Aptify's CEO Blog

When evaluating a business opportunity it is important to remember to ask the question “Why isn’t anyone else doing this?” Perhaps your idea is so innovative that nobody has thought of it. Or perhaps the timing of your idea is now feasible due to an advancement in technology, business practices, or consumer tastes. Perhaps.

But, in case those factors aren’t present, don’t forget to ask this question of yourself and others when considering new businesses, offerings, processes, or other forms of innovation. Openly and honestly debate the answer to this question including getting thoughts from trusted and impartial observers who are familiar with your industry. If you skip this step you might be ignoring a landmine that could have already snared other would-be innovators who have tried to blaze the same trail. At the same time, don't be discouraged by naysayers - just make sure you turn over this rock so you aren't surprised.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a group of undergraduate and MBA business students at the International Career Conference held at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. I was honored to have been invited to keynote the conference and also participated in a panel discussion later in the day. During my keynote I spoke about common themes that I’ve seen in growing Aptify over the past 16 years and specifically talked about innovation. One of the main points I made to the group was that you can’t innovate with perfect data, and in many cases little to no data is available at all. Traditional methods in market research require validation of a wide variety of input factors before making a decision to pursue an idea or opportunity. While such methods are quite valuable, they have to be adaptable to the environment you are in.

True innovation, by definition, means you are doing something that is new. If what you are considering has been done before you’ll probably be able to find a great deal of information. If, however, you are embarking on a new process, method, or bringing a truly unique product or service to market, you may not find directly relevant data. You have to be willing to make a logical leap from the intended benefits/value proposition of your idea to estimating if results will be successful. I recently read a great column in Business Week by Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel that speaks to the same general theme.

What experiences have you had fostering innovation in your organization and how do my observations compare to your own history?

I'm pleased to announce that I've been asked to keynote the International Career Conference at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on February 20th. I'm a Cal Poly graduate and am very much looking forward to returning and speaking with students, faculty, and other speakers at this event.

I'm excited to be co-presenting with Don Dea, Co-Founder of Fusion Productions, this Friday. We will be speaking on this topic: Integrating Social Media and Association Management Systems. Please join us from 2 PM to 3:15 PM at the ASAE Tech Show in Washington DC.

Recently, I was asked a seemingly simple question – how to go about calculating member renewal rates? This question at face value seems to be pretty straightforward, you figure out how many renewals you had out of the # of possible renewals, and there you have it – a renewal rate. The challenge lies in calculating this in a consistent manner so that you can compare renewal rates as a key performance indicator (KPI) based on an “As Of Date”. Like any good metric or KPI, you must first have a very clear definition of the way it is calculated, otherwise there will be room for interpretation in directions you didn’t intend. So, in the case of member renewal rates, one example of a definition might be:

“The membership renewal rate is calculated by dividing the number of members that renewed their membership during the specified time period, by the number of members that were eligible to renew during that time period.”

Building on this further, it is important to define any exceptions such as:

• The renewal rate (does/does not) include memberships that were initiated in the current year from trial offers
• The renewal rate (does/does not) include memberships that were in a grace-period during the subject time-period

With a clear definition in place, it is possible to build a reporting model to automate this calculation. In the case of renewal rates, there are some complexities in calculating the renewal rate based on an As Of Date. First, you have to determine if each given membership was “Active” at the As Of date. Clearly, a membership that expired in a period prior to the subject period is not one that should negatively affect the renewal rate. Additionally, a membership that commenced during the subject period should not be included in the calculation either – that is, if a new member signs up mid-year, that membership was not renewed during the year, even though it was active, and should therefore be excluded as its active status bears no indication of renewal performance yet.

 

So, to summarize the logic here: for each membership record, include in the renewal rate calculation only if:

1. The membership is not in the first cycle (typically a year)
2. The membership did not expire before the beginning of the time period being evaluated
3. Any other exceptions as noted above, depending on business rules most appropriate for your organization

If your AMS doesn’t have a report that suits your particular needs out of the box you should be able to build this quite easily with a reporting tool or spreadsheet.

Happy Holidays from Aptify

Anyone who takes to the air frequently with commercial airlines is probably familiar with the benefits of having status in a frequent flyer program. In my own case, a loyalty program can certainly influence my decision making process in purchasing airfare, particularly for longer flights. The benefits of these membership programs go beyond racking up bonus miles for free flights, but really help where it counts. For example, if flights are "unexpectedly" canceled, it is much easier for an elite member of these programs to get on the next available flight. Additionally, if you fly frequently enough, many programs shower perks on you such as free upgrades, use of their first class lounges while waiting at airports, and so on.

At the end of the day, a frequent flyer, frequent guest, or other loyalty program is a form of a membership model. Membership in United’s Mileage Plus, or American’s AAdvantage have multiple “levels” that you can earn as you participate with the airline. For each level, certain exclusive perks are provided. To maintain status, you have to continue to fly a certain amount each year.

Why not implement “elite” levels, or a similar concept in the association world? Many members are actively involved with their associations. Keeping track of their engagement level, and directly rewarding them for the behaviors that are most important to the association could create a direct behavior/reward model that is beneficial to both sides. In the case of airlines, “bonus” miles are often earned when you purchase a full fare ticket. In the association world, certain types of activities are of greater benefit to the association and its community than others (and they change over time).

So, what about the incentives to get people to actively participate the way you want them to. In the case of airlines, priority on standby, upgrades, and free flights are nice perks. In the case of associations, there are many other benefits that could incent people. For example, I know of one of our large clients running a program that recognizes people based on their “level’ at the annual conference, and has a Chairman’s Ball for the top tier of members based on their engagement. In other instances, an organization might simply recognize those members on their web site, or at events with a special label on their badge.

Different incentives speak to different people, so there is no universal recipe. However, the idea of directly linking benefits with desired behavior is a model that can work well in nearly any context. Type your content here...

A recent discussion within Aptify’s User Community on trial memberships sparked my interest in exploring this topic with a broader audience and thinking about how trials might tie into previous topics on this blog including Predictive Analysis and Member Engagement Scoring models.

