The Association Transformation: Data, Analytics, and Insights

Associations are quickly changing the way they run with the onset of digitization. Here’s one of the ways it’s giving them an edge.

There is a paradigm shift taking place right this moment. Organizations of all kinds are making the transition from the physical to the digital in their daily operations. Data is being gathered, processed, and evaluated at a pace that was unfathomable before.

Information that simply couldn’t be collected before, such as who is coming to your website and how, is being tracked instantly. Operational costs such as having to interface with employees, members, or customers (depending on the type of business), can be greatly reduced with the ability to make many of those interactions online processes.

Information that was once disparate and a trying task to consolidate, like the various profiles of members, can now easily be put in one place via cloud technologies. Many associations have caught on to the numerous benefits of going digital, and yet a significant minority are still unsure of or are concerned about the hassle such a transition will bring.

We at Innovexa Solutions know as well anyone the incredible value the integration of digital tools can have on associations, as well as how easy that integration can be, and we want to spread the word.

We can’t possibly detail them all in a single article, nor do we want to get too technical. But piece-by-piece and article-by-article, we hope to show you the bigger picture. On today’s agenda: analytics.

Data Gathering

Analytics is the collecting, managing, and expressing of data that can, in turn, be used for superior decision-making. It’s what takes raw data and makes it mean something — something that can then be actionable. Thus, the first stage of this larger process is the collection of data.

There are a variety of analytics platforms, the most prominent of which is Google Analytics. Once you have yours set up and connected to your website, it will start gathering data. The data will be pure numbers. How many people have visited your website, for example.

Already, this is useful information, as it can be a indication of success or failure, but of course, there’s a great deal of refinement left in this process.

Producing Analytics

The next stage in this data journey is rendering the data into something that can be understood—the analytics. As seen in the picture above, analytics gives you the necessary specifics, often with the help of tables, charts, and graphs to make sense of the data.

At this point you’ll be able to see not only how many people have visited your website but from which locations, with what devices, for how long, and so on. It is having this precise information that allows you to evaluate your operations and strategies thus far. Enabling you to see not just their general success of failure but the specific avenues through which excelled or fell short.

Gaining Insights

Finally, the last stage of this process is insights. This means reviewing the analytics, selecting the most crucial information from them, and coming to conclusions about that information so that it can be used for the running of your association.

This is where you might, for example, see that there’s been an increase in people visiting your website (data), in turn see that most of them are from Toronto using iPhones (analytics), and then gain the insight that people from Toronto on their iPhones engage more with your website. From there you could make the decision to make your website more mobile-friendly than before.

All in all, this is just one facet of what digitization can bring an association, yet we hope that you can see just how much this single facet can deliver for you. Analytics and the subsequent insights you can obtain from them can dramatically impact the way your business operates—saving it money and making its operation smarter and more efficient.

Key Takeaways

• Takeaway 1: Raw information—data—is gathered.
• Takeaway 2: Analytics takes that data and makes it discernible.
• Takeaway 3: You can then gain insights from the analytics that highlight the most pertinent details for your association’s decision-making.
• Takeaway 4: Through this process your association can cut costs, improve efficiency, and make more educated decisions.

To participate in the digital readiness survey we’re currently conducting, click the following link: http://bit.ly/insurvey-07