It takes a village… to build great association management software

Our sales team often uses the phrase that Avectra’s association management software “captures the best practices of almost 1,000 associations and puts it to work for you.”   The best thing about that line is… it’s absolutely true.

In fact, more than 1/3 of the new features added in each product release come from customer suggestions user requests. (The rest are innovations and technology tools or industry driven improvements)

At Avectra, we believe user input is central to the success of our innovative membership management systems and have multiple channels for collecting the feedback drives improvements and new features.

• Customer Support Systems – As part of Avectra’s customer support system, our users submit requests for new features into our computerized tracking system. This adds them to our production systems and helps capture and quantify requested features. If we see enough requests for the same thing, that functionality moves higher on the list.
• User Group Feedback – TeamProCommunity.com, Avectra’s online user group for netFORUM Team and Pro users, includes a discussion group for users to discuss potential system enhancements. It provides an opportunity for users to collaborate and give feedback on potential system improvements, see if an idea is a “one-off” or would benefit other users, and help the development team prioritize requests.   Additionally, our teams meet with the Avectra Users Group (for our netFORUM Enterprise users) to review the product roadmap and discuss new functionality.
• In-person meetings – We regularly get groups of customers together to discuss the netFORUM product and the features they want. (In fact, this month we are having several of those meetings.) This is an opportunity for Avectra leadership and the development teams to discuss product improvements in one-on-one environment and get feedback and prioritize efforts.

In addition to these quantifiable resources, our entire team is constantly speaking with customers to identify what’s working, what isn’t and what’s needed.   This feedback is added to the mix in deciding about new tools and features to be added to our association software.

The bottom line is that product development and deciding what features to add to our association management software is a collaborative effort – a blend of customer feedback and developers who bring it to reality.

And the end benefit is that each client is able to benefit from the best practices, insight and experiences of the entire community of users.