The future of associations
Resistance to adopting technology is common, yet associations are set to reap huge
rewards once they embrace it instead, writes association futurist Omer Soker.
“Technology can make life profoundly better
for associations once they address the five
most common reasons for resisting it,” says
Lloyd Grosse of Internet Vision Technologies
(Association Online) who has worked with
dozens of associations to transform their
member services.
The top three resisters of modern cloud-
based solutions are associations who feel
their members are not technology savvy,
staff or management who are technologically
afraid and those who want to embrace
technology but have no money. The second
resisters are those who have already spent
heavily on server-based legacy systems and
are scared to scrap such a large investment
and daunted by managing the change.
The third are those with partly integrated
technology across departments and are
trying to make do.
Technology solutions are designed to
reduce the administrative burden so that
associations are not bound by it. The
problem is that associations generally don’t
like to fund administration. Integrated
systems allow for an association to grow
without the strain of an expediential
administrative burden. Staff employed to do
more events or recruit and retain members
can find that the successes they achieve can
result in them getting swamped by more
and more administration. Paradoxically,
wanting to avoid administration can create
the very bureaucracy associations are looking
to avoid. Technology can create structural
efficiencies by moving everything online
with an automated system that does all the
thinking itself in line with an association’s
needs, both as a best practice generalist
solution and customised individual options
where required.
Any fear around whether members are ready
for technology or staff are capable of handling
it can be mitigated by the knowledge that
digital transformation is already here and
growing. The simple truth is that associations
will be left behind if they don’t embrace
technology and change. However, caution is
still required. Nothing beats due diligence,
and getting real references from others who
have used a system being recommended to
you is critical. An even better way to mitigate
risk is to engage with an established, trusted
system that is already being used by other
associations, who are similar to yours. If the
technology has worked for so many others
it means you can make yours work too. This
creates a technology or software community
in your sector, so that your organisation is
not exposed alone.
Ultimately, most of the processes shared
by associations are the same. After all, the
process around membership acquisition is
the same, even if membership benefits or
prices are different. The process around event
management is essentially the same, even if
the topics, speakers, delegates or exhibitors
are different. The same is true of education,
payment systems, market