To run our organizations, we need to implement a bevy of solutions. Unfortunately, when it comes to process software, there is no “one size fits all” or “one-stop shop”. To add insult to injury, associations can have a large amount of data and information coming into their association management system – all of it needing to be divvied into the proper standalone software to be processed in a variety of ways (whether it be for accounting, operations, or resource management purposes).
APIs to the rescue! It’s an absolute must to ensure whatever membership management software you invest in, that it comes standard with API capability that is compatible with the standalone process solutions your organization uses. Having an AMS that can plug into your existing programs is extremely important in planning for the success of your association.
Your administrators and support personnel are key pieces in growing your membership. If they are being utilized in their role properly, they have the time to comprehensively serve members. That means engaging with them, promptly answering inquiries, leading community-enriching initiatives and generally ensuring that value is being provided and members are satisfied with the association.
One of the usual suspects in the event that administrators are coming up short on any of the above tasks is a lack of time to devote to the successful observance of those critical activities. So, you might ask, what is eating up their time and keeping them from managing the members? The answer is most likely a process that is forcing them to duplicate certain efforts.
Without APIs, an organization’s processing solutions will not communicate and share with one another. So, someone is going to have to manually transfer data from one program to the next. Unfortunately, in an association, that task is usually delegated to administrators. In this scenario, administrators will be forced to waste hours entering data and information over and over again. This monotonous keyboard-punching activity will undoubtedly impact the administrators’ ability to establish healthy relationships with the membership.
Conversely, when your AMS is well-equipped with API capability, administrators will be completely freed from the tedious task of data reallocation and re-entry. Not only that, your AMS becomes an incredible central station of information. A lot of information is willingly provided by members. When your AMS is connected to your other processing solutions, all of this provided information is automatically drawn out – making it so your association can easily evaluate it and respond to it accordingly.
When your administrators are freed up to interact with membership and your association management system’s data and information is automatically extracted and processed, you are able to optimize the performance of your organization and continually improve the member experience (resulting in growth of your association).