iMIS

We were able to work with iMIS to create a more customized system for our needs. The iMIS team has been great to work with and have built a great product for us. The system has a somewhat steep learning curve at first, but once you get fully onboarded, the system is really powerful. 

Our Association has used IMIS since the 1990s. They were the gold standard then and remain the gold standard today.

The product has simplified the way we run our organization and has saved us time and money. We get a good return on our investment.
 

We not only get a great AMS system but we also get  quality service. There have been many changes over the years and they have led to an amazing system.

IMIS has always been there for us and we heartily recommend it to everyone who asks

Unfortunately we were forced into changing our CRM when our previous supplier decided not to support their own product anymore. In hindsight it was the best thing that could have happened to us. iMIS has changed the way we work by making us more effiecient and changed the way we engage with our members and supporters. 

Our previous system, even though it was reletively new was out dated. iMIS has been a real game changer for us by streamlining most of out previously manual processes. Our website now has a direct link with our CRM that was never there before. Our supporters and become members, make donations(including recurring donations) and book on events and the data feeds directly into iMIS. This means our staff, overnight have become far mroe efficient giving them more time to concentrate on us achieving our mission and helping disadvantaged young people.

The team at ASI, along with their development partner, C-Systems were a pleasure to work with and we continue to develop a fantastic partnership moving our charity forward. I cannot reccomend iMIS enough.

I have been using iMIS for over 13 years and it has become the backbone of our association. All of our member data, event, publications, services and billing are done through iMIS. We track engagement with our members and use the scoring module to provide that information to our members. We have also been able to automate certain functions that used to be done manually through the Process Automation. 

WHat really frustrates me with iMIS is that there is zero automtion. Lots of things you just have to hire a consultant to program. It is not compatible with lots of programs, plug-ins, that allows you to customize your processes. Certification module failed for us, so we had to hire someone to create one for us. Every time you upgrade, you have to make sure your "custom" programs are 'clean' so they can be upgraded. You have to have a consultant on payroll if you ayhve any custom programs. If you have an IT Manager, they will need intense training. I just do not think it is manageable to get them trained. Might be best to have a consultant. The "deep" back end of iMIS is complex, so it takes a lot of training. 

iMIS is wonky, sometimes the website crashes or updates to pages do not get posted. When we reach out to ATS, they take forever to respond. We spend tens of thousands of dollars on their support package, but have to wai for a long time to get support.  

iMIS does not come out of the box ready to use, and requires ongoing consultant support.  The logic that runs it is not intuitive and the IQAs that underpin reporting are complicated to learn to use.  If you are willing to commit the time and resources, it is a powerful tool with a lot of customization opportunity.  Just be aware of what you are getting into.

Since I started using iMIS for my database management needs, it has made my life much easier. The user friendly interface and ease to run queries to pull out data is amazing. I can see membership trends, add events and bill my members os easily. The ability to customize makes it so much easier to use as I can add panels and other information parameters on my own without having to deal with expensive external services. I would definately recommend thid amazing product from ASI.

We have had iMIS for a looong time and we are looking to make a change... even though we realize the process will be challenging and disruptive. The upgrades are expensive and render prior customization un-usable. As stated by another reviewer, reporting is glitchy and less-than-trustworthy.

iMIS is an enterprise system which is a really good system if you need a customized database and are willing to pay for additional modules and third party add-ons. However, out of the box, it lacks a number of key features such as: process automation, recurring payments, robust engagement scoring, amongst a few. I would not suggest iMIS for a small organization looking for a turnkey AMS. We also utilized the website feature, RiSE. It is a decent website and CMS that gives enough functionality with a small association but, again, I wouldn't suggest it unless you're willing to add additional modules and customizations.

The primary issue is the complexity of the system and the dependency on outside resources to help address questions or concerns you may have. While there are a ton of great resources out there, the issue is the cost associated with using them. If you have a complex membership structure or need to manage multiple tax ids or accounts, the system becomes very hard to achieve. The reporting capabilities, while nice appear to have discrepancies in the results returned based on corresponding reports that were created, which leads to trust issues in what is being returned. The web version has promise, but it's apparent when working solution providers that most of them still have a client-server mentality, and this migration will to the cloud is and will continue to be bumpy for the foreseeable future.

We are considering a move from iMIS after nearly three decades of use. We have attempted to implement their Staff Site only to find that not only is it not new, there is basic functionality that exists in the antiquated desktop version that doesn't exist in Staff Site. And the move to the cloud requires major migration and implementation--again, with no guarantee that basic functionality will work in the cloud. However, iMIS is being considered as a finalist as it's "the devil we know versus the devil we don't."

We've customized iMIS to offer some of the same functionality that we would see in a newer system. This has proven expensive and burdensome for our staff. We have had to hire outside companies to help with a lot of areas. The member experience is not good. A lot of steps are often needed to do things that should be simple and on many newer AMS are standard.

