I truly believe that Australian Associations should avoid business CRMs like Salesforce, Zoho and Hubspot. And it’s for your own good!
I was at the AuSAE conference this week and spent quite a bit of that time talking to Association CRM vendors. These are companies that have designed solutions specifically for the Association market in Australia.
These companies know that Associations are not actually looking for a business CRM or a Customer Relationship Management System that can keep track of their members or sponsors.
Instead, they are often looking for something that can do all these functions in the diagram below.
Business CRMs versus an AMS
To designate the difference, sometimes these types of CRMs are called Association Management Systems (AMS) or Member Management Systems (MMS).
In Australia, these requirements can be a little more complex than what may be required in other countries like the US.
For one, certifications and CPD points tend to be more commonly used in Australia. As such, there are only a few CRMs that can manage and automate this particular function well.
The Australian Association CRM Market
There are about a dozen or so software vendors in the Australian market that have specific solutions for Associations. Some of these vendors are from the US, New Zealand or the UK, but others are native to Australia.
I often have Salesforce and Zoho implementation partners approach me about their solutions for Associations. However, when I ask them questions about the functionality, I have not seen one that meets most of an Association’s needs yet.
In fact, of all the business CRMs on the marketplace, Microsoft Dynamics is the only solution that has been fully tailored by a vendor partner for the Association market in Australia.
What happens when an Association invests in business CRMs?
When you invest in business CRMs, one of two things has to occur to make them useful for an Association:
1) Non-native functionality must be developed in the system, such as a shopping cart and events management module;
Don’t do this!
When you start to customise the CRM, you are signing your organisation up to significant ongoing support costs and likely some pain every time there is an upgrade from the CRM vendor.
I have worked with several clients and potential clients that are struggling with broken instances of Salesforce, despite their significant investments.
OR
2) There has to be integrations to a lot of 3rd party tools to meet the full requirements.
While integrations are definitely the better way to go than customisations, every time you build an integration with another system, you add another layer of complexity which can also break.
So, why would you choose either of these pathways when there are solutions on the Australian market that can meet an Association’s requirements out of the box?
Board members can be blamed for choosing business CRMs
Association board members most often come from the professions being served by that association. These are accountants, medical professionals, IT experts, HR staff, etc. Essentially, many of them come from businesses with a different mission.
So, when an Association begins to consider CRMs, it’s only natural that these board members think about solutions they are already familiar with, such as Salesforce or Hubspot.
The problem is that an Association’s service offering is likely very different than that of a business.
Therefore, when you take business CRMs whose primary purpose is to track sales leads and try to apply them to an Association, it’s not a great fit.
Yet, board members often struggle to see this problem and wonder later why so much money is required to keep that business CRM working.
When would you consider business CRMs as an Association?
Other than the Dynamics products I mentioned previously, I only recommend business CRMs for an Association when they are living off spreadsheets and documents right now.
There are free versions that can help move the organisation away from paper-based member management. This also strengthens business continuity when the Association has very few staff.
Beyond that size and immaturity, I would likely recommend a proper Association CRM for most organisations. Some of these vendors have affordable pricing plans and will provide a much better outcome than commercial CRMs.
So, next time you’re considering a new CRM for your Association, consider those vendors that are already fit for purpose for your needs rather than buying the best-known business brands.
I regularly help Associations select a CRM and other systems. Let me know if you need some help.
P.S. If you found this article helpful, you might want to read this one too:
- Why the greatest CRM could still fail to meet your needs.
- What’s the cost of a new CRM?
- When should you use an RFT process to procure IT?
Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Association President, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today, she helps NFPs with strategic IT decisions, especially around investments.