Personify Review

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