implementation

A project manager will guide the implementation of your thankQ software, coordinating the involvement of the appropriate staff from your organisation and our own developers, trainers and data transfer experts. Each implementation is tailored to meet your needs and gives the project team the opportunity to understand your specific requirements so they can tune the system correctly for you.

We will share our experience of successful projects to make your life easier; for example we strongly recommend that you nominate a ‘System Champion’ who understands the aims of both the thankQ project and the needs of your staff to ease the introduction of the system into your organisation.

Office Integration

As part of any implementation we need to configure the interface with other, 3rd party systems that you use. As standard, thankQ integrates with Microsoft Office delivering the following benefits:

• easy to configure templates for letters or labels in Word, and reports in Excel
• smart filing automatically saves and logs Word documents and Outlook emails
• synchronisation between thankQ and Outlook means that selected contact details can be transferred onto your laptop, desktop or PDA
• export or import of data from Excel.

Address Management Software

thankQ integrates with standard postcode lookup software for rapid address completion and verification. These include:

• QAS (Quick Address)
• AFD

Account Management Software

thankQ has been integrated with the following financial systems. The list is not exhaustive, but is illustrative of the breadth of our experience in this process:

• Sage Line 50 / 100
• Sun
• Great Plains Dynamics
• TAS Books
• Microsoft Money
• Horizon
• VERO

system migration & data transfer

We have extensive experience of upgrading customers from their existing system to their thankQ solution; having completed over 100 such implementations our data migration specialists recognise that while we are able to use the same model, no two migrations should be treated exactly the same.

The data transfer process is an opportunity to add value to your information; it is a chance to clean address data, update sections of the database or merge duplicate records. Because we understand your data is unique, our data migration specialists will work with you to solve the common problems; for example, finding fields within your database that have been used for a bespoke requirement. Challenges such as this require interpretation by your staff and our data transfer experts to ensure the final migration meets the expectation of all users.

Recent implementations have seen us carry out migration from the following systems:

• AppealMaster
• DOS Alms and Visual Alms
• Donor 2000
• Donoflex
• Saturn
• Raiser’s Edge

training

Your training will be provided by our Customer Services department who will also be your point of contact for ongoing support, giving you the opportunity to put a face to at least one of the team you will be working with on the support desk. Because our trainers work on the support desk, we ensure they stay abreast of current questions and the appropriate solutions.

Typically, we deliver standard training for thankQ either from our own training facilities in Loughborough, your offices, or occasionally a different location of your choice. You can be assured that your training will be delivered to the highest standards by our trainers who are all accredited by the Institute of IT Training.

In addition to courses for new users of the software, we offer refresher and advanced user courses; whilst the software is intuitive and user friendly, we recognise there may be a time when a refresher course for someone returning to the programme will help them pick up where they left off quickly and easily.

thankQ integrates seamlessly with the Microsoft Office products – Word, Excel and Access, and we offer courses to help users get the most out of this integration – for example, letter templates, reporting and analysis.

For more information or to discuss your requirements in more detail please contact us on +44 (0)1509 235544.

support

Our dedicated team of support staff are available at the end of the telephone when and where you need them. With extensive product knowledge they also assist Customer Services with the provision of high quality training, so you can be assured of receiving quality support and a high level of product knowledge. By connecting remotely from our office to your system, we are able to assist with more and more enquiries faster and with minimal disruption to your users.

Quality and transparency is at the heart of our operation and so to help both us and you to monitor our level of service we log all calls which you can then track online, from this website.

hosted solutions

ESiT offer a hosted version of thankQ making its full power available to you without the need for specialist IT staff and infrastructure. Our hosted solutions support remote working and multi-user access, enabling personnel such as trustees or field staff to access the same system, 24-7 with the added assurance that the information is current and up-to-date.

In addition to the convenience of access and elimination of hardware costs, ESiT’s support of the hosted solution ensures that the latest security updates and backups will be performed when needed. And because ESIT has this remote access, support of your system couldn’t be simpler. If you need additional reports writing or data importing, we can do this for you quickly and efficiently.

To make the most of this solution and access the system, all your organisation needs is an internet connection and a relatively ‘low’ specification PC. Although a 56k modem is adequate, broadband is our recommended internet connection.