Trial offers are fairly common in the membership world. But just how good are trial memberships in terms of bringing on new members? The simplest answer to this question might be sought by looking at a simple initial conversion ratio. While this number may tell the early part of the story, it is very important to evaluate the trajectory of that member over a longer period of time. As an example, how active is this new member in other areas of the association – a measure of their overall engagement. Furthermore, how likely is it that the member will renew in Year 2, 3 and beyond?

Are there patterns that can be used to predict what might make one individual more likely to convert past a trial, get active, and then becoming actively engaged? The technology is out there to help with both the predictive analytics question as well as creating a method of “scoring” engagement levels. The question of when to offer trial memberships is a great example that should leverage both of these concepts.

Consider it this way – if you can find a few defining characteristics that help assess if a prospect will go from trial to member and beyond there would be many applications. It would be great to build those characteristics into your core operating processes. Imagine a scenario where your AMS (for staff and on the web too) automatically determined the probability of “success” based on several factors and then selectively (and automatically) offered trial memberships to individuals or groups that fit the model.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, none of these modeling techniques are perfect, but they often do reveal interesting trends. At a minimum, they are worth a hard look. If one or more model is good at predictive work for your organization, find ways to use it frequently and in nontrivial ways.

In my experience, quite a few association executives have a difficult time describing how they would categorize their “best” members. One of the reasons this is a challenge is due to the fact that association/member relationships are incredibly multifaceted. They are therefore much harder to quantify in value than a typical vendor/customer relationship. Since members are so much more than customers, their activities within an organization need to be considered along with more traditional metrics such as years of renewal and financial transactions.

The concept of tracking and acting on the level of member engagement is increasingly becoming a hot topic with executives I speak to. The goal is to define an aggregate score that incorporates data from a variety of activities into a singular measure that can easily be evaluated. Just as examples consider factors such as:

• Meeting attendance
• Earning/Maintaining Certifications
• Committee positions
• On-line forum moderation
• Social networking involvement
• Speaking assignments
• Authoring articles in a journal
• Financial Activities/Impact(Buying Products, Renewing Dues/etc)

Each association is different, so the weightings tied to each activity type need to be different. Additionally, the approach to weightings may change over time based on the strategic plan of the organization and its areas of focus.

Once you have a conceptual framework for defining engagement levels, use the information. For one thing, make sure that whatever system you are using to manage the data displays the engagement score prominently to users. Additionally, leverage this engagement score in your marketing and outreach as well as throughout your service delivery when considering the level of prioritization you afford to each inquiry. As I mentioned in a prior post, you can use this type of information in a predictive analysis effort quite effectively too.

Most importantly, experiment with different models and stay agile so that you find the approach that suits the characteristics of your organization best.

If a business application has inadequate security, it can wreak havoc on an organization. There have been plenty of discussions on the importance of tight security, particularly in the last year or so. While security must be tight in modern business applications, it is important that it fits in a way that eliminates or minimizes any impact on productivity. Many applications have wild pendulum swings from being far too open to being far too closed. Additionally, security is something that takes care and feeding over time since roles changes, users come and go, and the needs of an organization and its business processes change. Last, but certainly not least, security needs to be implemented in a unified model through all layers of the software. That is, the security in the user interface, business logic and database must all match, and must stay in sync over time. This is in fact one of the greatest administrative headaches that face administrators and application developers in many development shops.

Modern systems need to have a unified model with a single point of administration. This means that a system administrator can make changes to security in a single place, easily, and these changes automatically have impact on all layers of the software infrastructure from the database through the user experience. Many development shops ignore this approach as it does normally(see note) take extra time to invest in this level of security infrastructure. However, if you don't have a unified security model in place, the long term total cost of ownership will be much higher. Even incremental changes will have to be managed in multiple places and typically by different people (e.g. DBA/Sys Admin/Developers for different layers). In addition to the higher long term cost, the lack of a truly unified security architecture will likely increase security vulnerabilities and create quality problems. This is a great example in application development where a bit of additional infrastructure on the front end will provide for big usability benefits and cost savings over time.

Note: While the importance of this security model applies to all business applications in any environment, our Aptify RAD Platform automates this entire process and actually reduces the amount of time it takes to establish a unified security model in any business application.

I previously wrote about some of the theory behind using predictive analysis in a member-based organization. This post is intended to take the next step, looking at some specific variables that might be relevant in a membership renewal business case. Here are some quick examples that may prove interesting in a predictive model. The value of these data points may be greater in some organizations than others and in some cases these attributes may have no bearing at all on renewal probability. These are just some common data points that we've seen in some way correlate to renewal probability.

# of Years as a Member

Is there a correlation between the # of years someone is a member and their likelihood to renew. For example, is an individual/organization that has been a member for one year, less likely to renew than a 10 year member? Depending on the organization and the nature of the membership structure, there could be different answers. For your group, do you know the answer?

# of Non-Dues Related Transactions

Members that are active in purchasing books, certifications, or other non-dues items from an organization may be getting more value for their membership, and therefore more likely to renew than others. Is this true for your group?

# of Years of Uninterrupted Attendance at Annual Event

Attendance at Annual Meetings, as well as other events may be a factor in someone’s willingness to renew membership. A committed member that attends annual gatherings, year after year, is more likely to renew, or are they?

# of Committee Assignments

The involvement level of an individual or organization in volunteer activities, such as committee positions, may have a bearing in their overall perception of value from membership. Is this the case for your constituents?

These factors are simply a handful of dozens or hundreds that can be evaluated quite easily with modern predictive analytics tools. Additionally, a key goal of predictive analytics is to find factors in the data that you didn't necessarily think would impact your intended business goal.

Once you have started the process of running these types of analytical tools, you must have an action plan, otherwise there is little value in the analytics. For example, if a predictive model suggests that your most at-risk members are those that have been with the organization between 3 and 7 years and have not attended at least one event in the least 2 years, what do you do? The action element is just as important as the analysis. Remember, no predictive model is perfect, but they get better as you use them more and more. Don't be afraid to act on good, yet imperfect ideas that come from these tools. Make sure you foster an inquisitive culture organizationally and constantly go back to tune the modeling approach.

