SmartSimple Blog

Imagine two grantmaking organizations, A and B. They each need to buy software to manage their contact relationships, operations, and finances, but they go about it very differently. Grantmaker A buys a technology suite from a single vendor, and uses it for everything. Grantmaker B, on the other hand, buys a specific solution for each function from different vendors, and then integrates them all.

Both approaches can be successfully implemented if done right, but organizations of all sizes are increasingly adopting the “best-of-breed” model in order to maximize their productivity and impact. With best-of-breed, you select the best solutions to solve each of your organization’s functional challenges and integrate them together where needed.

The upside to the best-of-breed approach is clear enough. That is, its intent is to leverage the best technologies to manage each functional need with the idea that if you’re using the best, you get the best results. Of course, in practice that isn’t always the case. There are a million and one cases of organizations that have cobbled together multiple technologies only to end up with a Frankenstein-looking tech stack where technologies can’t fit together well because there’s incongruent flow of data between the various technologies.

Photo by Glenn Carstens

Originally written and published by SmartSimple Software COO & Co-Founder, Michael Reid, in his blog 'Charlie In The Jungle', a journal of his thoughts on what technology is, how it works, and why it matters.

I recently saw a blog post by a competitor criticizing our platform due to the inability to add fields to forms using drag and drop. I'm not going to reciprocate and criticize their platform, as I'm sure it's a fine solution for some organizations (plus, I do believe that it's unprofessional to criticize anyone's work). However, let me explain exactly why our platform does not use drag and drop.

Photo by John McArthur

In any given year, the auditing requirements of government agencies are challenging to navigate. For state and local governments in the US, compliance with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) means closely tracking funds received from federal awarding agencies and disbursed to a wide array of subrecipients—non-profits, public agencies, health facilities, businesses, higher education institutions, tribal governments, individuals, and other organizations—and reporting all pertinent data back to the federal government.

Going into our second year of the global COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have adjusted to working remotely. Admittedly, there are some things that are more difficult to manage virtually, but executing agreements shouldn’t be one of them.

Tools like DocuSign’s eSignature solution have been pivotal in helping organizations manage activities that are traditionally managed offline like agreements and contracts. It’s just one of the dozens of apps on the SmartSimple Marketplace that can be added to any SmartSimple Platform3 system to extend functionality, so that you can manage even more of your operation from place. There’s PayPal and Stripe for online payments, Salesforce for CRM, or Microsoft Dynamics GP for Accounting to name just a few.

Read on to see how one financial institution automated their e-signature workflow with SmartSimple Marketplace’s DocuSign eSignature app to not only meet urgent funding needs in their community, but also accelerate their operational efficiency.

When reflecting on the events of 2020, the word that leaps to many of our minds is “unprecedented.” From the crippling COVID-19 pandemic to the calls for justice and equity heard across the United States, companies have had to absorb a number of unprecedented shocks to the way they do business, and the way they carry out their mandate of corporate citizenship. Many organizations have shifted their missions to respond to the ongoing crises—for example, by directing funds toward addressing employee hardship, improving digital education, or advancing advocacy work.