Membership organisations, including Chartered Institutes, play a pivotal role in professional standards across a wide range of sectors.
To maintain efficient working practices, it’s becoming ever more important for organisations to turn to technology to help streamline operations. While current advancements in automation and AI may seem overwhelming, they actual offer myriad opportunities to help membership organisations do more with less.
Adopting some of the latest technology developments doesn’t have to be complicated. With plentiful accessible and easy-to-integrate automation and AI solutions, membership organisations have abundant opportunities to boost member engagement, streamline operations and provide outstanding services.
The MemberWise Digital Excellence Report for 2021/22, however found that only 32% of respondents had a digital strategy in place.
In this blog, jaam automation will cover seven ways in which membership organisations can exploit the power of intelligent automation to address everyday challenges and achieve goals.
1. Effectively Communicating Value
Attracting new members while keeping existing members engaged and active is a common challenge for membership organisations.
Having a member value proposition that is clear and highlights the benefits of joining or renewing is mission-critical. A clear value proposition helps validate fees, generate revenue and build a strong membership base. Even in light of this, the MemberWise Digital Excellence Report 2021/2022 showed that only 58% of organisations have a member value proposition in place, with just 40% of those thinking that they effectively communicate it to members and staff.
Information barriers can be broken down by using intelligent automation technologies. To gain real-time insights that inform decision-making and engagement strategies, automated analytics and reporting tools can add real value. And the data that these tools produce can help with understanding of member behaviours and preferences, enabling personalised content and member engagement that doubles down on that value proposition.
2. Engaging and retaining members
Accurate measurement of membership engagement is critical for retention, but the MemberWise study revealed that only 53% of organisations do this, mostly because of data management challenges.
These challenges tend to come from a lack of integration among databases, websites and membership management systems, in addition to diversity in how members use digital platforms, including mobile apps and social media.
Challenges such as these can be addressed by intelligent automation, with frictionless integration between systems to provide a more precise way of measuring engagement. Understanding what members prefer offers organisations the ability to personalise content to effectively improve engagement and enhance retention.
3. Increasing renewals and applications
To reduce friction and create a positive experience, slick and straightforward membership application, payment and renewal processes are essential. Automation helps to simplify these processes, making them much more user-friendly.
Solutions could include automated candidate screening or streamlined onboarding processes that manage tasks such as document collection, training scheduling and communication. Additionally, AI-powered community platforms can promote networking, collaboration and knowledge-sharing, which should ultimately lead to increased member retention and renewals.
4. Turning students and graduates into to full-time members
The membership value proposition and career support offered by membership may not be apparent to students until they begin full-time employment. To help with this, it’s important to engage with students while they are on their academic journey with targeted, relevant communication. Automation can encourage students to upgrade their memberships as soon as they meet eligibility criteria, via personalised reminders and incentives through the course of your relationship with them.
Membership options that are affordable at an early stage in individuals’ careers can assist in nurturing graduates and easing the transition to full-time membership.
5. Simplifying accreditation and training
To maintain a high level of competency in the industries they represent, membership organisations offer accreditation, certification and training as a key service that helps to ensure that their professional members can demonstrate expertise and deliver for customers.
Automating the processes around these areas can help with managing applications, processing payments and evaluating candidate qualifications, reducing the time and effort required.
In addition, AI-powered learning management systems enable customised and adaptive training content that can support members on their journey to certification.
6. Supporting ongoing professional development
Supporting continuous professional development is frequently a key service within chartered institutes, and training, knowledge sharing and resources help members to stay abreast of developments in their chosen field.
Organisations that utilise AI to analyse huge amounts of content will have a tool that quickly identifies the most important and relevant resources and information, meaning that members are kept up to date with industry news and trends in a fraction of the time a manual process might take.
7. Effective supplier management
External suppliers often play an important role in the operations and goals of membership organisations, and an effective supplier management strategy helps to keep costs and risks low, while still providing a high-quality service to members.
Automating the procurement process, including areas such as invoice processing or vendor selection, makes everything more efficient and saves time for staff. Intelligent automation can help with a wide range of supplier-related activities and AI-driven analysis offers real benefits in assessing the expertise and service quality of suppliers for selection, or managing supplier performance in real-time. It can also manage risk through predictive analytics, as well as identifying areas for improvement.
Key points to takeaway
To summarise, membership organisations can become more efficient, effective and responsive by using intelligent automation technologies. User-friendly and readily-available automation and AI technologies delivery powerful process automations that streamline operations, enabling better service for members and higher impact on the industries represented.
jaam automation is thrilled to be exhibiting and presenting at the coming Memberwise Digital Excellence event on 18thMay. We hope to see you there!
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