I had the opportunity to attend TMA Resources Annual Users Group meeting (TAUG) last week in Albuquerque. They put on a very impressive event, including two sessions specifically focused on AMS consultants.
TMAR is focused on their new AMS product dubbed Personify. The product looks very slick, including some nice integrations with Business Objects for dashboards, analytics, etc. I don’t have any ideas on pricing at this point, but I’m fairly certain this product will be out of reach of smaller associations (those with budgets under $5 million).
In one session on customer service, I got to hear the story of an association that had raised its dues by $5. As a result, as many as 25% of their members were paying the old dues, even though the new dues were clearly printed on the invoice. The customers were saying, in effect, sorry, I’m not paying higher dues. The association was seeing this as a “customer service” issue. I’m sorry, but if a quarter of your members are refusing to pay a nominal dues increase, you don’t have a customer service issue, you have a business model and value communications issue. No amount of customer service training or database improvements is going to fix that!
UPDATE: Full disclosure: EDM is an independent third-party consulting firm. This means we have no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this blog. We provide unbiased opinions on what we see.