Solution overview
Industry
Financial Services
Solution
End-to-end Membership Engagement Platform
Technology
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing App
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales App
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service (with Customer Portal)
Client
The client assists financial planners with accreditation, professional development, and professional support.
Location
South Africa
Requirement
The client was looking to grow its membership and approached Decision Inc. to build an integrated solution that would attract and onboard new members but also provide a one-stop shop to meet all of its members’ needs.
The client can now manage the whole member process from initial application and onboarding right through to membership renewal and continuing professional development.
The Client
The client is one of the main recognised professional bodies for financial planners in South Africa. In 2012, the client was highly commended by FPSB and awarded Tier 1 Affiliate Status for receiving 96% in the global assessment. This is the highest achievement any affiliate has ever received.
It is the only institution in South Africa to offer the Certified Financial Planner CFP® certification and has been approved by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) as a Recognised Controlling Body (RCB). It assists financial planners with accreditation, professional development, and professional support.
The Requirement
The client was looking to grow its membership and approached Decision Inc. to build an integrated solution that would attract and onboard new members but also provide a one-stop shop to meet all of its members’ needs.
From the marketing/sales side, the solution needed to manage targeted marketing campaigns to attract potential members (lead generation). These leads needed to be qualified and nurtured through to successful membership application. The membership onboarding process needed to be fully digital and facilitated through the client’s website.
In terms of meeting the needs of current members, members needed to access a self-service portal where they could read and download relevant documents and carry out activities to accrue continuing professional development accreditations. They also needed to apply for events, track their ongoing learning, and make payments within this easy-to-use member portal. Members also needed to be able to give feedback on events and learning programs and access commonly asked FAQs. The portal needed to be able to manage service requests, by logging a service ticket and seeing it through to resolution.
The client required this solution to integrate with its existing systems: their finance and ERP systems (Sage Evolution 200), Microsoft Teams, Lexis Nexis, LinkedIn (careers), Power BI for reporting, bulk mailing (Everlytic / Mail Chimp), DocuSign (digital signatures), Forms Builder (Adobe), Social Networks, Sprout Social (reporting), Google Analytics and bespoke Content management platforms written using Joomla and WordPress.
Compliance, security and governance standards needed to be high and all member information needed to be POPI and GDPR compliant. Additionally, the application that facilitated continuing professional development needed to be compliant with SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model).
The Solution
Decision Inc. spent time reviewing the client’s current business processes and technology systems and proposed customising Microsoft Dynamics 365, a leading enterprise portfolio of intelligent business applications, to provide the technological basis of the solution.
The advantage of using the Dynamics 365 suite of applications is that all data resides in the same database. This means that all information around a Member can be accessed together: from first engagement as a potential member (a sales lead) through to membership renewals, completion of accreditations etc.
Built on Microsoft Azure, integration with other applications is quick to complete, often using one of the many pre-built connectors. With it all being hosted in local Microsoft datacentres, security levels are extremely high and the Dynamics suite is set up to be GDPR and PoPI compliant.
The following modules were installed and customised:
-
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing App
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales App
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service (with Customer Portal)
The marketing app is a powerful enterprise marketing automation application. This was customised so that the client could target potential members through automated campaigns and workflows. The marketing app works seamlessly with the sales app where leads can be qualified and engaged and remarketed to. Sales pipelines and sales funnels can easily be visualised giving up-to-date statistics on drop-off at each stage of the new member attraction process.
The applications were integrated with their website so that new members could apply for membership and pay their membership fees through the website and follow a structured onboarding process. Behind the scenes, Microsoft Dynamics tracks all this activity so that trends can be reported on and improvements made to the customer journey and lead conversion rates.
The customer service app was customised to allow members to access the content they need through a members-only area of their website powered by the Customer Portal element of the customer service application. This portal surfaces relevant content and allows members to see their membership status and accreditation status and manage their payments. The case management features were activated allowing members to log support tickets in response to any difficulties they were having.
The solution was integrated with all the other required systems so that the client now has a single view of its members and can see all member data in one place.
Decision Inc.’s specialised training team trained users within the company on the solution and Decision Inc. consultants were present when Go-Live occurred to ensure a smooth business transition and fast user adoption.
The Benefits and value realised
Since its implementation, the client now has a scalable solution to manage its entire membership engagement process.
MANAGE AND TRACK INTERACTIONS
They can attract and onboard new members and then provide a useful environment for them to manage their interactions.
SINGLE PLATFORM ACTIVITIES
They can ensure members are engaged in professional development activities and have a single place to advertise and manage courses, events, and engagements.
IMPROVED CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
The client can now easily see trends and insights on their members and have access to the data they need to continually improve their engagements with their members.
To find out more about our Customer Engagement Solution view here.
About Decision Inc.
Decision Inc. is a global leader in information-driven transformation with a core focus on data, digital and performance intelligence.
Our expertise in technology and industry specialisations have enabled us to help companies around the world make better decisions faster.
Our emphasis on local excellence and global scale enables us to bring clients best of breed technology solutions that enable significant improvement whilst leveraging our Global Research and Innovation teams to accelerate the time to insight. Our local consulting teams are experts in the implementation, support, and execution of these solutions and work with our clients to deliver real results and improvement.
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