The Aptify 2009 Users Conference is now wrapped up and I'm pleased to write that this year's event was the best one yet. Incredible levels of community involvement drove a wide array of thought provoking and actionable content. More than half of the content was executed by members of the User Community which represented a significant increase compared to prior years. I'd like to thank everyone in our User Community who participated and especially those who committed significant portions of their time in preparing and delivering content.

I am going to write a series of posts in the coming weeks that will highlight some of the topics that were presented.

We are looking forward to next year's event! More information will be coming on the chosen venue and dates in the coming months.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the difficulties many organizations face when they attempt to strike a balance between keeping up to date on Microsoft technologies and optimizing their internal operations. Many businesses and member based organizations are turning to packaged software products rather than taking responsibility for building business applications from the ground up. A similar case can be made for commercial software vendors who believe that their main competitive advantage resides in business application expertise rather than lower level technical innovations.

Domain Expertise as a Competitive Edge

While software companies that focus on building operating systems, programming languages, database software, and application frameworks must have competitive advantages in lower level programming, the same is not necessarily true for firms delivering specialized business application functionality to customers. Well designed business application software, particularly for specialized vertical markets, depends on deep business domain expertise of those who are developing the system.

Domain expertise in a particular industry takes a significant amount of time to acquire and application designers need to have the necessary level of business acumen required to efficiently translate requirements into software. This is a skill set that is often far different from what a lower level programmer would need to build developer tools or application frameworks. Even if a software company focusing on business application functionality has programmers with significant low level programming skills, it may still make sense to use a well designed business application framework for the same reasons that a company might want to avoid building in-house software from the ground up.

Ultimately, commercial software company executives need to ask themselves what motivates their customers to select their software over competing products. If the answer involves providing more efficient business productivity through extensive domain expertise, it may make more sense to invest heavily to improve business functionality rather than focusing on lower level layers of the software stack.

Risks Require Management

The strategy of focusing on business application functionality rather than lower level technology is not without risk. If a commercial software firm focuses only on business functionality while relying on partners or other vendors to supply lower level technologies, there is always a risk of falling behind strategically on big picture issues.

Managers can minimize this risk by associating with partners who have a proven record of innovation and by having enough expertise within the company to question the partner when it comes to technologies and big picture issues. Customers require complete solutions and rely on business application vendors to deliver turnkey systems. While controlling the entire software stack may provide a certain theoretical level of control, a software firm with limited resources will likely find it more effective to focus on business application functionality built on an application framework developed by a trusted and proven partner.

Aptify

Aptify's own case is not different from that which is being described above. It so happens that our company has two distinct lines of business operations: one focused on Aptify RAD, our core platform technology, and the other is a domain-specific vertical market solution for Associations, Membership, Events, and similar organizations. Our case is fairly unique since we have two successful and independent lines of business. In fact, other commercial software companies are choosing Aptify RAD as a business applications platform to build commercial software upon. At the same time, we have a large number of resources directly in the business of providing a particular vertical market with leading edge domain-specific functionality. To make this work internally, our development group focused on the AMS (Association/Membership) market, must focus purely on application functionality and business processes in the vertical and not get into the lower level development functions described above.

The Financial Times published a very interesting article today regarding the growing use of "predictive analysis" tools capable of detecting when customers are growing unhappy with a company. With most companies still facing tough conditions despite recent signs of improvement, many managers have shifted their focus from attracting new business toward keeping customers that they already have relationships with. This concept has important implications for member based organizations as well.

Capturing Relevant Data

While the specific tools and technologies used by companies vary widely, no solution can work at all without relevant, timely, and accurate data. Attempts to predict outcomes based on incorrect or partial sets of data can lead to wasted resources and can even backfire. Member based organizations need to ensure that all data relevant to members are stored in a central repository rather than data silos restricted to individual departments. Any attempt to build an analytical framework prior to being satisfied that all relevant data are accurate and timely can be an exercise in futility.

Selecting Criteria to Measure

Once an organization is satisfied that sufficient data has been captured, it is necessary to come up with specific criteria that can help identify members that may be at risk of not renewing their dues in the future. The criteria will be different for each organization but there are some common themes that nearly all organizations can measure. For example, most associations find that members who are engaged with the community in various ways are most likely to renew their dues.

With a comprehensive information system, a manager can identify members who have never engaged with the organization except for paying their dues. A member who never logs into the organization's website, does not attend meetings or conferences, and has not made additional purchases during the year may be at high risk for not renewing in the future. By analyzing past data for non-renewals, such patterns can become apparent and then incorporated into your member retention strategy.

Of course, each organization will need to select additional criteria and this will be an iterative process that can be refined over time.

Taking Action

Action can be taken to engage with such members prior to the renewal cycle assuming that relevant the data capture has taken place and appropriate criteria have been identified. Members who have not participated at all during the year can be contacted through written communications or by phone. Special offers can be targeted to those who may be specifically at risk rather than providing such offers to all members including those who are almost certain to renew anyway. The methods used to reach out to members will vary for each organization, but the idea of spending time to save members is universal. It invariably costs much less to retain a current member than it does to attract a new one.

Many Other Possibilities

Member retention only scratches the surface of what is possible through effective analysis of member behavior. For example, it is possible to track member activity on your website in a way that can reveal the types of content they are looking at and to target products or services specifically to those who may be interested. There are some privacy issues to be aware of when monitoring website usage but it is now quite common for privacy policies to permit this type of data collection.

Of course, the key to all of these exciting possibilities is to have accurate and timely data to begin with. Regardless of the member management system you are using, it is wise to invest the time to ensure the quality and accuracy of your data in a manner that can help with member retention. Type your content here...

Although the pace of software releases from Microsoft has slowed somewhat in recent years, it is still difficult for many organizations to keep up with the various service packs and new product versions that appear on a regular basis. Even organizations that do not develop software in-house must deal with periodic upgrades for operating systems, database server platforms, and the Office suite. An organization that has taken charge of developing software in-house must also bear the burden of testing and modifying the software when underlying layers of the Microsoft stack are updated. Most organizations simply do not have the budget to allocate staff to such tasks. As a result, it is not uncommon for an organization to run on Microsoft software that is several years or even a decade old.

