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AMI24
Association Technology
Harnessing the
Benefits of New
Technologies
Tom Inglis
Cloud computing solutions like Amazon Web Services facilitate globally
scalable hosting of these platforms and delivery of webcasts and email
newsletters. Rather than paying for overpriced shared, or dedicated,
hosting, organisations can pay for infrastructure as they need it and
make their website available where users want to access it.
It is also possible for individuals to use their established social identities
from major social networks such as Linkedin and Twitter to subscribe
to a member organisation’s own platform. This reduces the problems
that can be associated with creating yet another new profile and re-
establishing contacts.
A case in point – the CPD Foundation
One organisation that is leading the pack when it comes to taking
advantage of new technologies is the CPD Foundation, a membership
organisation offering an annual programme of evening lectures to
chartered surveyors, lawyers, accountants, investors, facilities and
property managers.
Ben Hull, Head of the CPD Foundation observed: ‘the only interaction
between members was that they turned up to an evening lecture on the
same night’. Recognising this as a missed opportunity he decided to
embrace a solution which created a much more compelling offering
for their members to increase their engagement with the foundation
and with each other and, at the same time, reducing the organisation’s
administrative burden.
Harnessing Content
One immediate way in which membership organisations can
significantly improve traffic and engagement with their web and mobile
platforms is to film some or all of the seminars and conferences that
they put on and upload this content.
Many organisations put on regular events but have not established
ways to capitalise on the time and expense that go into arranging them
beyond the selling of tickets to those who attend them.
The truth is that the content of these events is usually of interest to a
broader range of professionals who specialise in the field covered.
Making the content available to this broader audience online may
result in an increase in subscriptions to the organisation as well as
creating an opportunity to charge for access to the highly desirable
content of the webcasts on an individual or package basis.
The CPD Foundation needed a solution which allowed them upload
their videos and stream them to members on demand. They also
desired to create a system where synchronised slides appear alongside
the videos which can then be used as an alternative method of
selecting different parts of a lecture.
After considering various ways of achieving this they found they were
able to use Amazon Simple Storage Service and Amazon CloudFront
to store and stream the videos several orders of magnitude cheaper
than through bespoke solutions which are often built on top of Amazon
anyway. They opted to use the open source JW Player to play the
videos and synchronise them with the slides and found that, in this way,
they were able to provide a powerful learning experience.
Following the success of their webcast platform, the CPD Foundation
is now investigating the potential for launching additional packages of
webcast only content and making them available globally and not just
in the UK.
There are a number of new technologies available today
which allow membership organisations to provide added
value to their members at the same time as simplifying
administration, significantly reducing costs, and
facilitating new revenue streams.
In this issue of Association Management International we are focusing
on professional development and our insight article is a case study
of the Continual Professional Development (CPD) Foundation. The
CPD Foundation is a client of Feusd Ltd, a company which specialises
in adding value to and simplifying the administration of membership
driven organisations through a new software platform. In this article we
hear from Tom Inglis, the founder of Feusd Ltd, as he explains some of
these technologies and how Feusd worked with their client to harness
content, add value and simplify administration.
New Technologies
Various individual technologies have evolved that have the potential,
when used in the right way, to add an advantage to member
organisations. Some of these are highlighted below.
Web frameworks such as ‘Ruby on Rails’ enable organisations to
quickly create flexible, interactive and integrated web and mobile
platforms for their members which are designed to suit their specific
needs. Rather than paying for multiple overlapping systems, each with
its own separate login, it is possible to create a unified and simple user
experience which encourages more subscriptions, more bookings, and
increased advertising revenues.

technologies to provide modern, integrated and simple experiences on
the web and mobile.
By introducing a much more engaging environment they encourage
interaction and new subscriptions.
By utilising modern web frameworks and cloud hosting they can create
cost-effective solutions tailored to their needs.
By analysing the way their members use their services they can
generate new revenue streams such as educational webcasts and
demographically targeted advertising.
Association Technology
AMI 25
Adding Value
Organisations are increasingly realising that, while it is important to
have a Linkedin group or Twitter feed, the real value for their members
lies in the interactions facilitated by their content and events in
environments which they own and control.
One of the major advantages of many membership organisations
(particularly, for example, those dealing with sensitive medical issues)
is that they are able to offer the opportunity for a community of like
minded professionals to discuss common interests in an open way
without worrying about external ramifications.
By closely integrating social networking features with events, webcasts
and members, it is possible to create a convenient and secure method
of information exchange online that mirrors the offline environment.
This provides a highly valued additional service which is not available
elsewhere.
When this approach was taken by the CPD Foundation the
organisation found that it significantly enhanced the member
engagement. Ben Hull explains: ‘Implementing this approach allowed
a much clearer, more user-friendly, experience with a high degree of
interaction between members, speakers and staff.’
The online environment is set up in such a way that members are able
to discover each others’ profiles according to the specific sector that
they work in as well as the interests that they have in common. They
can also discuss the subjects that they found interesting from the events
they have attended as well as the webcasts they have watched.
Simplifying Administration
Some of the biggest burdens associated with overlapping software
solutions fall on the administrative staff who often have to come up
with creative shortcuts or do more things manually.
As a small organisation, the CPD Foundation was keen to automate
its processes as much as possible so it could focus on improving the
quality of lectures and attracting more members.
‘Our new solution has saved us a lot of time in terms of admin.’
reported Ben. ‘Key Contacts can now administer a lot of the
membership activities that we previously had to do for them including
inviting members and checking who had accepted and who hadn’t.’
As well as giving control to Corporate Key Contacts the members’ CPD
attendance records are automatically generated from events they have
attended and webcasts they have watched. This enables the records
to be printed as a PDF and given to employers to demonstrate the
learning achieved.
When considering the work done by the CPD foundation in integrating
their membership, event, webcast and advertising systems in a single
solution perhaps the most significant benefit is the amount of analytical
data they now have access to.
‘We can now monitor how users are viewing the webcasts, when
they’re booking lectures and to what capacity companies are using
their membership.’ Ben explains. ‘This is of huge benefit to us when we
come to the annual renewal period. We can now say, with evidence,
how their membership has been used that year and what value they
are, in fact, getting.’
Summary
Membership organisations can and should be leveraging the latest

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Feusd Assoc Mgmt Int Vol12 Ed2

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