Your association’s data can be a powerful tool. It can give you deep insights that help your organization make more informed decisions and drive a better experience for your members. But, you have to be able to collect, manage, and analyze your data to put it to good use. And, that’s not always easy.
According to the State of Data in the Nonprofit Sector report, 79 percent of organizations feel they don’t have enough time or resources to focus on data. As a result, only 6 percent believe they are making effective use of the data collected.
It’s time to turn this around.
First, consider how having disjointed data in multiple spreadsheets and systems across your organization makes it difficult to use data effectively:
Outdated information – Data that’s in multiple systems and spreadsheets can get outdated in a hurry. It’s nearly impossible to remember to update member data that’s hanging out in spreadsheets and various systems every time something changes. The next thing you know, you aren’t sure how to find the most recent information.
Reporting breakdown – Without member data in a single system, pulling together reports requires a time-consuming process of cobbling together numbers and other data from disparate systems. Even then you don’t know for sure that you’ve captured all of the latest data.
Inconsistent decision-making – With reports you can’t trust, you don’t have accurate insights into the health of your organization. You can’t make precise and informed decisions. And, if each team across your organization is housing data in a different place, they each could each be making decisions based on different information than the other teams.
Next, consider what you can do if you move to a modern association management software (AMS) system. A smart AMS helps you collect and manage member data in one central location so you can:
- Allow members to update their own information through an online member portal.
- Easily keep member data updated and secure.
- Get a complete, visual representation of your organization’s data through reports and dashboards that help you make more informed decisions.
- Give anyone in the organization access to relevant reports and dashboards without the need for help from IT.
- Schedule regular reports to automatically send to managers, executives, board members, or others in your organization.
- Integrate other technology systems, such as your learning management system (LMS) and your online job board, with your AMS so your entire organization can look to your AMS for the most accurate, updated information.
Use data to create a more personalized member experience through:
- Artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to do things like automate aspects of customer service, create an Amazon-like shopping experience that recommends new purchases based on past member behaviors, and improve renewal rates by predicting member behavior
- Email templates that personalize content using member data and other details pulled directly from your AMS into your email communications
Making data-driven decisions for your association is no longer limited to IT departments or only a select few at the organization. Learn more by joining our upcoming CAE webinar, Analytics for Everyone: How to Become a Data-Driven Organization.
