Blackbaud

Blackbaud Inc. Introduction

Blackbaud Inc. is a company that provides a number of solutions to a specific target market of non profit organizations. It has divided the target market into the three sectors of Enterprise Customer Business Unit (ECBU), General Market Business Unit (GMBU), and the International Business Unit (IBU). The company has been providing these solutions for the last thirty years and has become a renowned solution provider for the charitable organizations. The company employs more than twenty six hundred employees in countries like the US, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong, and Mexico (Blackbaud Inc, 2013). In the year 2004, Blackbaud announced the initial public offering and got listed in the NASDAQ as BLKB. The company also went a step ahead and acquired Convio Inc. in May, 2012 (Reuters.com, 2013). The company offers analytics, finance, management, maintenance, and CRM solutions to customers based on the organizational focus, solution area, and the goals that the clients want to achieve. The customer base of the company has increased to over twenty seven thousand worldwide.

Discussion

Blackbaud Inc. has always focused on a very unique business strategy. It has developed products and solutions for the not for profit and charitable organizations and clients. The leadership of Blackbaud analyzed a very critical factor to identify and exploit this niche market. The operating and financial systems of the charitable institutions are different from the companies that do business to earn profits (Epstein & McFarlan, 2011). Description of product

The Blackbaud has offered some very innovative and popular solutions like the Blackbaud Enterprise CRM, eTapestry, Sphere emarketing, BlackbaudNow, and the Financial Edge which caters to the different needs and types of customers. However, the most popular solution developed in the company history is The Raiser's Edge. It was developed as a complete solution system that supports funds raising and marketing of the non profit companies. The Raiser's Edge provides one step solution of a company by including online training, secure payment processing, channels for online marketing, fundraising management, Blackbaud Giving Score, and customer relationship management. The most basic form of the Raiser's Edge has been available in the market for more than twenty years. The product was further developed and in the year 2006, the Raiser's Edge (i) was introduced Blackbaud further identified the need of integrating all the solutions with a high demand from the target market in to the Raiser Edge (i) Enterprise which specifically caters the needs of the large not for profit organizations. New Product Development

The Blackbaud Inc has identified the fact that the new products and solutions should be designed in a way that they become accessible from smart phones and other cloud based online servers. The company identified this particular need from the responses of the client organizations who suggested that the donors should be able to make a contribution at anytime from any where around the world. This facility is also important for the employees of the charity organizations because most of their work is field based and far ...