The Perils of Falling Behind

There are at least two major dangers associated with falling significantly behind Microsoft’s latest software stack. The first danger is the most obvious: Microsoft eventually reduces or eliminates support for software that has passed a certain age or is several versions behind the latest release. No organization can afford to take the risk of running unsupported software particularly for mission critical applications.

The second danger is less obvious but just as important: Organizations that allow their competitors to leverage the best advances in the Microsoft stack while falling behind on their own systems can eventually end up at a severe competitive disadvantage in terms of team productivity. This disadvantage does not appear overnight but eventually an organization that falls far enough behind its competitors will either be unable to provide services expected by members or customers or will only be able to do so with a much more labor intensive (and costly) process.

Keep Focus on Your Competitive Advantage

Every organization has a different mission and set of competitive advantages. Most organizations exist to provide products or services to their customers or members and have identified competitive advantages that allow them to have some kind of “edge” over others who are attempting to compete in the same market. While it is certainly important for many organizations to maintain a skilled IT Department, the competitive edge of most organizations is not related to producing in-house software.

Of course, no one today even contemplates creating an operating system, a database platform, or a programming language. However, many organizations still develop custom in-house business applications that program directly within these underlying software layers. Programmers take responsibility for interacting with lower levels of the Microsoft stack and even though modern programming languages provide a level of abstraction, the task still retains major challenges. The key question is whether there is something unique about the in-house software that provides the organization with a competitive edge. If so, the investment may be worthwhile. But if not, the investment may actually harm the overall competitive position by drawing resources away from the true competitive edge.

Leveraging Packaged Software Products

There are many software vendors that focus on building products that can be leveraged by businesses that do not wish to develop software on their own. These software companies specialize in keeping up to date with the underlying technology stack from vendors like Microsoft and leveraging that stack to provide business application functionality in a way that insulates customers from having to do so directly. For example, the Aptify RAD solution leverages the latest versions of Microsoft operating systems, database platforms, programming languages, and productivity tools such as Office in a way that insulates clients from the need to directly interface with the Microsoft layers. Clients who build business application functionality on top of the Aptify RAD platform can be confident that underlying changes in Microsoft technology will not require their staff to specialize in keeping up to date with the many changes introduced by Microsoft each year. Instead, IT departments can focus on constantly adapting their business software to more effectively meet their goals and objectives. A solution like Aptify RAD does not relieve an organization of the need to keep current on the strategic implications of Microsoft technology releases or the need to upgrade computers and servers to the latest Microsoft versions on a periodic basis. However, by knowing that all business applications built on the Aptify RAD platform can upgrade and leverage Microsoft’s improvements, an organization can spend more time focusing on improving their competitive advantages rather than becoming experts in the low level details of Microsoft releases.

The global economic recession has taken a significant toll on professionals in nearly every sector of the economy. With unemployment rising consistently and individuals feeling less secure in their jobs, it is no surprise that social networks catering to professionals have experienced rapid growth over the last two years.

LinkedIn is one of the most successful professional networking platforms and has experienced rapid growth over the past two years with registered members rising from 8 million at the end of 2006 to 33 million at the end of 2008. So far in 2009, LinkedIn has added an additional 13 million members and now has "46 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world" according to their website. Half of LinkedIn's members reside outside the United States and one new member joins every second.

Building "Brand Awareness"

Professional societies, trade associations, and similar organizations can easily leverage LinkedIn to build "brand awareness" and to seek new members. While a significant number of professionals make consistent efforts to remain current in their fields, many others only come to realize the importance of such involvement during a period of unemployment. These individuals are very likely to be heavy users of networks such as LinkedIn. It is conventional wisdom that most jobs are found through professional networking and this fact is not lost on the newly unemployed. Such individuals may also be receptive to the products and services offered by professional societies and trade associations.

LinkedIn Groups: A Powerful Outreach Tool

LinkedIn Groups are powerful tools for member outreach. A group can be created by any registered member of LinkedIn and there are no fees required. The group manager has the ability to include a group logo and other information and can fully control access. A group can be open to anyone or can be restricted to those who are approved by the manager. LinkedIn also permits group managers to specify email domains for members who will be automatically approved.

Once your group is created, it will automatically appear in the Groups directory and individuals searching for keywords associated with your group may find it. You may also proactively send links to LinkedIn users through various methods, some of which require "premium" LinkedIn account types that permit greater access to the membership base. Of course, your regular bulk email platforms can also be used to notify contacts in your association management system and encourage them to join the group.

Provide Useful Content and Networking Opportunities

Of course, merely setting up a group is not the end of the story. You can use the group to provide useful content such as links to news articles and free content on your own website. In addition, LinkedIn groups permit members to start discussions. Many of these features may be similar to what you already have on your website or association management platform. However, having this type of content directly within LinkedIn is a great first step to building relationships with potential new members.

It is perfectly appropriate to redirect prospective new members to your website for more in depth content. However, it is best to not use LinkedIn Groups entirely as a "new member sourcing" tool. Instead, if you provide good content and genuine networking opportunities, LinkedIn members will be naturally inclined to visit your website and consider the benefits of membership. While there is nothing wrong with trying to "sell" products or services, many potential members may be turned off by a "hard sell". In contrast, if your LinkedIn group provides useful content and networking opportunities that translate into career opportunities, you may find yourself with a loyal new member of your association for years to come.

Aptify has created a LinkedIn Group for our customers, partners and employees. Please feel free to join the group and participate in the discussions!

This link provides some great information directly from the folks at Twitter on how it can be leveraged for business purposes. Enjoy...

As we can see from the statistics in my last blog post, Twitter has the potential to provide useful information for associations seeking to improve member outreach. The rapid growth of Twitter over the past year along with the favorable demographics of the users leveraging the platform should lead to opportunities but only if a productive means of monitoring Twitter traffic can be developed.

If you believe that Twitter has some value for your organization, how can you possibly sift through all of the “tweets” that occur on a 24/7 basis to make sense of the information? Like mining for gold, a strategy must be put in place to avoid wasting significant time on irrelevant tweets that contain little value for your organization.

