Personify

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Personify

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You can't make everyone happy.

Reviewed on May 18, 2016 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
I have worked on Personify formerly TIMSS system for 10 years. While I believe it is powerful it does have it's challenges. I am told that the API's are difficult to work with if not using an ASP.net site. That is not my area I will take my co-workers opinions on that challenge. I can speak best to the back office as I call it. It is powerful and we only had to have 3 customization's to the program. We have added several fields that we track and that is relatively easy. But I hear understand the connection is very important so the API challenges need to be addressed.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:25,001-50,000

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:Individual Membership

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:8-11 years

Moving in the right direction

Reviewed on May 10, 2016 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
The company was absorbed about two years ago and a lot of the veterans left. I think they're still back-filling support positions and getting them up to speed on a very sophisticated product. It really does support an incredible amount of customization, but we're trying to stay "out of the box" now to stay in the upgrade cycle. The customizations that were done by previous organization employees were mostly thrown out, as the software has matured over the last 7 years. Those customizations were done outside of personify and prevented the upgrade, since nobody really knew what would happen. With all of the new features for their ecommerce and membership profiles, event registration, digital content delivery, support for SSO and restful application interface, many high quality third party vendors can now interact with Personify such as career, learning management, social media and other SaaS vendors to extend the value of our membership.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:50,001-100,000

Industry Type:Business Services

Organization Type:Individual Membership

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

Personify - not for the faint of heart

Reviewed on Apr 6, 2016 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
The Personify platform, as it is today, can be many things to many people. That being said, it is also complex in its configuration. It can be slow and buggy. Support is almost non-existent. If you must rely on Personify to solve your issues, you will be in for a long hard ride. Does it deliver most of the time? The quick answer is yes, it has a solid A/R platform behind the AMS, Membership, Subscriptions, Order entry, Exhibits, Meeting registration, Committees are all rock solid. There is a quirky address file structure, with an even quirkier address link. Their E-Biz is ok, but not up to today standards, and not consistent from area to area. Documentation is getting better. Q/A is also pretty good, but look out when there is a functional issue - see the above support issues. They have a decent set of partners with varying level of integration (buyer beware). They have an off the shelf data warehouse solution, I would ignore it and build my own (we did). There is a great user community, lots of sharing and help comes from this area.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:50,001-100,000

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:Individual Membership

Primary Job Function: Executive Management, Strategic Planning, Governance

Number of Years Used:15-20 years

Hoping service will become as robust as the AMS

Reviewed on Mar 31, 2016 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Having used many AMS solutions in the past, Personify proved to be an impressive system which includes all the core functionality an association needs and provides the end-user with many options for aligning the system with unique business rules. The integrated mobile application is not quite ready for prime time but does function. The integrated web site is also good from a functionality stand point, however, a lot of tweaking is required to make it user friendly. Overall we have found Personify to be a complete and reliable system and the company continues to make significant improvements to the system each year. The quality of service and responsiveness of the company had started to decline, while the cost of ownership started to increase, and recently the company undertook a major endeavor to address these problems. We are starting to see improvement but, much like how changing the direction of a large boat while it is in motion can slow, it may be a year or two before service and support are at the level they need to be. If their plans come together as expected and you can be a little patient, Personify is a great system.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:501-1000

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:Trade Membership

Primary Job Function: Executive Management, Strategic Planning, Governance

Number of Years Used:12-14 years

Personify Difficulties

Reviewed on Feb 24, 2016 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
The product is solid with not many issues in backoffice. However, its ebusiness interface issues combined with the need to have either a large technical internal staff or a large wallet, still leave me feeling dissatisfied. We are upgrading to version 7.6 and it is time consuming and costly. Not sure if it is any worse than any other AMS, but I still believe there should be an easier way.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:25,001-50,000

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:Individual Membership

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:4-7 years

Robust AMS!

Reviewed on Oct 6, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We've been using Personify now for a few years -- while it can be difficult and overbearing, it's quite robust and allows for much flexibility in customizing and fitting it to our needs. Not many systems provide the amount of functionality that Personify offers out of the box.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

Major turnover at AMS leads to lack of customer support

Reviewed on Sep 8, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We've been using Personify for just about four years and have gone through one major upgrade. Since the original implementation we've had at least 5 different account managers and probably the same number of technical point people - most of these within the past year. The brain drain, especially on the technical side, has led to a severe lack of customer service and exceptionally long response times. We've had tickets open for (literally) over a year waiting for some response. The exodus of technical people, mostly to outsourced firms, led Personify to start forcing customers to sign an even more enhanced NDA, so now it is nearly impossible to get outside development help. You really need to have your own staff or be exceptionally patient in waiting for Personify to deliver any customizations you need. Personify isn't a terrible tool, although the backbone coding could be better. It's basically fine for large associations with their own IT staff. If they (Personify) can stop bleeding talent and retain some quality people, that would go a long way towards user satisfaction. We also use the Personify hosting service and I will give that a very high ranking. Minimal downtime, decent communication, good redundancy. But like the other areas, if you have a project or implementation coming up, make sure you give plenty of notice. It can occasionally take months to get a new server stood up or configured.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

