Can you put a price on effective membership management?
There’s never a shortage of material when it comes to cost benefit analysis, impact analysis and payback periods on commercial investments. Why? Because it’s useful intelligence and helps reassure those responsible for making investments on behalf of their organisation that they are making the right investments.
In the context of membership management – or, to be more precise, membership CRM systems – the same rings true. After all, whether you’re a finance director, a membership director or a membership manager, you’ll want to be confident that your membership CRM platform investment is going to be worthwhile (and stand the test of time).
As the architect of Silverbear 365, our flagship member CRM system that is built on Dynamics 365, we’re often asked is Dynamics 365 the best for membership management? For a whole host of reasons, many of which we’ve covered in previous articles (and will certainly be addressed in future pieces, too), our view is yes.
However, recently we’ve been asked a more specific question: can the positive impact of Dynamics 365 be quantified? A really great example of this was demonstrated by The Expert Witness Insitute (EWI), who did a benefit analysis netting a 94% reduction in manual processes since adopting Silverbear, read full article HERE. So, in a bid to explain why we think the best membership CRM software is built on Dynamics 365, here are Silverbear’s favourite and most compelling reasons for building your member CRM system around Microsoft.
Silverbear's Reasons for building a CRM system around Microsoft
A penny saved is a penny earned
Yes, we know it’s a cliché – but clichés exist because they’re often used and generally built on facts. And when it comes to facts, Nucleus Research is pretty good at delivering. In 2018, the organisation produced a report that researched the results of Dynamics 365 deployments. The result? Dynamics 365 delivers $16.97 for every dollar (or £12.52 for every 74 pence) spent*. As far as ROI goes, 1,597 per cent is pretty high. When it comes to choosing a membership CRM platform, you want to create as much value as possible - not only for your membership, but also for your organisation, too. The case for Dynamics 365 here is difficult to argue with.
On-premise means on-going costs
On-premise membership CRM solutions are expensive to maintain. There are costs attributable to storage, upgrades and server refreshes. A report by Forrester entitled The Total Economic ImpactTM Of Migrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Dynamics 365 In the Cloud, which focused on four customers that migrated to Dynamics 365 from Dynamics CRM 2011 and 2013, revealed that in doing so, they saved $60,249 per server for networking, hardware and software costs. They also saved $29,912 attributable to heating, cooling, electric and maintenance costs, too. With membership CRM in the Cloud, these high operational costs disappear.
Use the experts – but only when you need to
As membership CRM specialists, we’re experts at developing bespoke membership CRM systems for our customers. As you would probably expect, large scale development takes time and can quickly incur high costs. With Dynamics 365’s Power Platform, ALL users can work on forms, fields and low-code customisation themselves, which means that you would only need to engage us for the more technical aspects of membership management platform creation. The same Forrester report suggests that as much as 30 per cent of CRM developers’ expensive time can be saved for more complex work as a result of Dynamics 365’s functionality.
Compatibility is critical
Whether you’re looking for out-of-the-box association management software or considering creating your own member CRM software, the ability to easily integrate with other software is essential. Membership organisations using Dynamics 365 can seamlessly integrate their system with Office 365 and SharePoint. And let’s face it, who doesn’t use Outlook, Word and Excel throughout their organisation.
And the total cost of ownership is…
… a significant seven per cent less when migrating from Dynamics CRM 2013 to Dynamics 365 in the Cloud. Not only that, but the same report suggested that Dynamics 365 provides a return on investment of 63 per cent when it comes to IT savings and impacts to end users.
*Source: Nucleus Research, document number S148 September 2018
*Source: The Total Economic ImpactTM Of Migrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Dynamics 365 In The Cloud
Explore the benefits of Dynamics 365 for membership organisations
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