to work with they are more than likely going to be leaving shortly.

We have been using Personify for well over a decade (upgraded from TIMSS in 2009) and use many of it's modules. It is very efficient for us when using it's core functionality but we have some issues with customizations and Personify's support fixes. They just finished a retrofit, after 6 months, that is still not fully completed to our expectations. As far as the financial side of the software, everything has been working well for some time. Overall, it is a great software package and I have yet to come across something that is better. I'm a believer in the saying "The grass is always greener..."

We are using Personify 7.6.1. We implemented back in 2012 and we use virtually every module in the product suite, except for Awards. In the early years of using the product, the support was lacking and the software had more defects than we would have liked. However, Personify addressed the problems in that area and I can honestly say their support is SUPERB! Very responsive and we get a real solution. In addition, during our last upgrade we found only a handful of defects, which is AWESOME for such a complex system. The upgrade process is great! It's quick and well executed and managed.

I have over 15 years experience with this vendor across multiple associations. In the old days, there was a strong sense of community that made up for the shortcomings of the system itself. It was also clear that the management genuinely cared for customers. Since the acquisition, it's really gone downhill. I expect ownership and leadership changes to be rough in the best of times, but Personify really falls short on delivering on its promise. Personify has long been known for it's expensive implementation, limited documentation, slow introduction of modern features, and painful upgrades. They are at heart, still an n-tier system based on robust back-end server infrastructure that is always harder to customize than would be expected. For over a decade, customers were promised a separate user layer, that would simplify this. Perhaps this eventually worked for some clients, but I always found it to be limited to simplistic changes. They get very low marks for data services and web integrations. Personify based their entire online strategy on SOAP web services and DotNetNuke. Stubbornly holding on to these strategies for years after it was clear that they were ineffective. This was doubly compounded by their attempt at providing SSO options that were not based on any industry standards, and always difficult to implement. Looking for responsive driven design, not here. Communicating with clients? Don't expect much. I did have many meetings with Edi, and then Eric. Always offering reasonable steps to improve our partnership and always getting promises about followup and action. Dust in the wind. In one twelve month period, we lost 3 account managers, two tech leads, our project manager, several business analysts, and management of our local (Chicago) office changed hands. During that period, the only time Personify reached out to us was to share the news that they had acquired SmallWorld Labs. Thanks Eric. Home run. Now that I have moved on, I can reflect on the years of wasted effort trying to work with Personify. I would not wish them on an enemy. Perhaps they are turning a corner, but they've burned too many bridges for me.

In general, Personify provides responsive technical support service via ticketing system. on some occasions, you had to escalate the tickets to next level of support, management team to get the response.

When offered a chance to purchase a large association software redesigned and priced for smaller associations, we were naturally intrigued and interested. Our associated hovers around 6500 members, and we employ a staff of 18. We are dedicated to engaging our membership and offering education to support the industry. We also certify clinicians in their specialty and offer continuing education conferences. Having an AMS platform that could give us the opportunity to track certification, meetings, membership, engagement, and streamline processes was exactly what we were looking for. We did what we thought was due diligence, always in the back of our minds, asking the question, Òis this too good to be true?Ó. Almost 2 years later, the short answer to that question is yes. This is not the product that was sold to us. When Personify debuted the small association cloud based platform, we were one of the first small associations to take advantage of this new program. The implementation plan laid out for us was to be 12 weeks from discovery to implementation. We were asked to fill out questionnaires designed for them to learn every aspect of our association, however, like many associations out there, we didnÕt always fit Òin the boxÓ on these questionnaires. I would ask, what I should put in the box? And, was told, just put anything. Fast forward to implementation, which was 7 months later, not 12 weeks as they had indicated, and all of those Òjust put anything in the boxÓ answers started to become problematic. The certification module promised to us, was non-existent, and now, one year after implementation we are still working on a certification and recertification workflow. Additionally, one year post implementation, we are still working on reports, never having been told during the sales process that we would need a dedicated staff person to learn Business Objects (at our own expense) in order to query information from the 5 Ð 25 universes that our data is scattered throughout. We have incurred additional cost, in that we had to hire a website consultant, though we were told numerous times, no HTML knowledge was necessary for website design and upkeep. We also now have a consultant cleaning up reports and designing functional reports so that we can run our business. Lastly, customer service. Here I could write a book on what we went through and are still going through, but I will end with one event that epitomizes our entire experience. We were struggling to get our issues addressed, our business was financially affected, the effects of this year long implementation had a huge negative impact not only financially, but on employee morale as well. In response, Personify assigned us an advocate, their VP and Industry Principal, a role defined as ÒDriving client engagement with roadshows, user group meetings and strategic alignment meetings, building relationships with clients, partners and industry consultants and being a brand evangelist for Personify.Ó During a conference call, as we were trying to find a way to make our needs heard and get our issues resolved, the Personify brand evangelist stated, Òyour complaints are getting old.Ó

