MemberWise charts the course of digital and membership in 2023/24

MemberWise has published its latest Digital Excellence Report 2023/24 (DigX 23/24) detailing the membership and association sector’s progress in developing focused strategies for digital tools and services. The report is based on an industry-wide survey conducted by MemberWise in summer 2023 which received 807 responses from membership professionals working in over 600 organisations.

A strong pedigree

DigX 23/24 is the ninth edition of this biennial report and MemberWise has been charting the progress of digital adoption in the membership sector for over fifteen years. In many respects, the 23/24 edition tells a similar story to previous years. Membership bodies continue to evolve their use of tools and services through digital channels. This is not surprising considering the proliferation of digital in people’s lives. In 2023, 97.8% of the UK’s population use digital tools and services (Kepios, Sep 23) and 94% of the UK’s population use a smart phone (Statista, Aug 23). It also makes good sense because delivering services digitally can speed up interactions, improve customer outcomes, and lower delivery costs. The flip side to this is that people’s expectations from the digital services they use are very high and membership bodies risk damaging their reputation if they can’t get the basics done well.

Critical business systems

MemberWise identifies six key categories of software that membership organisations use to deliver their primary services and interactions with members and stakeholders:

Membership CRM / Association Management Systems (AMS)
Content Management Systems (CMS)
Learning Management Systems (LMS)
Online Community Platforms
Online Continuing Professional Development
Assessment Solutions

Five of these are systems of engagement (2 – 6; i.e. systems that end-users interact with directly to access benefits) and one is a system of record (CRM; i.e. the place where business critical information about members is stored). Increasingly, CRM and AMS is also used by staff to group and segment contacts, undertake communication campaigns, and identify trends and insights about members. To deliver high-quality digital experiences, organisations want and need system of records to be closely integrated with systems of engagement and six of the most common challenges identified in the report – (1) inadequate integration; (2) inability to measure engagement; (3) inability to automate tasks; (4) multiple databases; (5) inadequate self-service; and (6) limited website personalisation – speak directly to problems that surface when this is not achieved. Improving master data management and integration between business critical systems will be fundamental to improving this perception – no doubt ongoing food for thought for digital managers, IT Directors, and CIOs.

Platforms progress

Perhaps unsurprisingly given this context, CRM systems with powerful data management capabilities and access to extended cloud-based data platforms and services (e.g. Microsoft Azure) continue to grow their presence. By far the leader is Microsoft Dynamics with nearly 1/3rd of the market share (28% of all associations and 31% and 38% of medium and large associations respectively). However, Salesforce has also made significant gains and 56% of large associations now use one of these two industry giants. I expect this number to continue to grow over the next few years due to the vast R&D investments by each which make it very difficult for other systems to keep pace, particularly in emerging technology spaces such as AI and automation. Salesforce’s R&D expenditure in 2022 was $4.5 billion (£3.7BN) and Microsoft’s was a whopping $24.5 billion (£20.2BN).

Enter the age of AI

Finally, the report has a new section on Artificial Intelligence (AI) which chimes with the zeitgeist sparked by the release of ChatGPT in November 2022 and the rapid adoption and investment in AI tools we saw during 2023. The report speaks for itself that the membership sector is beginning to quickly realise the potential of AI on their work, and MemberWise and its recognised suppliers are helping to articulate this vision through AI-focused content and events. Indeed, the timing of this article coincides with another big step forward in the AI space with the general availability of Microsoft 365 Copilot on 1 November 2023. I encourage everyone to have a look at Copilot and think about how it will impact their work, and the work of their organisations, moving forward.

Conclusion: all to play for

In conclusion, MemberWise’s DigX 23/24 report provides a timely snapshot of the state of digital in the UK and Ireland’s membership sector and delivers insights that will help organisations to improve what they’re doing and innovate their digital offerings. In many respects the report speaks to the ubiquity of the landscape, but there are indicators that organisations should double down on strategic thinking and focus efforts on evolving their overall digital and data ecosystems so they can better serve their members, unleash the power of data, and take advantage of new ways of working in the age of AI.