The Master Plumbers, a household recognised association, were established in 1891, they are Australia's largest plumbing industry association. An industry leader for over 120 years, they are a trusted source of information, advice and expertise for members, the industry, government and the community.
The Master Plumbers selected AMS based on our high level of experience with data migration and the power of the AMS custom business process work-flow manager that would drive a number of their key business processes, streamlining what used to be laborious paper-based offline practices.
The organisation were previously using iMIS to manage their membership data but found it to be in-flexible and was no longer meeting their requirements. AMS was approached to implement a more agile system that would make it easier to manage membership packages and data as well as a new integrated website, micro-sites, reporting and more targeted communications with their members.
The public website has had a complete design refresh, sporting a responsive website to ensure the website looks a million bucks no matter what device it's being viewed on. Desktops, laptops and mobile devices each have their own adaptation of the design.
The work-flow system now handles a seamless join up and renewal process that allows new and current members to follow a simple step-by-step form wizard to complete new membership applications, or renew their membership, selecting from a number of payment methods such as credit card, PayPal, direct debit or offline payments. Memberships are now seamlessly managed via AMS, all management need to do is monitor memberships as they come in, check they meet their guidelines before approving them.
Once approved, new members can manage their profile and categories that they appear in Find a Plumber section of the website. By simply logging into their personalised dashboard, members can manage all aspects of their membership, access invoices of payments completed, are able to change their payment schedules at anytime, and of course access the wealth of member-only content that the Master Plumbers provide as part of the membership.
It was clear from our first meeting with the AMS team that they were dedicated to delivering a superior database and website that would deliver a less convoluted way to manage our membership than what we had been using for a number of years.
Significant time was spent by AMS to scope the whole project to ensure that we had everything that we needed and more! The team at AMS were fantastic at providing solutions and ideas that would not only benefit our members but allow our staff to spend more time working on other projects and interacting with members.
Our members have been delighted in the significant changes to our find a Master Plumber search function, which now allows e-mail contact from consumers and the ability for members to log into their portal to see how many times their business profile has been viewed by a consumer each month. The ability for our members to see a clear benefit of their membership each month now assists with our member retention and acquisition campaigns.
It was really refreshing to work with an organisation who were honest and clear on what could be delivered from the start The Master Plumbers Association is looking forward to working on the future phases of our project with AMS that will further benefit our members and increase engagement.
I would have no hesitation in recommending AMS to any membership organisation who is looking for a database that will improve their services!
The membership managers were looking for a new system that was more streamlined, user-friendly and had the ability to obtain instant reporting across all membership data.
Working with AMS, current membership data was reviewed and carefully migrated away from iMIS. The data bought across was selectively chosen to ensure it was relevant and accurate. Divisions, user preferences and activities were all brought over from the previous system so as to not lose any historic data. Old data was put into archive but still searchable should the need arise.
Using the AMS Product Manager, membership packages were created based on the rules that govern how each membership level is structured including business rules and price-points. Master Plumbers enjoy the process of now being able to change these and create new packages within moments and have them available for purchase instantly via the website.
AMS tailored the MRM to better facilitate streamlined interactions with members, call staff can identify a member and their membership class so as to quickly assign the enquiry to right person within the organisation.
At a glance, membership managers can see a complete history of all member interaction at either the company or individual level. Current active and completed work-flows can be reviewed also. Simply clicking on any work-flow takes the administrator through to the active work-flow to review data or complete a pending actions.
Master Plumber are now leveraging the AMS custom business process work-flow manager that provides the automation of many of the Plumber's business processes. Replacing offline forms and time-consuming data entry, new members can now follow an easy to use, wizard-like process to sign up for a new membership. A new members simply selects the membership category they fall under based on number of employees and a number of other rules, they are then assigned the appropriate segments and saved into the MRM.
All Master Plumbers are required to do is review the membership, approve it if the correct credentials are met, and the new member is then verified. Upon verification, the new member then gains access to their personalised member-portal where they are able to manage all member-related information including their contact details, membership payments and renewals, manage their profile that appears in the Find a Plumber section of the website and a history of invoices for payments make for event attendance and products purchased.
Leveraging the AMS auto-renewal system, memberships are managed automatically. Members can select from monthly, quarterly or annual payments. Members are able to select from a number of payment options including credit card, direct debit, PayPal or offline payments. Their accounts are auto-debited based on the payment option they have selected.
In addition to the membership applications and renewals, the work-flow manager manages other work-flows such as event registrations and magazine subscriptions.
Master Plumbers are now leveraging the new AMS finance management and reporting system. Any products such as advertising and sponsorship packages, in addition to the management of membership packages, can be created in a matter of moments via the Product Manager. Business rules and price-points are then applied to each new product, once saved, the new product is ready to be sold to members and clients either from via the website or direct. An invoice can be created be simply searching for an individual or company from the MRM, selecting the product to be sold and applying a discount value should it be required. An invoice is instantly sent to the person or company and the new invoice is viewable in the finance module, invoice manager as well as in addition to being stored against the person's or company's card in the MRM.
Finance reporting is crucial to the management of any organisation. The AMS reporting system handles reporting on any of the finance data stored in AMS. AMS users can decide how they wish to filter the financial data by using the advanced field management tool. Once the user has setup all the fields they wish to filter by in the finance section, they are able to run reports on any of the data stored to produce instant and comprehensive reports. Results can be displayed in chart format or exported to Excel. Finance managers can then interact with the charts in real-time playing with the different variants to see instant results. Reports can be saved as favourites so they can be then run at anytime to see real-time results or saved as graphics to be used in offline presentations.
On approval of their membership, new (and current) members immediately gain access to their own personalised dashboard. From here, members manage all aspects of their membership. Based on their level of membership, they are presented with access to a wealth of member-only content that is tailored to their specific membership group.
In addition to access of member-only content, each member has the ability to manage contact points within their company. Master Plumbers allow them to appoint first and second nominees within the member company as well as admin, communication and HR contacts to ensure the correct people within the member company is communicated to.
Each member is entitled to be listed in the Find a Plumber search from the public website. From their dashboard the member selects what type of services they offer, their contact details and the postcodes they service. The number of times their profile is viewed from the public site is also recorded and displayed on their dashboard.
A comprehensive toolbox is also provided so members can store notes on relevant pages which are all gathered conveniently in the member's dashboard. To ensure the usability of the dashboard is functional, favourite pages, links, assets, resources and notes are all managed from the toolbox as well as access to membership payment invoices, renewals and other account related material.
Master Plumbers have a variety of websites that they manage in addition to their main one. AMS are implementing a micro-site management module which enables the Master Plumbers to manage any number of websites, all from the one Content Management System. The power of this is that assets, work-flows and permission sets can be applied to any of the websites created.
First site of the rank will be their training website, all training courses that Master Plumber offer, along with other organisations such as PICAC will also be listed.
As an example of a microsite, check out their latest addition, the Australian Plumbing Industry Magazine website.