Aptify

In the association community, when you start a conversation about integrating systems, the first stop in the discussion needs to be the AMS system. Association Management Systems (AMS) are comprehensive applications purpose-built for the association industry. My company builds one of the leading products in this space and there are many others in the market as well. The goal for these systems has been to provide a centralized system for managing the core businesses of the association. The challenge for most associations is that they have diverse lines of business including membership dues, meetings, publications, education and many others. So, while most associations are not large businesses, they have a level of complexity that far exceeds many for-profit organizations of the same revenue level.

Most people will agree that the AMS must capture the core data of the association and be a single “source of truth” for the organization. This data would include member profile, dues history, orders, subscriptions, committees, and much more. These are all “traditional” areas of data for an association to capture. In the mid-1990s this information may have represented the bulk of what an association cared to capture. However, in 2011, this set of data is only the beginning and much of the key information for an association to capture comes from external sources such as social networks and partner organizations.

So what does an association need to capture in the AMS? In my view, it needs to capture nearly everything that can be associated with a member. The risk you run when not capturing these “extra” data points is that you lose track of what the member really cares about. As an example, let’s say that your membership is increasingly active with Twitter and Facebook and you are not capturing the data from those environments and linking it into your AMS. Over a period of time, you could quickly lose sight of the true areas of interest for each member and not be “part of the conversation”.

The biggest challenge facing associations today is the same one that we’ll have tomorrow – not knowing what is next. You can design a database, web site, and integration methods to capture all of the latest and greatest but you have no real way to determine what will happen next. Change is increasingly surrounding the association business model.

So, what this all boils down to in my view is that you have to make sure that you position your AMS to be at the center of all of this AND you have to make sure your AMS is setup right so that you have the flexibility to capture essentially an unlimited amount of data and types of data. If you do this right and you employ solid methods and technology for Business Intelligence, you’ll reap the rewards by keeping up with your members, staying relevant and necessary to their lives, and increasing the impact of your organization daily.