PersoniCry

Reviewed on Aug 29, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Our National organization has invested untold dollars and hours in trying to make this AMS system, which never really was designed for associations with members but businesses with products/customers, work for our local affiliates/chapters. It's been a painful process (which is to be expected with any rollout of a new AMS) and while I must say it does what we need it to do (member/prospect tracking, participation, dues invoicing, etc.) but because it was designed with a different use in mind, it is not intuitive and many reports and tweeks are still needed.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: —

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

Configuration vs. Customization - Devil's in the Details

Reviewed on Aug 27, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
For several years I was the end user of the Personify AMS (now owned by TMA Resources) within a very large medical society. To be fair to Personify, many of the problems with the system were caused by a combination of communication breakdowns between their support and our users and developers over time. Every association feels that it is "unique" and must customize a system to be perfect for their systems and processes. While it is true that everyone does business differently, a major "lesson learned" was that it is actually possible to customize a system to the point where it is no longer effective, or where a change made in one part of the system will cause ten other things to break down the line. When my organization decided that a major upgrade of the system was in order, we at first assumed that making the move to a more modern version of Personify would be less cost and hassle than going to a completely different system. Over time, we became aware that despite already having paid for the full system once and for ongoing support, upgrading essentially meant going through an entirely new implementation. Coupled with negative experiences with Personify's project implementation team, we decided to pull back and to evaluate other options in the market, keeping Personify on the list as an option but looking at prices and timelines of major competitors. In the end we narrowed our prospective choices to Personify, Aptify and Avectra and ended up choosing Aptify due to its ability to configure - rather than customize - and to maintain upgradeability despite conforming to our processes and integrations. For many organizations, Personify may still be a great option and I have heard (but not experienced) that some of the staffing issues have been improved since TMA Resources became involved. The system is robust and offers fairly generous pricing options for small to mid-size associations.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Executive Management, Strategic Planning, Governance

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

Personify in transition

Reviewed on Aug 27, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Personify v7.5 is a buggy product. It's problems were magnified over the past year by the massive staff attrition at Personify Inc. Too many staff left the company too quickly after the new ownership and management team took over in late 2013. Personify has been much more aggressive in billing clients for support work from their professional services team. They've also attempted to limit client access to source code in order to increase dependence on their professional services team for all bug fixes (which they cannot address quickly due to their staffing problems). Finally, their divestiture of their interactive team speaks to the new management's lack of commitment toward quality web design.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:15-20 years

Getting ready to break up with Personify

Reviewed on Aug 17, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We have used Personify for several years, but have really seen a decline in customer service over the past two years. It takes a long time and many escalations to get responses, our account manager changed three times in 12 months, and no one seems to be able to give us specific information on timelines. It's a very expensive product, and we are not getting enough functionality out of it to justify the cost and headache.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Membership, Customer Service, Data Entry

Number of Years Used:8-11 years

Outstanding AMS for Medium/Large Associations

Reviewed on Jul 2, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Personify is a very robust AMS designed for medium to large associations with complex workflows and the need to fully customize their offering. Pluses include a very good end user interface, robust reporting features, and very good "out-of-the-box" functionality. Good customer service, and upgrades tend to offer meaningful, new features/functionality. Negatives - Personify is NOT really for a small association (or even some medium associations) who do not have in-house IT support with database expertise. If you are looking for a system that minimizes your need for in-house support/contracted IT support, this is probably not the solution for you.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Executive Management, Strategic Planning, Governance

Number of Years Used:8-11 years

Does the job

Reviewed on Apr 29, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Robust overall AMS with good integration with accounting, e-commerce and other systems Additional packages needed for add ons with customization requirements makes transition time consuming. Works in the long run, but better for larger organizations with IT resources.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Executive Management, Strategic Planning, Governance

