Today, the internet is the go-to place for membership bodies to advertise their services, and for individuals to find membership organisations. Your membership website will collect masses of membership data, including: member details, member engagement levels, event information, learning performance and much more.
But how are you storing this data and what are you discovering from it? Despite a lot of care and attention going into your member-facing website, it’s what’s below the bonnet that’s affecting performance. Much like a car with a pristine body on the outside, but old, tired, unserviced mechanics under the hood.
Even though your members don’t see it, it does still affect them… and you
Take a look under your hood and you’ll be surprised by what you might find. Trust us, we saved one client £300,000 per year by streamlining their backend systems. (Want to find out more on that? Contact us)
A backend system refers to any system that runs and supports corporate back-office applications. This can come in the shape of servers, mainframes, cloud infrastructure and other systems that offer data services.
Basically, they are computers and devices that work in the background and are not seen by members or anyone else who interacts with your websites and apps.
Back-end infrastructure can often be ignored, with attention more focused on forward-facing technologies such as websites and applications. Although focusing on frontend tech is effective for member acquisition, it proves damaging for organisational efficiencies, member retention and you may be spending unnecessary cost.
The right backend infrastructure can deliver an extraordinary member experience
From our experience working with membership bodies, we’ve seen there is a tendency to think that what members see is where you should put most of your attention and investment. The infrastructure behind the scenes is hidden away from sight so, if it works what’s the point looking at it?
As true as this is to some extent (Why would a high street store have a messy shop window?), a backend system plays a critical role in any organisation’s operations.
Generally speaking, IT infrastructure is anything that does not involve: application development, database analysis, reporting and website development.
A good analogy for IT infrastructure is a train. The train works as your applications; delivering your information from one place to another, while your IT infrastructure is the digital track that is allowing the applications to collect and deliver their data.
Like with a physical train track, infrastructure professionals plan, build and maintain the track to ensure it’s working efficiently and create the rails for the locomotive to keep running on.
In terms of quicker and more efficient, which is a better– a single journey that goes from one station to the other, or a split journey where it must changes trains to get to its destination?
Not to mention the cost aspect, too. Going back to our case study mentioned earlier, the running of infrastructure is expensive and confusing. So expensive and complicated in fact, that it can be hard to breakdown and scrutinise costs; so much so that you could be wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.
When you streamline your backend, your member experience benefits too
While your members are busy interacting with your website and applications, the backend system is working busily behind the scenes. It delivers the applications that enable you to pull information from multiple sources, communicate this with staff and members, handle your member data and give you the insights you need to make proper analysis on your organisation and member engagement.
What are the benefits of streamlining your IT infrastructure?
- Cost-cutting: How many servers do you have running right now? How much money do they make you and how much does it cost to run them? If you can’t answer these questions, you could save your organisation significant costs.
- Automation of manual processes which will lead to reduced workload and higher staff productivity.
- Improved member experience thanks to better engagement with members and integrated CRM software.
- Increased productivity which leads to reduction in staff workload and cost, while helping staff satisfaction.
- Get more out of your servers: A recent survey found nearly 30% of servers worldwide are “comatose” (unused) and sucking up energy that isn’t needed.
PSP IT Design and Development has worked with membership organisations for more than a decade. Our team can analyse and modernise your existing IT infrastructure to help you cut costs and improve efficiency. Recently, we saved a client £300k per year after we analysed their existing IT infrastructure and implemented changes to streamline and modernise their set up.
Leave A Comment