Monitor Your Followers

Once you have set up your identity on Twitter and informed potential followers that you are now using the platform, individuals will begin to “follow” your Twitter feed. The best way to gain followers is to follow other users yourself. Twitter has a number of search features that will allow you to locate your contacts. Once you have built up a list of users who you are following, Twitter will build a personalized feed of tweets from these individuals which will appear on the main page of twitter.com once you log in. An RSS Feed icon can be used to generate a personalized feed that you can monitor through Microsoft Outlook or any other RSS Feed reader.

Monitor Other Twitter Feeds

If you only monitor the Twitter feeds of individuals who you are explicitly following, the platform would still be interesting but of limited use. The real value of Twitter is revealed when you begin to monitor activity of users who you are not directly following. Twitter has a basic and advanced search tool that will allow you to search for tweets containing keywords that are important to your organization.

For example, let’s say that your association has an interest in monitoring a particular bill that is making its way through Congress. A timely example might be the health care reform bill (HR 3200) in the House of Representatives. By generating a simple search for “HR 3200”, you can monitor all Twitter traffic where individuals refer to the legislation specifically by its official name. An advanced search could filter the large number of tweets based on a more specific interest. Twitter’s search functionality allows for a number of search operators that permit more advanced queries such as "HR 3200" AND "Public Option". This search will return all tweets that refer to the legislation in question and mention the phrase “public option” which is one of the features of the health care reform bill.

What’s even more powerful about Twitter’s search options is that any search can be consumed as a RSS Feed which will allow you to monitor tweets meeting your preferred criteria from within a RSS Feed reader such as Microsoft Outlook, Google Reader, and many others. Using this approach, many search combinations can be used to generate specialized RSS feeds that will automatically notify you when relevant information appears on Twitter. For example, click on this link for a RSS Feed corresponding to the search discussed above. The icons below will appear on any search result. Click on the “Feed for this query” icon to generate the RSS Feed.

Many Possibilities

While the examples outlined above involve searching for information related to legislation, endless possibilities exist for monitoring other keywords including the names of important members or organizations. Associations should definitely create searches for their organization’s full and abbreviated name since tweets can reveal opportunities for better member outreach as well as the potential to reach out to new members.

Of course, in addition to monitoring Twitter using the search options, it is always a good idea to become a participant in discussions as well. By providing tweets with valuable information, more followers will emerge and possibly “re-tweet” your messages to their own networks. Through this network effect, your message can reach a much larger audience and you will attract additional followers.

While nearly all association executives are at least somewhat familiar with Twitter, most associations have yet to embrace this emerging social networking platform as a means of outreach to the constituencies they serve. In many cases, the perception of Twitter is that it is a tool used by teenagers and young adults to transmit messages regarding social plans or to gossip on various topics. While in some cases, these perceptions are accurate, Twitter already has proven to be a smart social networking platform for many forward looking organizations.

Twitter’s Demographics

A few statistics should demonstrate the importance of considering Twitter in your member outreach strategy and will also dispel some of the more common misconceptions regarding the platform:

• According to a recent Nielsen survey, Twitter is by far the fastest growing online member community. Twitter has grown from one million unique visitors in June 2008 to nearly 21 million unique visitors in June 2009. This far exceeds the growth in other social networks during this timeframe and only includes users who access Twitter via the main twitter.com website. Many users leverage applications like Tweet Deck on their computers or mobile phones. Twitter reached a penetration level of 10.7 percent of all active Internet users in June 2009.
• Another survey dispels the notion that Twitter is mainly used by teenagers and young adults. It appears that only 16 percent of Twitter.com users were under the age of 25 in June 2009. 64 percent of Twitter users are between the age of 25 to 54 and a surprising 20 percent of Twitter users are over 55.
• It appears that the simplicity of Twitter’s 140 character updates and the lack of more sophisticated social networking features such as posting videos and other content leads younger people seeking a more advanced platform to use Facebook rather than Twitter. By contrast, the relative simplicity of Twitter seems to be attracting older users who may be intimidated by more fully featured social networking platforms.

Ideas for Leveraging Twitter

If teenagers and young adults aren’t using Twitter to plan this weekend’s party, then who is actually using this platform? How can an organization hope to sift through all of the noise in order to find relevant information?

People from all walks of life have taken to using Twitter to broadcast their activities. A surprising number of members of Congress use Twitter to communicate with constituents and to link to relevant content on the web. Business executives such as Jack Welch post personal and business content on a frequent basis. Celebrities, journalists, and ordinary people are interacting in ways that were not possible just a couple of years ago.

All of this is interesting and sounds like it could be great fun, but how is it relevant to associations? The most intriguing aspect of Twitter is the fact that most messages tend to be made on a “spur of the moment” basis and are generally unfiltered. Think of Twitter as the equivalent of an online water cooler where you can listen to the stream of consciousness thoughts of relevant individuals. Here are a few strategies worth considering:

• Monitor Twitter feeds using important keywords that are relevant to the organization. This could involve the association’s name, acronym, or industry specific words and phrases.
• Keep up to date with the Twitter profiles of important members who carry significant influence within their industry or profession.
• Assign staff members to proactively communicate with individuals who are seeking information on the profession or industry. This is a great way to grow membership over time since it builds awareness and involvement within the community.
• Monitor Twitter comments that might be critical of the organization or expose frustration. Similarly, monitor compliments and consider “re-tweeting”, or re-broadcasting, relevant content.
• Establish an organizational profile on Twitter and begin to follow relevant individuals and posting relevant content to your Twitter feed. Over time, your Twitter profile will attract followers. The network effects of Twitter will really take off once your profile has a significant number of followers.

Assuming that you are sold on the concept of using Twitter, how can this strategy be effectively implemented? Surely you do not want to assign staff members to monitor huge streams of Twitter feeds each day hoping for the occasional relevant tweet. In my next blog post, several approaches for productively monitoring Twitter will be discussed. In the meantime, follow me on Twitter by clicking on this link !

Publishing Technology is the largest software provider to the publishing industry. PT selected Aptify RAD to form the foundation of their new generation of business applications.

