Siloed data is hurting your association. Here’s how to fix that.
- Association data is typically siloed across multiple systems, making it harder to understand your members and assess the performance of your own organization.
- Integrating your data into a central data repository gives you a foundation to draw deeper insights into your membership and operations, as well as implement AI and automation tools.
- As you upgrade your data capabilities, focus on solving specific organizational problems to maximize impact and lean on a third-party advisor to make the process faster and more effective.
Associations are often heavily siloed, with data spread between a half-dozen core systems that don’t talk to each other. That makes it harder to gain insight into your members, hurting your ability to provide value in a moment when association membership is already in decline.
However, a stronger data foundation can change all that. By making better use of the data your association is already generating, you can learn more about your membership so you can provide more effective offerings and services — plus better implement AI and automation.
Keep reading to learn more.
Why do associations need integrated data?
Your association is constantly collecting valuable data about your members, your operational performance and your offerings. But because that data is usually siloed across your association management software (AMS) and other platforms like marketing, events, learning, credentialing and finance, you’re missing out on key insights into what your members want, performance data and AI-readiness.
Here's how integrating your data can change that:
- Understand your members: Unified data can help you learn more about your members. You’ll be able to more accurately track both individual member behavior over time and look for broader trends among your membership as a whole. This can help you tailor your offerings more closely to what your members actually want, delivering both new members and increased retention.
- Improve your organizational performance: Similarly, integrating your data into a central repository or data warehouse can also help you assess your association’s operational performance. By applying business logic to your unified data, you can generate insights out of raw information, using visualization and natural language tools to identify areas of opportunity.
- Get ready for AI: If AI is a sports car, then data is gasoline. Without it, you can’t use AI tools effectively, so if you’re looking to lean on AI to make your association operate more efficiently or help you connect with your members, you’ll need a strong data foundation in place first.
How should associations create a data management strategy to get more value from their data?
Associations need a data strategy to map out how to integrate data from across their different systems, analyze it and use it to create value for members and strengthen operational performance. Here’s how to start thinking about your strategy:
1. Understand your technology infrastructure
Your first step is to understand how your organization currently handles data. Where is your data coming from? The answer includes your data sources, the different technologies you use to collect and store data and the people who have access to it.
Map out how things currently work and your existing data governance structures so you can start thinking about what you can do better.
2. Identify specific organizational problems you want to solve
Your data strategy will be more effective if it’s focused on solving specific problems within your organization. So consider areas where you’re currently experiencing challenges, such as limited member engagement details, slow financial reporting or staff burnout, where more effective data could help you implement innovative solutions.
3. Integrate your data and systems
Integrate your siloed data into a central data repository or data warehouse. This makes all your data accessible throughout your organization and creates a foundation for better analytics, swifter decision-making and leveraging AI.
Two commonly confused approaches that can work independently or together are data integration and data ingestion. You can either:
- Ingest bulk data extracts into a central repository designed for easy data access and then apply business logic for structured and unstructured reporting.
- Choose to stream individual records from operational systems like an AMS into your FMS (financial management system) each time a new record is generated or vice versa.
Both approaches are effective and can also be implemented in tandem, which can be especially impactful. Whichever path you take, your goal is to turn your organization’s technical footprint into a unified platform for information and insights.
4. Use your data to gain insights that drive optimization
At this point in the process, you can now feed your newly integrated data into visualization tools that allow you to keep a finger on the pulse of your members, your staff, and your organizational performance. But that’s not all.
Past pure visualization, a data repository will allow you to conduct ad hoc, AI-powered data exploration. This gives your decision-makers the ability to dive deeper into your organizational information without the traditional technical skills formerly needed to do so.
And finally, your data will also now be ready to fuel automations that can cut down on your team’s rote tasks, freeing up more time to focus on higher-value work like member engagement and retention.
What are your next steps to get started?
Getting your data out of siloes and generating insights is a process. That process is more likely to succeed if your whole team participates by identifying problems to solve, implementing new systems and using more powerful insights to drive decisions and action.
However, your internal team will also often benefit from some external support. Leaning on an outside advisor can help make this journey faster and more successful.
An advisor can help you identify gaps in your current systems and data management strategy and then work with your team to unlock deeper insights into what your members want and how you can improve your organizational performance.
How Wipfli can help
We advise associations on improving performance, engaging membership and growth. Let’s talk about your goals and how solutions like integrating your data and implementing smarter analytics can help you get there. Start a conversation.
Let’s make your association stronger
