I’ve been following the (US) membership marketing blog for a few months now and there have been a number of interesting posts for anyone in the membership sector.
Some examples of recent posts that have caught my eye:
Posts Tagged ‘NFP’
Membership Marketing
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010Open OS Map use gains momentum
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010The increased availability of Ordinance Survey map data was trailed in the Governement’s Power of Information Taskforce Report in 2009.
The OS’s OpenSpace API for using interactive OS map data on websites is gaining momentum with the release of additional developer resources, which now include a wiki, blog and forum. There are some good example applications on the wiki, including where to find “Boris’s Bikes”.
OpenSpace is free for use by not-for-profit organisations as long as the service is not charged for and is not behind a member-only login. There are daily limits on the data downloaded and the terms and conditions need careful scrutiny (as always). A “pro” version is also available.
For many there will be a usability decision to be made between this and Google Maps, with OpenSpace having significant advantages for applications to do with walking or away from major centres (as demonstrated by my experience of trying to navigate the South Downs Way using Google Maps on my iPhone).
Book Review: The Best Service is No Service
Monday, August 23rd, 2010“The Best Service is No Service
The book gives clear, practical advice and loads of examples of where service has gone wrong and of best practice (plenty of examples from Amazon and first direct for instance in this category).
A few of the most significant points they make are:
The advice should transform customer experience where it is poor and have a major impact on the bottom line of companies who take notice.
It is interesting to think about how this impacts on the NFP sector. I think the key issues are:
The two key IT elements of this are:
Also available: ebook version
The Future of Membership
Friday, July 23rd, 2010The NCVO has just released the Third Sector Foresight report “What will membership be like in 5 years time?“. The report identifies major drivers that will impact membership organisation over the next 5 years and beyond:
There are some interesting pointers to how these challenge current models of membership, suggested next steps and a case study.
It provides a useful starting point for thinking strategically about the impact of the drivers on membership models, engagement … and business and IT changes.
See also - the blog by Katherine Hudson, one of the authors and member of the NCVO Third Sector Foresight team.
Cultivating Knowledge through Communities of Practice
Thursday, June 24th, 2010A very interesting slide set - Cultivating knowledge through Communities of Practice - from Steve Dale, the information architect for the award winning local government “Community Hub” online community. He sets out the fundamentals for setting up and encouraging Communities of Practice and the different ways of sharing and developing knowledge.
The presentation takes is business-focused (rather than IT-focused), looking at the methods and roles to get successful Communities.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM NFP Announcements
Friday, May 28th, 2010There have been some interesting announcements by Microsoft on its Dynamics CRM product and additions it is making for the charity sector.
See:
Seminar: The Death and Rebirth of CRM
Friday, March 26th, 2010Our seminar on Wednesday was very well received, with three excellent speakers bringing views and insights on CRM from very different perspectives.
Abby Wright-Parkes of ACEVO talked about their recent experience of implementing a new database solution - an experience they’ve found very costly. She drew out a number of interesting points for NFPs: that CRM is about relationships, not data; don’t forget about relationships with people who don’t use computers; there is a need for fine tuning of communication preferences; and that it is vital to ensure the culture of the organisation is right for the new strategy and system.
Chris Jones from Remploy gave his conclusions from their experience of large scale business change, the key theme of which is to build a flexible scalable capability for them as a business. He highlighted two examples of where CRM has been introduced. The first was a technology led programme which has resulted in a system no one uses because the project didn’t engage with the business users to put the system into the context of the business strategy and how the system needed to work operationally. The second was a system (or actually a number of separate systems) that have grown organically in the operational departments. This has resulted in successful individual systems, but which are isolated and with no ability to aggregate the data or the processes.
Both of these really highlight the need to get the strategy right and to view the programme as a business change programme, rather than an IT project!
The final speaker was Dominic Monkhouse of Peer1, who brought an entertaining insight into customer service [relationship management] from the commercial world of managed hosting services. He again emphasised that it is about the culture within the organisation and potentially the need to confront and change that culture. He put forward two challenges around the theme of how can you deliver great service? The first is what can you offer. His examples here were that as UK MD, he gives his mobile number to all clients, and has only ever had four out of hours calls; and that making a very significant offer when things do go wrong has had a huge benefit to customer satisfaction, actually at marginal cost.
His second challenge was how to drastically reduce the amount of service provided, by giving great service, particularly by eliminating errors (that result in service calls) and providing excellent facilities for customers/users to find the answers they need so easily that they don’t need to call.
More information: white paper and presentations
CRM and Website Integration
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Organisations are often faced with the dilemma of how to select their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and website CMS (Content Management System) - should they use the same supplier for both, with the promise of out of the box integration?
This is a dilemma we find quite a lot of people having and there isn’t a single answer that suits everyone.
The main problem is that organisations very rarely start with a “green field” - there are always legacy systems that have to be taken into account and the business case for change to be considered. This is the main reason why there isn’t one solution that suits everyone. If you have already made a considerable investment, there may not be a good commercial case for changing.
In general, membership system / donor system / CRM (I’ll refer to them collectively as CRMs) suppliers don’t provide very good website CMSs and certainly not systems with market leading facilities. So in most cases it doesn’t make sense to use the supplier of your CRM for your CMS.
It is generally better to use a best-of-breed CMS. There are some very good low cost and open source CMSs and a good range of companies, contractors and potential employees who can provide the implementation effort needed to build your website, content, and facilities for your forums, blogs, etc. There are a number of membership organisations and charities using the leading open source CMSs Drupal and Joomla! for example.
The other angle on this is that integrating your CRM with your website shouldn’t be too difficult - most CRMs and all CMSs worth considering should provide web services interfaces. If your CRM doesn’t provide web services, there are also alternative methods that can be used (and if this is an area of difficulty or significant cost, maybe its time to reconsider your CRM platform).
A more detailed question is - what data needs to be saved in the CRM and what can be kept in the website? In most cases, the answer is that data needed for managing relationships (with members and other stakeholders) should be in the CRM and other data can be in the website. So items such as name, contact details and areas of interest need to be in the CRM, and display preferences and forum postings in the website. This means that there is a relatively restricted amount of data that needs to be passed across the interface.
Related links:
Charity Closing over IT Problems
Thursday, November 19th, 2009Yesterday’s report by Civil Society that charity IBS-STL UK is trying to sell off its operations and wind itself up after the failed implementation of a new supply chain IT system underlines the importance of managing IT system implementation and the resulting business change very carefully. IBS-STL UK includes Christian bookshop Wesley Owen and had a £38m turnover.
Their UK general manager is quoted as saying “the implementation of the ERP caused all kinds of problems with inventory and it was just as the recession hit. Those two things together gave us serious problems.”
IBS-STL UK’s failure isn’t the first such IT led change programme to go wrong (Sainsbury’s supply system problems in 2004 resulted in a £256m write off for example) and I’m sure won’t be the last.
However, as mentioned in a previous blog, using an agile approach with incremental change (complemented with sound project and change management, and thorough testing) can significantly reduce financial exposure and risk.