How to Embrace Technology to Serve Your Members Better (Part 2) Associations can access On Line Services in a lot of different ways. Remember from my last column that On Line Services is also called the Information Super Highway. It is a way for association members to communicate with one another through a computer hooked up to a telephone line by using a modem. According to Bob Treadway, a Sacramento based national speaker, On Line Services is the most dramatic of the new non simultaneous communication for associations.
One way is to get on line is to affiliate or take space on an existing system, such as CompuServe, America On Line, Prodigy, Delphi, or another commercial system. The other way is to buy or establish an address or location on the overall worldwide system known as the Internet, and allow people to reach you through the Internet. Probably the simplest way to incorporate On Line Services is to affiliate with one of the commercial services that exists now.
Meeting Professionals International, the American Marketing Association, and other organizations are already doing so.
Some associations are taking leadership roles. Bob Treadway's research revealed an innovative organization that is doing some impressive work on line. They are the National Tour Association (NTA), headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky. They are about to roll out their On Line Service to all of their various members. Their association is made up of tour operators. Their member companies put together tours for various individuals who take tours by bus, airline, boat, and other modes of transportation in locations around the world. Their membership is already on line, in most cases, because they are connected to various travel reservations systems.
The travel reservation system was one of the first forms of On Line Services offered throughout American business. The NTA is offering a dual system. The first system is for NTA members only, and the second is a system that incorporates the National Tour Association with various vendors and suppliers of products to those types of businesses. On the NTA members only side, they will have electronic mail, directories of members, the ability for ongoing discussions in the form of forums and various bulletin board services, and the kinds of traditional On Line Services that commercial services have. Members will have the option to conference together, have meetings where the text of a meeting is taking place even though the individuals are located in various areas around the country. It's the text equivalent of a conference call, meeting or teleconference where the individuals are hooked together by other means. But it's much less expensive. NTA is outsourcing the establishment of the On Line Service to a company that is in Montana. They are looking at this as not being an expenditure as much as an investment, and they believe this service will generate significant revenues for them over the future. They feel that revenues will come in the form of vendors paying to access different members, the kinds of usage fees that they will get from their members, and the fact that they will build and develop a stronger relationship with their members.
They also feel that in their particular case that time is short, that they won't have much more time to establish this before alternative commercial services are offered to their membership. NTA sees their effort as both an offensive and a defensive form of marketing.
Associations should also look to future technologies once their organization is hooked up. In the On Line Services we'll soon see video versions of the same type of service. Conversations and meetings will be done on video. The expense of technology will be reduced dramatically by competition as telephone companies, cable companies and other suppliers in the business of passing information between individuals, businesses and groups of individuals throughout the U.S. and the world compete.
These new technologies basically provide different means of communication between associations and their membership. Today, most associations have only two forms of communication the telephone and the mail. In many cases, they also have fax machines. In addition, they can communicate with their members in the most expensive means possible simultaneous, face to face communication typically at association meetings and functions. But the new technology gives associations more choices. Computers, telephones, and fax machines, give the association the opportunity to take advantage of these technologies.
If associations don't take advantage of non simultaneous communications in the future, either one of two things will happen. They will either see their membership flatten out and begin to decline, or they will suddenly be confronted with another organization that will compete with them for their members' loyalty. If the association has members that are members of their association as well as another association, the association that does not use high tech will put itself in jeopardy.
The barriers to entry into markets is becoming lower and lower. To compete, associations need to look around at what kinds of consolidations will take place within various industries. Associations will begin to band together and form consortiums or alliances in order to be able to compete more readily. Cooperation as well as competition are the two things that associations need to emphasize in the future. Technology will be the way to accomplish both.
Patricia Fripp is a San Francisco based professional speaker on the subjects of Change, Teamwork, Customer Service, Promoting Business and Speaking Skills. She is also the author of 'Get What You Want' and Past-President of the National Speakers Association. For more information please feel free to contact her.
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