Click here to learn how Publishing Technology benefited from Aptify RAD, our Application Lifecycle Platform.

The Agile methodology has become increasingly prevalent in software development. We believe that techniques from this method of software development can be effectively put to use in implementing software. In our experience, organizations that use a phased, iterative approach to implementing a complex system can see significant benefits. Organizations, like individuals, learn and mature over time. Recognizing that an organization (or individual) doesn’t know everything they possibly need to know on the front end of a project strengthens the argument for rapid iterations. Organizations can (and in many cases should) change rapidly. Agile approaches a complex problem by breaking it down into many small parts that can be incrementally solved and brought back into a cohesive picture. This approach allows changes to be more easily incorporated. It is, of course, still important to hold the line on unnecessary changes during any project. However, in some cases, business fundamentals shift in front of your eyes and there is no sense in pursuing a set of requirements that no longer solve the current business problem.

While there are many benefits to a rapid and iterative model, some organizations must have a large initial phase to get a base system in place. We agree that it is necessary to do this in many instances where the legacy system being replaced has roots in multiple operational areas. However, even within that first large phase, the idea of rapid iterative sub-phases can be applied. For example, each functional area can be broken out as a sub-phase that has its own iteration cycle, repeatedly testing integration with the larger project at key milestones.

In our particular case, we are able to take advantage of the Aptify Application Lifecycle Platform to help with these concepts, but the idea is not product or technology specific. For more on Agile, take a look a this Wikipedia article. Keep in mind that many of the concepts described in the article will have to be interpreted a bit differently in the context of implementation rather than development, but they largely apply.

The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD), the largest, most influential and most representative of all dermatological associations in the United States, has selected Aptify as its new Association Management System (AMS).

Click here for the full article

Click here to learn about the SEMI implementation of Aptify.

A new article (previously summarized on this blog) has been published in the latest issue of Associations Now magazine. Click here for the article.

We are excited to have The Ohio Society of CPAs come on board as a new Aptify client. We have been working with a number of accounting related organizations for many years and look forward to a close partnership with Ohio. Ohio has a very technology savvy team and we are excited too see how they will leverage the Aptify platform.

Click here for more information and the full press release.

We have an upcoming webinar that is directly related to my recent post on combining Social Media and AMS technology. Aptify will be co-hosting a session with HigherLogic to discuss many of these concepts. HigherLogic is one of several social media platforms(such as Fusion's CoP, Ning, and public sites such as LinkedIn) that Aptify can integrate with through our Open Web Services architecture.

Click here for more information on the webinar

If you stay current on your reading these days, you can’t avoid all of the hype behind social media and the reasons you need to implement it right away. Social media is important for many of the reasons being expressed, however hidden beyond the frequently asserted benefits lies a tremendous, and largely untapped asset waiting for you to unlock. Social media provides a rich and up-to-date data source that is maintained at no cost to you by an army of volunteers – your members and prospective members. This data, when harnessed into the core of your operations within your Association Management System (AMS), can be amongst the most significant benefits gained from a social media strategy.

Connecting Social Media and AMS

Social networks enable groups of like-minded individuals to congregate and share knowledge. It is possible to integrate this information with an association’s existing data fairly easily. Integration is highly dependent on the association management system in use since it is necessary to be able to seamlessly push and pull data between the AMS and social network. For example, since the social network platform tracks relationships between members and others, an AMS needs to be able to transfer this information in and out of the database seamlessly. The same principle applies to areas of interests/expertise and other profile data. When the data from a social network is tightly tied into the AMS, many interesting things can happen. A few examples are described below.

Scenario: Managing a Member’s Change in Employers

Traditionally, when a member leaves their organization it has been difficult to track them. Unless the member reconnects with the association and states where they have moved they are hard to contact. However, if a member is an active participant in a social network, the association can track and integrate a member’s career changes into their AMS. In this example, an additional opportunity exists: marketing to the person that replaced the member at their old company. The social network knows about the job change and when this data moves into the AMS, additional workflow can automatically kick in. An association could set up a rule within the AMS that creates a task for a staff member to go to the original company and find out who the replacement is. Once that is done, the replacement contact at the company could be targeted for membership, events, and other offerings. This workflow could also send an automated email congratulating the existing member on their move and ask for help in finding additional people in their new company that would benefit from membership.

Scenario: Supporting Viral Marketing and Referral Campaigns

A social network provides the data needed to launch highly personalized campaigns. If an AMS is tracking the relationships of an individual, you can generate personalized messages that request their support in areas such as: fundraising, membership campaigns, grass-roots, events and more. The idea centers on asking the member to help by requesting people in their network to participate in an activity. For example, in a “member-get-a-member” campaign, an email could be sent requesting a member’s support targeting non-members they know in the industry. The email could show a list of people in their network that are in the industry but are not members. The email could allow them to check boxes next to the names they want to invite and the association web-site would automatically send messages to each prospective member on behalf of the current member. Similar concepts could be applied to grass-roots, fundraising, and many other activities. The common thread is that these campaigns require knowledge of the network of relationships, something that social media provides today!

In Summary

Most of the buzz around social media relates to building communities, new methods to communicate, and reaching diverse segments of a population. All of these benefits are good reasons to consider a social media strategy. The value of the social network to an association goes beyond those concepts when tight integration between the AMS and social network is established. The rich information within a social media platform can directly be leveraged to improve many association business practices right now.

On April 17, I will be speaking on a panel at DigitalNow 2009. I am looking forward to the panel, moderated by Sherry Budziak. Along with 2 other panelists I will be speaking about how New Media can impact membership growth and retention. My focus will be on creating leverage between New Media and database applications to drive a higher quality experience to the member while uncovering new growth opportunities.

Session Details

Friday, April 17, 2009 at 2:00PM-3:30PM

Increasing Membership with New Media

I found this post by Clarke Price, CEO of The Ohio Society of CPAs to be very interesting. It discusses a common problem within the association community related to embracing new social media technologies. Take a look, does this describe your own organization? If so, what are you doing to try to change?

I recently participated in an interview with Wes to discuss the state of the AMS software industry, current economic conditions, social networking and more. Click here to listen to the interview on Wes' blog site.

