The Association of Higher Education Professionals (AHEP) is the professional association for higher education professionals. By connecting with like-minded individuals, members can look beyond their current role and institution and become part of the wider sector. As well as being a representative voice for Higher Education (HE) professionals within the sector, they support and guide members' career ambitions.
AHEP had previously attempted to implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 with another partner, but the project failed. Cantarus took on the Dynamics 365 project within a 6-month window, as their existing membership management system was scheduled to be retired. By utilising Cantarus' prebuilt membership and events modules and working collaboratively, a solution was successfully delivered within the required timeframe.
AHEP are benefitting from the ability to automatically send out direct debit schedules to their members. This is important as it fulfils their direct debit scheme advance notice requirements. This process in the old system was manual, and AHEP staff spent a lot of time pulling together the required information.
Event setup utilising Cantarus' events module takes roughly the same time as the previous CRM solution, but the end product is much more sophisticated.
"The previous solution could not automatically apply the appropriate member rates or restrict bookings to certain groups. The functionality of CRM has improved our communication with delegates, and we’re now able to send automatic booking confirmations and personalised joining instructions. Through the website integration, delegates can view the events they have booked and update their breakout session choices. We can also automatically allocate CPD hours to members after they have attended an event. Management information has much improved throughout CRM, but particularly for events. CRM has allowed us to build views to show how events are performing, how many have booked on, and estimated profits."
– Anna Green, Head of Finance at AHEP
AHEP have been live on Cantarus' modules for 1 year and is starting to see retention rates increase. AHEP believe this is down to their staff having more time to engage with their members. AHEP are planning to make use of the automated renewal reminder functions to build a segmented retention campaign. For instance, a long-standing member who holds a senior role in their university will receive different communications than a new member in a more junior role.
Renewal notifications can be automated, and we have the flexibility to send some notifications by email and others by post. Renewals now run daily, where in the previous system they ran monthly. This allows us to spread the admin workload and smooth out the peaks of activity we experienced when we ran the processes previously. The renewals and reminder notification process in the previous system required a day and a half to be blocked out. Now, most processes are completed with a few keystrokes.
The process for joining AHEP is now much more straightforward.
“With the previous system, processing memberships took a while; we had to batch them and typically it took around a week from receipt of the membership application to welcoming the new member. Now, memberships from the website are processed automatically. Members apply, pay their subscriptions, and are welcomed to the organisation all in around ten minutes and without our office staff being involved.”
– Anna Green, Head of Finance
AHEP have also gained significant benefits regarding their management Information and business intelligence reporting.
The biggest change we have seen since launching CRM is how much information we are able to see about our members. From the main contact page, we can view our communications with them, how long they have been a member, their membership status, the events they have attended, and if they have any outstanding invoices.
This is useful in itself, but additionally, CRM enables us to straightforwardly aggregate and segment this data. This is allowing us to measure our performance much more effectively through member engagement scoring, it helps us to better understand the needs of members, and it enables us to get the right message to the right people through targeted communications.
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