Number of Years Used:4-7 years

Enterprise level - 80/20 rule

Reviewed on Jan 5, 2015 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We have been on the Personify platform since the very beginning with upgrades every other year for the past several years. It is a very large system, that can be complex if you make decisions that way. The more complex the rules, the more that there are cracks you find in the base system. Even after all these years, there are still a ton of bugs on things you couldn't imagine passing out of their QA environment and into the hands of customers. Not well tested at all at this point in time. However, if you need a system that does it all for an association and does at least 80% of what your needs are, Personify is a good choice. It can save you money compared to cobbling together other niche systems. You will likely be disappointed that the system doesn't do xyz in a particular area like meeting registration, ecommerce, etc. But you can't expect a system like this to compete with specialists when its competing in a generalist field. You can customize a lot and fill those gaps if you need to, but you will pay for it in time and money later during upgrades. Implementations and upgrades are extremely painful. We have to port over customizations and there isn't a really good way to do it efficiently. Its not quite a 1:1 from implementation hours to upgrade hours, but pretty darn close. The technical teams assigned are not well practiced in software development and so expect there to be bad estimates, off schedule, and off-budget. So the fewer the customizations, the smoother your upgrade will go. Since there are bugs in the system, Personify is very slow to react and truly resolve the issues at the core. They do attempt to follow best practices in this area. However, they have failed to solve the vast majority of reported bugs and therefore the best practices only work to inflame its customer base that a fix isn't coming. Often we have experienced that a bug is classified 'By Design' - meaning, they didn't finish off a design or had a flaw in the design and aren't simply willing to claim it as a bug and fix it. We're not talking a new feature, but just making sure that pricing is accurately shown online... Every association is different and needs are different. There are some associations that I've recommended Personify for based on their needs; and other associations where I've not recommended it (too large for what they need). So its a mixed bag. Just know going in that you will need to spend a lot of time managing the vendor, more than you can imagine and set those expectations with your stakeholders appropriately on the 80/20 rule.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: —

Number of Years Used:—

An Evolving AMS

Reviewed on Dec 3, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
We've used Personify (formerly TIMSS) since 2004. The product continues to evolve for the good. In the early years, upgrades were problematic, but that's not so much an issue these days. With Personify we manage membership, fundraising, meetings, exhibits, subscriptions, advertising, contact tracking, marketing, inventory, and more. Personify (the company) continues to release web controls, which has made online programming much easier. Though there's a learning curve with any AMS system, Personify's documentation has greatly improved over the years and continues to evolve. I don't how Personify compares in pricing with other AMS products, but it's not inexpensive.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Executive Management, Strategic Planning, Governance

Number of Years Used:—

AMS a so-so

Reviewed on Oct 31, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Not using this AMS any longer but would only recommend if you have resources for extensive staff training. Found reporting capabilities a plus, but customization not that easy. Not that intuitive for most staff members.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Membership, Customer Service, Data Entry

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

Want Intuitive Interface and Easy Integration? Look elsewhere.

Reviewed on Oct 15, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
As a user of Personify version 7.4.1 and primary contact for internal staff at my organization we have had challenges working with Personify. Below is a summary of our experience: END-USERS A big plus is that documentation for end-users has improved over the past year. There is still a deficit in that the documents uses terminology and acronyms that are not adequately defined and lead to road-blocks. There have been more times since these improvements have been made that I was able to avoid having to submit a ticket and work through Customer Service. Customer Service has generally been poor unless you are lucky enough to have a more technical CS rep assigned to your account. However, those reps don't stay in those positions long. Responses to submitted tickets are often not complete and require more time than should be necessary to work through to resolution. The reps assigned to us over the past few years have largely been unable to answer simple questions and tend to escalate everything to a more technical resource. Features have been added as the AMS has gone through updates and upgrades. The interface feels very old-school and clunky. It could use a major facelift. There is also a large learning curve to train new staff and keep existing staff on the right path with continual refresher training. While the volume and types of data that could be captured is significant, the usability of the AMS is lacking and requires users to hunt to find the appropriate areas to enter information. We've limited customizations as much as possible to avoid inflated costs to transition the customizations during upgrades. The cost to upgrade is very expensive when you go through Personify Corp directly so I'm hearing of more customers using third party shops when upgrading. TECHNICAL STAFF My IT team has had constant struggles with using web services when integrating with our websites. Many just don't work as described and the documentation is not helpful. We've had to build custom solutions which is discouraging and costly. We do a lot of integration with our websites so this is particularly painful. There are technical staff at Personify that care and do a good job. On the Professional Services side (Pay to Play), the work orders are estimated accurately most of the time which is a great plus. Staff require a large amount of support from the IT team to use the system and troubleshoot issues. OVERALL Personify tends to be modeled more for professional societies although they do have a number of trade associations as well as clients. Modules and improvements that have been made are overshadowed by a user interface that has not matured with the rest of the system. We often find that features shown in demos do not work well in real-world situations.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Operations, Administration

Number of Years Used:Less than 1 year

Personify - still old school

Reviewed on Oct 15, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization
Personify needs to join the cloud revolution. Their client still requires installation on a PC - reminiscent of the mid-1990s client-server architecture. There is a limited phone app. Member portal leaves a lot to be desired. Take some good advice and look for the best cloud-based solution you can find.

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Technology

Number of Years Used:1-3 years

Untitled Review

Reviewed on Sep 4, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization

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Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: —

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Untitled Review

Reviewed on Aug 12, 2014 - Archived Review

Customer Service
Ease of Use
Reliability
Customization

About Reviewer

AMS Version:—

Membership Size:—

Industry Type:—

Organization Type:—

Primary Job Function: Operations, Administration

Number of Years Used:—

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