How does your association ensure that your data is managed appropriately—and that staff members from all departments can abstract the data they need to do their jobs? At the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), these issues were resolved during a recent overhaul of the organization’s data management procedures.

ACORD—an international organization with staff and members in London, Germany, South Africa, and New Zealand in addition to the United States—implemented two major changes to instill better management and usage of data among its staff:

• It hired a full-time staff member to coordinate between the business units of IT, manage projects, and ensure that business decisions drive development.
• It formed a data task force composed of one person from every business unit to ensure that everyone’s data needs are met.

These changes have allowed ACORD staff members to better leverage the association’s data to drive the organization’s mission forward.

“The coordinator is a combination of business analyst and project manager. One of the most important roles is interfacing between IT, membership, and other staff.”—Marcia Berner, Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development

Moving Beyond Membership

The changes made by ACORD occurred soon after the organization purchased a new customer relationship management (CRM) system, which was being under-used by staff. “Our system is the hub of membership activity,” frequently accessed for billing, communications, committee information, and awards submissions, says Marcia Berner, ACE, AAM, chief membership officer for ACORD. However, the organization suffered from low use of the system by employees outside of the membership area: “We relied on membership staff to articulate business needs for the company, forgetting that other employees had different needs and were unfamiliar with the new CRM platform,” says Berner. These staff members also needed access to member data and additional reporting capabilities.

“There was a lack of confidence in the new CRM system and the quality of member data among staff outside the membership area,” says Berner. “Nonmembership employees were unable to perform simple tasks, such as finding member data and reporting. Even after locating data, they doubted its accuracy.” Staff leaders realized it was time to move past the organization’s traditional reliance on membership staff to articulate business requirements for all CRM system functionality and data needs.

Data coordinator. To facilitate this effort, ACORD established a full-time data coordinator position. This staff member “reports to IT with a dotted line to membership,” says Berner. “The coordinator is a combination of business analyst and project manager. One of the most important roles is interfacing between IT, membership, and other staff.”

This position has become “an invaluable resource,” with reach to all areas of the organization, Berner says. The role includes a business analysis function, working closely with business users to address their needs. The coordinator creates project and test plans, as well as ad hoc reports, and uses analytic skills “to translate needs into real requirements.”

Data task force.In addition, ACORD created a data task force to instill confidence in the CRM and its data among nonmembership staff members. “We knew the data was good overall; however, to prove the data was valuable, we had to assess needs and understand barriers to usage outside of membership,” says Berner. The goals of the data task force were to expand the use of the CRM system to all staff, restore confidence in the system and data, and enable staff to use the system for basic reporting.

ACORD populated the task force with representatives from each key area within the association, and also engaged non-U.S.-based employees to work with members from other regions to offer regional perspective.

Members of the task force met bimonthly or more frequently and involved the opinions of other department members to pinpoint training needs, discuss internal projects, and identify member data of interest to other areas. To date, the data task force has met many of its goals, including adding functionality to the CRM to enable easier search, adding new data fields and reports to the system, engaging membership employees to train others on system functions, and expanding the scope of its work to functionality of the ACORD website and content management system.

Laying the Groundwork for Future Success

The addition of the data coordinator and the creation of the data task force have led to a more coherent data management process for all staff at ACORD. What’s more, “we have actually met all of our target dates for CRM system projects in 2014 and 2015, and in one case exceeded the date by six months,” says Berner. “This includes a major system upgrade and website enhancement integration, which allows the CRM system to immediately access new web registrations. Previously all website registrations required membership [staff] intervention.”

The changes have also resulted in a more cooperative working environment—for staff members within and outside of the membership department. “Member data is at the heart of any association,” says Berner. “Keeping that data fresh, providing reporting capabilities, and making sure those who need it have access and ultimately feel confident about what they are seeing” are critical to an association’s success.