Modernizing a flagship CRM
A flagship CRM’s nav modernized by aligning six stakeholder groups across five years of deadlock.
Legacy to modern design for Raiser's Edge NXT
A flagship CRM’s nav modernized by aligning six stakeholder groups across five years of deadlock.
Competitors were getting bolder and we saw “attack articles” directly mocking our legacy interface framing us as outdated. The market perception was real, and it was affecting sales.
We needed to modernize the core navigation and information architecture across all pages in Raiser’s Edge NXT, our flagship CRM while convincing skeptical internal stakeholders that the change was worth the disruption to their own workflows.
The Raiser’s Edge 7 legacy interface
People feel strongly when it comes to changing things in a legacy product. I recognized early we needed evidence and partners. I aggregated years of historical IA research from past designers, ran an inclusive workshop, and built trust with influential stakeholders.
Customer & Non-Customer IA Research
We confirmed that left-hand navigation scales better for dense task environments and was easier to understand.
The Expert Endorsement
We received an endorsement from a highly-respected RENXT consultant who was a known skeptic. His word carried weight.
A Scalable Navigation Structure
We defined primary and secondary items clearly, setting a framework for parallel IA work in Financial Edge NXT.
| Stakeholder | Their Concern | How I Addressed It |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Support & Training | Nav change would break existing docs and training materials | Aligned rollout with an already-planned visual refresh of docs — zero additional cost to their team |
| Sales & Marketing | Afraid of disruption during active sales cycles | Positioned modernization as a market signal ahead of the BBCON conference turned a risk into a launch moment |
| Product Management | Concerned labels wouldn't reflect user mental models | Presented IA research findings; ran multiple rounds of label testing until all feedback was incorporated |
| Executive Leadership | High-visibility risk if rollout failed | Proposed a phased rollout with feedback monitoring at each stage, reducing the blast radius of any unforeseen issues |
Developing a shared understanding across six stakeholder organizations. Generated via Gemini (Nano Banana).
A collapsible left-hand navigation brought back the search bar and set us up to update the homepage. The release was controlled and phased, monitoring feedback along the way.
New left-nav in production. Note: Placeholder data is being used.
With the research we did in RENXT, we could quickly adapt to other products. I coordinated a visual refresh for the rebrand of BBMS to Blackbaud Integrated Payments.
Blackbaud Merchant Services brand refresh. Note: Placeholder data is being used.
Lessons Learned: A change like this seemed straightforward at first but I quickly learned how challenging it was to bring broad changes to flagship products. This work was a win for the whole design team and I leaned on years of insights and research. This project taught me the value of building relationships and learning to see with their eyes so that we could partner together.