Let me introduce you to Cliff. He urgently needs information that's only available from your association. In fact, he just clicked through to your website from Google and ran into your nonmember landing page. Seeing that the information he needs is only available to members, he decides to join right away. Because you've been smart enough to create a clear "Join Now" link on your nonmember landing page, he clicks right over to start filling out his membership application.

But wait. As he completes the form, he sees some fine print: "Please expect approximately six weeks' processing time for all new member applications."

Will Cliff bother to wait six weeks? Or will he seek out another option that gets him the information he needs much more quickly?

Chances are, he won't wait, and your association will become another victim of poor business practices.

Smart Business

While the example above is hypothetical, it's based on a real association. Through some specific changes to business processes, as well as a change in association management software, it was able to reduce the time it took to fulfill membership applications from six weeks to 72 hours. In fact, it regularly fulfills new member orders in 24 hours. Imagine the impact that has had on its bottom line.

Business practices are some of the most important yet least recognized facets of our day-to-day work in associations. Simply put, business processes are your rules and procedures for how you manage data in your organization. They identify the five Ws and H: Who manages the data, what data are managed, where it is managed, why it is managed, when it is managed, and how it is managed.

How can you tell if a business process needs improving? Listen to what your staff and customers are saying. If you're hearing complaints from staff like "Why does it take so long just to process a simple membership application?" or complaints from customers like "Why is it so difficult to buy a product on your website?" then you probably have some business process problems.

Know (and Fix) Your Processes

Whether you know you have business process problems that need to be corrected or you just want to ensure that your processes are as efficient and effective as possible, the same basic steps apply.

Establish your objectives. What are you trying to accomplish? Most business processes have multiple objectives or outcomes.

For example, let's say you are discussing the process for meeting registrations. Ask yourself: "What outcomes do I need from a successful meeting registration?" Typical responses include "I need to have payment accounted for," "I need to get a list of attendees," "I need a badge for this attendee," and so on.

Be sure to think this through and discuss it thoroughly, so that you list all of your objectives.

Identify the Five Ws and H for each objective. For the example above, ask yourself:

• Who manages our event registration (i.e., which person or persons on staff)?
• What are we managing? Are we managing just event registration and money? Are we managing guest registrations? Sub-event registrations? Tickets? Donations? Other data?
• Where are the data entered, stored, and reported? Is it in our central AMS, a separate system in house, a separately hosted system, or somewhere else?
• Why are we managing these data? Most often this is evident, but sometimes asking "why" will lead to answers like "I don't know" or "Because we've always done this," in which case maybe you can stop doing what you're doing.
• When are these data managed? When does registration open and when does it close? Do we need access to the data after the event itself has occurred?
• How is it managed? Does staff do all the work? Is a third-party registration company involved? Can customers manage registration themselves?

Document your processes. In my experience, associations spend more time fixing errors in the database that were created by lack of process documentation than it would have taken to document their processes in the first place. With proper documentation, errors will be minimized, as all staff will be able to use the documentation to enter data correctly.

In the example above, we should have documentation that not only outlines how we process a registration and all of its attendant data (guest registration, ticketed events, session registration, and so forth) but also how to process changes to registrations, cancellations, substitutions, and refunds.

Review your processes periodically. When I meet with clients to discuss business processes, I frequently discover that staff are not in agreement about a given process. It is not unusual for three staff people to have three different answers to an ostensibly simple question like "How do you process new members in the database?" (I confess to finding these conversations oddly entertaining.)

Review and update your documentation periodically and as needed. When a new program is introduced at your association, it may require a new process. If you create a certification program and have never done certification programs in the past, you will be creating new processes. These need to be documented.

By the same token, existing processes will change over time. It is incumbent upon you to review your current documentation periodically (I recommend at least twice per year) to determine if the existing documentation needs to be revised due to changes in the process or even thrown out due to a program's closure.

Use simple process maps to get a sense of how easy (or complicated) a given process is.

A process map shows in visual form the distinct steps that occur in a given process. For example, when an event registration is processed in the back office, the first step is that the form arrives in the mail. The second step is where the form is routed. The third step is what questions are asked (e.g., is this a member or nonmember? Is this a check or credit card payment?), and so on.

Once all the steps are mapped out, you get a visual representation of how easy or difficult a process is. You also get a sense of where decisions are being made, whether they are yes/no decisions or multiple choice, and where opportunities for error are. Finally, you can see where a change in process might be more efficient while still achieving the stated objectives. (See sidebar for an example of how this can be done.)

Processes You Can Live With

While having effective and up-to-date software is critically important to the long-term success of your data-management efforts, effective and up-to-date business processes are equally important. Using the processes outlined above will help ensure that your business processes are cogent, complete, and current.

Wes Trochlil is president of Effective Database Management in Hamilton, Virginia. He is the author of the new book Put Your Data to Work: 52 Tips and Techniques for Effectively Managing Your Database. He blogs at www.effectivedatabase.com/blog. Email: wtrochlil@effectivedatabase.com