If we could do it all over again...... We launched with Version 7 of the software in 2014, big mistake, the web controls were untested, ill-conceived and difficult to work with. Our web stats tanked, some Personify's fault some the web vendor, but they could get no support from Personify. We have struggled since the beginning with them and they only seem focused on fixing problems in the "next version". That next version comes with another big invoice IN ADDITION to the hefty annual maintenance. The story is always, this next version will solve all the problems of the past. I am VERY concerned about their client base shrinking further and added pressure being placed on existing clients to foot their HUGE list of "VP"s and "Executives". Just check their web site. We are looking at alternatives, but unfortunately we have a huge amount already invested in this "solution" with nothing but promises that if we just spend large additional sums all our problems will go away. I am not convinced. Unfortunately, venture capital money has seemed to ruin the reputation and delivery of this company, which I understand was stronger back in the TMA days. They have ambitious rhetoric, but I have serious doubts they can pull it off over the next 3-5 years with the bridges they have burned within the community.

I have had experience engaging with Personify for about 10+ years and I'd rate it as a positive one. By no means is the product a silver bullet and it won't solve all of your business automation problems but it's one that can work well if you take the time to understand its strengths and limitations and your expectations are clear. I'd say they are one of the top 3 vendors in this space and they have been in this industry for a long time. Because of their longevity they are very aware of and in tune with this marketplace. Their management has been professional and has always cared about its customers. Couple of years or so back they had to go through a transition involving change of ownership which as usual brought significant changes to management and a soul searching on where they were headed. Despite best efforts from them, this transition was a difficult time for it's customers. But it looks like they've got the right people on the bus and have a solid strategy for moving forward and things have turned around for the good from this period. Their recent fanatic attention to quality and reducing defects is a key indication of their focus to ensure that the investment on the product continues in the right direction. As a result the number of open tickets is way lower than anything I have seen in the past. They have assigned a Client Success Coordinator for customers to ensure that there is continuity of care and a single point of contact for all issues/challenges. The user group meetings are a great opportunity to engage with Personify staff & fellow users. The recent Midwest user group conference also attracted a solid attendance. Their investment in Data Services makes their product a platform and allows you to extend it where needed and integrate other systems, at the same time making the upgrades relatively painless than earlier. I would love to see them continue their product management strategy where they involve customers more closely in developing features like they did when they developed the Salesforce.com integration. The back office client is smart client based & is OK - does the job, but needs to be modernized and they are on this path as they are investing in a browser based client. Not sure how long this will take though. The customer facing web portal has improved over previous incarnations esply when they decoupled it from DotNetNuke. It's based on .NET web forms technology and delivers responsive web controls. But styling them is still a bit of a pain. Personify folks also need to think about a strategy for these controls when Web forms eventually dies and MVC takes center stage. Many third party vendor products in the association space integrate with them and this is a definite plus. This allows for data from external system to flow into Personify so that customer engagement can be measured on various activities. So, overall,a long term AMS player on a journey to modernize themselves and stay competitive. Definitely a good technology partner.

ASA launched Personify back in August of 2015. We did experience some significant issues at launch, however over time we have worked in partnership with Personify to improve our overall operational efficiency and to improve the overall customer and member experience with the eBusiness modules that we are providing and/or customizing. Generally speaking while we did have a rough start, Personify has been responsive in the areas of Customer and Professional Services. The product has great breadth and depth and when implemented well, can provide a lot of value to your organization and its members.