A CRM for professional associations and regulated bodies? Yes, it exists

We often believe, falsely, that CRM is only for companies. However, professional associations and regulated bodies have similar needs. From managing members, to communication and renewing memberships, you only need to replace members with clients and memberships with sales to see the parallels.

Obviously, it’s not that simple to manage professional associations or regulated bodies and the comparison to companies can stop there. However, you should know that CRM is a versatile and adaptable tool that can suit many organizations and help them simplify processes, improve productivity, and make the work of any organization a little easier, even if you work with difficult regulations or particular requirements.

This is exactly what professional associations and regulated bodies need, right? This is what Gestisoft believes in and does with its CRM specifically created for professional associations and regulated bodies. Curious to learn more about it? Discover how a CRM can really change your organization.

What’s CRM?

Well, CRM is customer relationship management software, and it might not look like the kind of software you need in a professional association, but you should know that surprisingly, it’s all you ever needed.

CRM is well known in manufacturing or in companies for being software that supports every aspect of your customer relationships. From customer services to sales, CRM software is present at every step to improve processes, but also help you deliver the very best to your clients.

Because CRM is not only for companies, it can be tailored to your every need and specific requirements to better help you manage your members and everything related to their certifications. Like clients, your members need to be provided with a number of services, and CRM can help you seamlessly deliver these on a daily basis.

Why choose CRM for your professional association?

As stated earlier, a CRM will help your professional association with everything that needs to be handled for your members. They have standards they need to comply with, they have certifications that you want proof of, they have continuing studies you need to oversee, and so on. It’s not simple to manage an association or regulated body organization.

CRM for associations will put everything from your emails to your member’s certification copies under the same umbrella. A CRM will help you navigate from one project to another: a collaboration to a solo project, a revision to the management of a complaint. In fact, the best CRM for association management is there to support you by automating some tasks (like reminders, some steps of approval processes, renewal of memberships, etc.), and by improving some of your processes by providing all you need in one place.

Since you work with very strict requirements, and you have a large number of members to manage, it simply cannot be done by hand. CRM could help you with:

• Management of the members register
• Management of registration to the profession
• Management of continuing education
• Management of the profession oversight program
• Management of the Office of the Syndic
• Management of complaints to the disciplinary board
• Management of the election of committee members
• Management of committees

How can it help you and your organization?

We have to say that your needs are pretty specific, and as a professional association your CRM will need to comply with numerous requirements and rules to both protect you and your members. So how does a CRM for associations concretely help you with your daily tasks?

Renewal of memberships: how to keep track of your members 101

Is it hard to keep track of membership renewals? Payment? Deadlines? Well, CRM can pretty much help you at every step. From the email notification that informs your members that it’s time to renew their membership to the update of their information, CRM does it all.

When informing your members that their membership is up for renewal, it can all be handled by email. Automatically, your CRM for professional associations will send an email with all the instructions to the concerned members. Once it’s done, it’ll also be possible to track who opened the email and who didn’t so you can better keep track of notices, but also reminders.

Besides paying their membership, they will also be able to update their information like a change of address, new email, a new status, or development courses, units completed in continuing studies, new job, etc. And without you having to even take care of it, all of this new information will be updated in your database automatically!

Verifying members: an easy task with CRM for associations

Has your member renewed on time? Have they reached the minimum number of hours of ongoing development?

If they haven’t, the best CRM for associations can help you keep track of this. During the height of renewal season, your dashboard will help notify you of all those members not complying with your regulations, so you can set up reminders, and also a limit date. And for the payments that are due? A quick search in your CRM for association management can help you get an overview of the situation!

If the set date is reached and some of your members’ accounts are still not meeting your demands, they will be automatically deactivated. Your regulations are essential to a good maintenance of your association or regulated body organization, and your CRM tailored to your professional association will help you respect them.

Following up with continuing studies is completely stress free with CRM for associations

Making sure that your profession and the public are both protected is one of the most important tasks you have to live up to every day as an association or regulated body. How can you make sure that each and every one of your members is respecting your regulations about certification and information? Did you install a new rule about the number of hours of continuing education your members have to respect? Do you regulate the trainings they can take?

It’s definitely no a small task to handle for an association or regulated bodies, and this is where getting a little bit of help can change everything. Between communicating with your members about new trainings and guaranteeing that every single one of your members has respected the minimum hours of ongoing development to ensure the best quality of services, the best CRM for association could help you automate some tasks and manage others more efficiently.

For example, you could set up rules for the types of training that are deemed acceptable, automate the process of communicating, registering, and verifying the upcoming trainings for your members and then have tools of support to help your members participate in the ongoing development that we know is essential to the well-being your organization.

CRM for associations can help with easy and quick communication

Is it time to renew membership? Is there a new membership plan available to your members? Is it the deadline to register for training? Did some members forget to send some documents?

Communication with members is an important part of any association or regulated body’s organization because members are the foundation of their existence. To ease the process, CRM for professional associations is linked to your email, and it can even help you with your newsletter or reminders with a schedule, pre-made models, and automated mailing.

No need for headaches or forgotten important deadlines for some of your members, it can all be linked together.

Welcoming newcomers with an efficient process on your CRM for associations

As the need grows in our country for specialized and well-trained experts in specific fields, welcoming immigrants in your practice with a system that facilitates the approval of their certification could save your regulated body from a crucial labor gap.

Equivalency applications are both a growing need and concern for organizations like yours, and since it can be a load of forms to go through with limited staff, the best CRM for association management can provide technological support that can streamline the process.

What if your online forms were standardized? What if any relevant document could be included digitally with their application online? Your organization would then be able to validate documents, submit applications to the concerned committee and even create a file online for further follow-ups. When needed, alerts could be automatically triggered so your team could take action in a timely manner. And what if all that data could be analyzed later so you could see where the problems are and solve them?

And what if the life of professional associations and regulated bodies could be simplified? We all know that resources can be limited and demands are high, and this is why CRM for your associations can be a terrific addition to your organization. A little bit like a superhuman team member, CRM will help you improve productivity, minimize the performance of redundant tasks and even automate some processes. And meanwhile, you can work to better protect the profession and the public.