We are a long-time user of iMIS and over the years due to limited functionality and not totally user-friendly, we have added numerous third-party applications, some integrated and others not integrated.  While iMIS was chosen originally for its ease of upgradability, these third-party applications have made upgrades difficult and thus we have fallen behind on upgrades as well as have created multiple data silos making it difficult to see a full overview of member activities.  Several of these third-party applications are developed by iMIS resellers themselves making it difficult to switch resellers and maintain support for the add-in product as well as paying for the same functionality twice in some cases.

I actually don't mind iMIS (I have found people either LOVE it or HATE it). But I was just content. There were functional issues with the system, but looking back, I'm pretty confident those issues were because our rep wasn't clear in what was needed to give the desired end result. 

iMIS is totally capable of giving you what you need. But, you may need to get creative in how you pull date, clean it, store it, etc. etc. in order to get what you need. 

I have been using iMIS for the past 8 years, and for approximately 20 years total in my career; our organization has been using iMIS since the early 90's.  We are now in the process of working in the iMIS Desktop environment which is version 20.2.49.5903, concurrently with the Staff Site, which I believe is the precursor to the Cloud version which will be I20/300 if we convert to that full version.  iMIS is a very flexible and complex AMS, which also allows for a lot of customization and 3rd party addins, which of course contributes to the complexity of the software and related training curve.  Users must be very sophisticated to utilize the software to the organization's full advantage.  As such, we engage an outside consultant (who is authorized/credentialed by ASI the developer of iMIS), to assist with more complicated queries, process automation and more sophesticated tasks, on an "as needed" basis.  This is great as the consultant we use is excellent, and provides for a level of expertise we couldn't afford as a full-time employee. 

From an accounting perspective, there is not a clear audit trail when trying to read a customer/members historical transactions, especially to figure out how payments and credits were applied in the past.  It does have an Accounts Receivable Trial Balance and AR tab on the customer record, but you really need to know where to go and how to drill down on transactions to figure some things out.  The system will allow users to input transactions in a "wrong way" which can throw Accounts Receivable out of balance.  The Deferred Revenue module does work well.  And iMIS does have accrual based Dues, which also works well, and is a plus for our organization.

The main issue with iMIS at this time, is navigating our way from the old legacy system to the Cloud, which requires us to alternate between the 2 systems/interfaces all the time, depending on what type of tasks you are performing.  Some things, like events, must be set-uo from the Staff Site (cloud) and final items must be completed using the Desktop interface  I imagine it would be a much better experience to just begin with the Cloud version, however not all functionality from the desktop is available in the Cloud version yet.   And a bigger issue coming up is the Cloud version is going to increase our AMS related expneses by 100%. 

This software is incredibly expensive as well as cumbersome to navigate, particularly for a small staff and memebrship organization.  Its constraints and limitations for the price are shocking.

I have been using IMIS for 12 years and I love IMIS.  It does have a few drop backs but what AMS don't.  I would recommend IMIS to anyone.

This review is based on the 20-something version of iMIS, not the new iMIS Cloud just rolling out. Currently, we use a curious mix of the old 1991-looking desktop version and the web-based staff site version because you STILL cannot do everything you need to do in the staff site. How awkward is that? The desktop version looks basically the same as it did when I first saw it back in 1991 with a row of tabs at the top and a row of tabs across the lower-middle. There are also rows of additional menu items across the very top and down the side. Where to go to do what you need to do? Take a guess and keep guessing until you find it. Not very intuitive and not easily customizable in the way it's viewed by the user. When they added IQAs vs. the old ad-hoc queries it was a big improvement. The fault with iMIS lies in that they kept adding code on top of their old system rather than working on a new platform to completely replace the old in a timely manner. They've finally caught up with this idea but they're a bit late. We have an iMIS expert on staff in our IT department. If he ever left, I think we'd have to think seriously about moving to something else. 

I've been using some version of iMIS since 1994. Back then it was a pretty solid AMS; however, throughout the years as ASI revamped the software to remain relevant through the 90s transition to online access and to today's cloud-based environment, it seems like a Frankenstein of an AMS. The software might be great if you are coming from another AMS and only using it as a CRM/event registration tool or start out as just using the basic functions. However, don't rely on using it for any true financial reporting/reconciling purposes with spending thousands on customization and custom reports. Speaking of spending thousands - it's hard to write that check for several thousand a year for a basic CRM/Event registration package...plus hosting/maintenance costs.

iMIS tells you they can do everything and anything. But to get it done, you have to use one of their authorized vendors and they generally cost a fortune and are not very good. I've worked with three different major AMS systems in my last three jobs and iMIS is definitely the worse - bloated, costly, and not user friendly. Go elsewhere.