First of all, are you aware of chambers of commerce? A chamber of commerce is a form of business network. Like an example, a local organization of businesses whose goal is to increase the interests of businesses. Chambers of commerce is essential to the economic growth of the entire community through building introductions, maintaining data on the service areas and their economic climates and to keep abreast of pending development projects.
Nowadays, doing all of this is not enough. Chambers have to ensure their members understand the return on investment of chamber membership. However, it can be easily overlooked while cost-cutting. Many associations are so excited to bring on chamber management software that can handle all the back-end member tracking and workflows that they can focus on what actually matters to their members. But at the end, they invest in a system that can manage members but fail in providing values to them. So, follow these four tips and choose the right chamber management software.
- Understand Yourself: The very first thing you should do is, talk with a salespeople and recognize your must-haves. As a human being, we all have certain things we can compromise on but at the end of the day, there are some things you must need in your software. So, you have to make a list of these must-have things and refer to them often.
- Identify Your Weak Points: You have to be honest with yourself. If your business must-haves is not that much effective then don’t cling to it. You should identify the good must-haves and ignore the ineffective ones. This strategy will help you in boosting operational efficiency. This is where your software vendors can become your ideal partner. Don’t tell him what is your need rather than explain to sales why you need it. A good salesperson who has served the industry will take some time to understand your needs and will work with other chamber professionals in the past can help you in analyzing if their system handles your must-haves in a proper way or there is need to introduce something better.
- Work With Someone Who Knows Chambers: When there are similarities in associations, there is also a large difference in between an organization with having local member base and one with a state or national ones. You should ask for a list of chamber clients from the vendor. But on the other side, if your industry is not at profit margin, even if the software is under development, you can be assured the features they are coming out with advantages to most of the clients. A company with a small number of chamber clients will not be quick to pull out a feature that only offers chambers. It doesn’t make sense to spend costly development time if the feature only benefits 5% of their client.
- Now You See Why To Benefit Lists Stink: Basically, they are damn confusing. They start to all sound the same but after a while, it’s easy to get the companies confused. But here’s a way by which you can easily differentiate them. Benefits are as important as the one you actually need. The most membership management software has amazing features but if those features aren’t helpful to you, there is no reason to pay for them.
End of the conversation is while choosing chamber management software, you should look for your must-haves. Because this software is not something like you can switch to every two to three years. You should also look for your ways to improve your operational efficiency and looking for what features can help you in engaging members. Thus, choose wisely. Hope, this post eliminates your confusion and help you out in choosing the best software. All The Best!