Whether or not to allow self-service on the web for refund and credit processing is a frequent debate. Proponents argue that self-service will enable a customer/member to more easily transact business with an organization, and build loyalty. Detractors often say that making it so easy to cancel something would encourage that behavior. In our experience, enabling self-service for "negative" transactions - situations where someone is returning a product, cancelling a membership or registration, etc - is a very positive thing. We have not seen objective evidence that would lead us to believe that making it easy to conduct such transactions has any impact on their frequency. Rather, when a cancellation or refund is going to be processed - it will likely happen one way or another. If it is made easy and seamless for the customer, the customer values it and is more likely to use that vendor in the future.

Great examples abound on the web including the web site for Southwest Airlines and Amazon.com. In each of these instances, the sites make it very easy to cancel existing transactions(when appropriate), and to apply prior credits to new transactions. All types of organizations, particularly member-based associations, should seriously consider enabling more of these transaction types on their web sites. This will improve processing efficiency and lower operating costs. Moreover, the improvement in customer service will have intangible, yet very meaningful value over the long run.

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We created a LinkedIn Group recently to provide an additional method of connecting with the community. This group is open to all users of the software as well as partners and our staff. Over time, we intend to create similar groups on other popular social media platforms such as Facebook. Many of our clients are doing similar things with their communities and our use of LinkedIn and planned support for OpenSocial and other emerging integration standards will help pave the way for this. If you are interested in joining the Aptify group on LinkedIn, click here.

A large percentage of web sites these days are driven by database content. As the impact of dynamic content continues to increase, it is important to have a high-availability strategy for your web site. A good first step to improving availability of your dynamic site is to use a replicated database server rather than connecting your production web site directly to a production database. This is second nature to some organizations that have been deploying web sites this way for years. For many groups, however, it is not something they have yet deployed. Setting up a replicated database server will bring several benefits to your organization. First, it eliminates the dependency on the network link between your web site (assuming it is hosted) and your production database. The model establishes redundancy as well since the production web server will not be directly accessed. This also leads to an improved security level as you can choose to replicate a sub-set of data to the replicated database server. Last, but certainly not least, the replicated server will take on the load from web requests and reduce load on your production database which should improve performance. If you haven't considered deploying a replicated database for your web site, consider the benefits of such a strategy in 2009.

For years, organizations have attempted to integrate disparate data sources. While challenging in nature, this is achievable and many success stories have been written about groups that have moved to a consolidated information architecture. Once your data is in the same place and effectively organized, what's next?

Many groups end up treating their information systems simply as an electronic filing cabinet - destined to be a modern cousin to the old fashioned version. People input all sorts of data and pull reports, but the "system" doesn't automate a great deal of the process. In our opinion, the missing link is having the ability for the system to easily adapt to changes in business processes over time. Just as critical is the ability to automate those steps of a process that call out for automation. Our approach to this at Aptify is to provide an intuitive, graphical and business-oriented workflow modeling tool within our platform. This technology allows a business user to visualize a process and to change it over time, in many cases with limited or no IT support due to the graphical nature of the tools.

While the tools exist in our platform to automate a wide array of processes, it is important that an organization stay focused on leveraging these capabilities to align systems with their overarching strategy. Doing this right will result in the system enabling efficiency and rapid change, not simply storing and reporting on data.

Most organizations work on performance tuning in depth during an initial software implementation. After a go-live, however, it is fairly common to see performance tuning fall off the radar. The issue with this is that the database and related components are constantly evolving and require review on a recurring basis. We recommend to our clients to conduct a performance tuning review at least quarterly during the first year of use of our product and at least semi-annually thereafter. Some organizations can get away with less frequent performance tuning efforts and some need to evaluate their environment more often. The key thing to remember is that you have to build a plan to review performance on a recurring basis to make sure that system performance stays steady, or preferably improves. If you don’t, it is likely that performance will slowly degrade over time as the performance tuning that was done earlier is no longer optimal.

This is a key issue for all of your enterprise database software applications. The good news is that the incremental tuning exercises are typically not very time consuming once you establish a baseline. We recommend that people put this on their calendar along with other scheduled reviews such as a recurring security review and disaster recovery plan review.

The ability for a software application to be modified is now viewed as a critical requirement for most organizations. This is largely due to the dynamic environment we face where response times must constantly shrink while quality and innovation move forward rapidly. These days, most software companies state that they are flexible and have “toolkits” available to modify their applications. We see the evolution of the industry in this direction as being a very good thing for the market.

However, it is also important in such an environment where most vendors claim such flexibility to differentiate between a toolkit and a true platform. For well over a decade, Aptify has provided what we call the Application Lifecycle Platform, which is a comprehensive solution for developing, deploying and maintaining(including upgrading) enterprise business applications. We at Aptify use our own Application Lifecycle Platform for 100% of the development of business applications. In contrast, a toolkit is a set of separate tools that is used only by a customer to change a vendor’s application. The vendor doesn’t typically use such a toolkit to actually build the base applications. The distinction is an important one – if you and the vendor use different tools, you will always have a limitation to what you can do.

In the Aptify world, there is no such difference, the platform we provide our clients is the same one we use to build the applications to begin with. Our customers leverage this platform day in and day out to build not only extensions to our apps, but to create entirely new business applications. Underscoring the power and flexibility of our technology, Aptify’s Application Lifecycle Platform is being used by a major independent software vendor to produce a complete ERP suite for the publishing vertical.

When you compare software solutions, if flexibility is important to you, make sure you ask this key question of each vendor: Is the toolkit/platform something that you internally use to build 100% of the proposed solution? If the answer is not an unqualified yes, consider carefully the limitations before moving ahead.

Data migration is a critical element in any software implementation. Most organizations have a number of legacy data sources that they intend to migrate to a new system. Some of the data sources that commonly require migration are legacy database applications, Access databases, Excel files, and many other forms of unstructured and structured data. A common mistake in data migration planning is to wait too long to make data visible to end-users. It is not uncommon for project managers to consider data migration to be a technical task that has to go through a high degree of scripting and QA before a user-oriented data sample can be presented.

