Different Management Systems That Could Help You Manage Your Association
Management is a vital process in an association to ensure the success of the association. A well-established management system ensures associations are aligned to their goals, increase productivity, improve efficiency and bring harmony to the workspace. The flip side is that finding management systems suitable for your associations is a great challenge. Worry not; that could be easily solved. We have composed a few management systems we believe can help you manage your members and other stakeholders.
1. Membership portals
We have noticed that many South African associations lack proper tools for managing their membership. They repeatedly find it challenging to extract data and insights that can help them offer personalised benefits to ensure the retention of existing members and attract new members.
As your association grows in membership, your data management tasks increase, such as registrations, payments, CPD tracking, downloads, inquiries, and on-going communications. A membership portal on your association’s website can help you immensely.
You might be wondering what a membership portal is?
A membership portal will provide your association members with a centralised hub where they can access their profile, custom content and information related to their membership. Members are expected to create their profile; when logged in, they can access information exclusive to them.
Few benefits to the association membership portal
· Keeps your members engaged and updated
· You offer a custom user experience
· Assured data security
· Offers a self-serve avenue for members to perform routine tasks
· Saves time and money by automating specific tasks
2. Learning Management Systems
Providing value to your members in your association is an essential element in your membership retention and attraction of new members. The best way for associations to provide more value is by establishing educational programs. Members value these educational programs because most industries require individuals to participate in CPD (Continuing Professional Development) programs.
If you are wondering what a Learning Management System is?
A learning management system (LMS) is a cloud-based software used by various types of association to manage the delivery of educational or training content. It is mainly used for eLearning. The system allows instructors to create and deliver content, evaluate, monitor member participation and assess member performance.
The system also allows learners to use interactive features such as threaded discussions, video conferencing and discussion forums.
What features can you find in Learning Management System?
- Allows for integrations
LMS allow your association seamlessly integrate with other systems, like association management software or your CRMs.
- Access of data
The system allows learners to track their progress and their outstanding tasks through the data which is accessible to them. LMS helps the association track and design its learning programs with the data provided.
- Personalised user experience
LMS can provide content based on a learner’s interests, history within the software, and role to ensure member satisfaction and participation.
- Push notifications and automated reminders
Sending push notifications to learners about their training deadlines or notifying trainers of a user’s completion rates is essential to keep learners engaged in their programs.
- Host different content type
An LMS can upload a range of study materials, such as videos, slide decks, written instructions, and other learning materials, in a user-friendly manner.
3. Event Management System
Events are significant to associations. Events are a powerful tool for associations to meet, engage with members, and provide a networking platform. These events can help connect members with corporate members who are a part of the industry.
Associations face the significant challenges of handling and managing today’s mix of in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. These challenges could include tracking attendees, management of funds and what?
What is an event management system?
An Event Management System provides the association’s event planners with a flexible, fully integrated web-based solution that will simplify the whole event management process and keep your members well-managed and happy whilst maintaining important reports and data for your short-term & future planning decisions.
- Minimise administration efforts
Running an event comes with a lot of administration, and Event Management System minimises administration with a much more efficient administrative process which is cloud-based.
- Eliminate missed communications
A lack of good communication portals could lead to an unsuccessful event. The event management system facilitates instant communication between planners and providers and makes sharing timely information with event organisers easier.
- Digital event era
Post-pandemic, the world has seen a tremendous increase in digital-based events. That meant many digital tasks, such as contracts, registrations, request forms, and reports, had to be digitalised.
- Integration benefits
An event management system provides various integrations for your event, including integrations with catering systems, CRM, and scheduling tools like Microsoft. These integrations allow event planners to streamline virtual, hybrid, and in-person events.
- Access detailed reports & analytics
Having access to analytics and contentious reporting on every event you run helps you continuously optimise your events and schedules, and you can make better space management decisions using real-time event data.
Conclusion
In the end, it would depend on your association’s specific circumstances and needs. Where you choose to go with a management system might also have a lot to do with how long your association has been established and what type of goals you are looking to accomplish. Hopefully, we have made a strong case that these systems can benefit associations, and at least one could be appropriate for your situation.