In our experience at Aptify, the earlier you can make data visible to users in a new system environment the more likely it is that the migration will be successful. It is indeed critical for a comprehensive data migration strategy to be crafted that will account for all of the data and relationships. However, it is also usually possible to structure the migration plan so that sub-components of data can be made visible to end-users sooner rather than later. Aptify implementations typically expose users to basic customer/contact data nearly immediately so that users can see “their data” in the new system as they begin familiarizing themselves with it. As the process moves forward, additional such subsets of data are incorporated into the users’ working environment. The technical quality assurance work required to ensure completeness and accuracy of the conversion are, of course, mandatory components of the process. The point here is that you can blend structured quality assurance cycles with early stage user visibility if you plan ahead for it. In our experience, this makes a world of difference in allowing end-users to understand how the new system relates to what they are used to.

As systems evolve and new technologies emerge there is an increasing need to exchange data between applications. While generalized standards such as XML and SOAP provide the foundation for easing such integration, they don’t provide a standard format for the data itself. This is because XML and SOAP are generic and applicable to any type of data. On the other hand, in each industry, data and relationships are different so the applicable formats need to be worked out by people within the field. It is therefore critical for industry groups to get together and define data standards that effectively capture the information that needs to move back and forth.

ASAE started just such a process and Aptify is actively supporting the effort. The ASAE Data Standard is a work in progress and has made significant headway towards establishing an initial data standard for associations to share constituent and organization data. The standard structures information about constituents and organizations so that any system that supports it can easily interpret and integrate the data. The greatest benefit of a standard is that all compliant software applications and services will be able to use the standard without any systems integration coding. This promotes an increased level of interoperability between systems and will lead to more functionality and flexibility. We are proud to support the ASAE standards effort and have already completed testing of the data standard within our software. After ratification of the new standard is complete, we plan to quickly introduce support for it in our product.

Many people ask how the name Aptify came to fruition. Aptify is a name that represents a number of values that we believe are of great importance in working as a team for the benefit of our clients. Aptify is not a word in the English language (or any other language of which I’m aware). We decided to select a name that included parts of words that connoted values that were meaningful and aligned with our corporate culture and mission. Aptify has two parts – “apt” and “ify”.

Aptify therefore literally means “to make apt”. In the context of Aptify software, this translates into “to make exactly suitable.” Since Aptify software is specifically designed to accommodate and promote change, the name perfectly suits our business purpose – to provide solutions that are appropriate and exactly suited to our customers’ evolving business needs.

We are very pleased to make available the latest release of Aptify.com. This web site has been completely redesigned with the goal of making information easily available to all types of users. We have highlighted our industry solutions and platform technology and have included a significantly increased amount of information on the company. Many of the changes were driven by feedback from the community and we look forward to your further input on how Aptify.com can continue to evolve.

When we work with our clients, one of the most common challenges is designing a taxonomy, or classification model, that will integrate disparate types of content in a way that makes sense to the consumers of that information. If you want to have a web site that is logical to the end-user, integrates content from sources such as document archives, a CMS, databases, and 3rd party syndication sources, you must ensure that the taxonomy is clearly defined and consistent. This is an area that is frequently underemphasized in our experience. Some organizations feel they can reduce focus on this type of work during early phase projects since the visibility is usually low (initially). A well planned taxonomy is much like a foundation for a home or building - you have to dig deep and work very hard before seeing the benefits and coming above surface. But if you make that investment in a solid foundation you can keep building higher than without one.

There are many approaches to taxonomies. The central theme that we believe must not be lost upon the designers of the taxonomy is that it must make logical sense to a consumer/end-user of the information without detailed explanation. A good taxonomy should be intuitive, avoid redundancy, and allow both separation and aggregation of content across multiple media types, locations and sources.

In working with a number of client organizations one of the common trends we see is that IT-driven BI projects tend to have a difficult time in keeping up with user needs. For this reason, we have been focusing a large pool of resources on driving some of the most commonly required BI capabilities into the hands of end-users. While the most in-depth BI requirements still demand fairly astute technical skills, we believe that the end-user having the power to build on-the-fly BI views for perhaps 80-90% of their common needs will greatly change how often BI is actually put to use. We are very interested in getting feedback from the community on where people are using BI, where projects have been succesful, and where they have not been.

A growing trend among association clients we work with is the desire to drive social-networking features into their web presence. We currently are supporting this with a variety of our clients through integration with popular social networking web sites as well as functionality that has been directly incorporated into the Aptify e-Business Suite that supports common needs. Social networking has great promise for many member driven organizations as it helps build more momentum around the community of individuals and can leverage relationships between those people in a way that is difficult to replicate in an off-line world.

In some membership organizations, social networking is looked at as being a trend amongst the younger generations of members. However, we are seeing trends where this is greatly picking up across a wide variety of age groups and demographics. We plan to conduct more in-depth research across a wide range of organizations in the community to determine current and future plans for social networking and would like to receive input on how people see this technology being used now and in the future.

In our experience, user training is one of the areas that is often given appropriate weight during initial planning but often times is compressed later in a project. In cases where milestones are tight and there is pressure from all ends to keep things moving, user training is an "easy" area to compress to keep a plan on schedule. Like many things in life, if you cut corners on elements like this they do catch up to you. Users are less prepared for the rigors of going live on a new system, they are less knowledgeable about workflow and capabilities, and long term they are more likely to be inefficient. Another factor is that job satisfaction for a less trained individual is consistently lower as they feel less confident in executing their responsibilities. Long term, it is critical to keep emphasis on training both current and new employees on the benefits of the application software, and new capabilities that are released with new versions.

Welcome to the Aptify CEO Blog!

As the CEO of Aptify Corporation, I established this blog to provide a new line of communiation between Aptify and the public. I feel it is very important for the company to frequently communicate. We have many thoughts related to the software industry and the vertical markets we serve and my goal with this blog will be to convey thoughts on a regular basis to the public. Your comments on the postings make the blog a valuable tool for many readers. The insights you share are greatly appreciated by Aptify and the community of users who access this site. Thank you for taking the time to participate in this blog!