Wicket - made us more productive, and our members happier
Our organization is small (<25 employees), and our membership, we are proud to say, is a robust 15000+.
As a voluntary association membership, we operate under the unofficial association motto of 'Do more, with less!'.
We have a diverse membership structure which spans across the country and is structured with several components, all of which need to access the membership data in some form or another.
Our old CRM/AMS was clunky, no ability to integrate, and up-time was substantially hindered (especially around renewal period which occurs once per calendar year). When emailing our members, it was a requirement to build them in HTML (requiring an HTML trained staff out of a team of <25, not ideal). With many components requiring access, licensing costs made up a substantial portion of our monthly expenses.
We required a change, and so, undertook an introspective look at what would our ideal CRM/AMS look like. No fibbing here, we constructed a diagram of a 'core' which would house our members integral data, and this 'core' would then speak to best-in-business applications. Our search began, and led us to some of the biggest names in the business, that was accompanied by the biggest fees in the business, not an option.
We then happened upon Wicket, the diagram we had in our boardroom, looked eerily similar to the Wicket structure. I won't bore you with all the back and forth, but Wicket was our answer.
We were supported througout the entire process at an engagement level only seen with an excited, and bright, team. The Wicket team took all of our needs and though every need could not be covered immediately, our very 'core' needs were met, and then some. The platform performs at an exceptional level, and continuous improvements only better the experience (heard directly from our members, which is the ultimate satisfaction). With no limits (re: licenses) on accessing the data, we are able to configure access for our components so they see the information they need, and nothing more. The interface is extremely friendly, and I even had new staff comment that they had never engaged with an AMS that was this easy to use (another bonus). Onboarding a new member into the environment takes minutes, and that involves many options to navigate, and is literally as quick as you are able to process the order.
When looking at the best-in-business applications we wanted to integrate with our number one priority, email. The vast majority of our membership (confirmed by a recent survey, 95%) want notifications, and communication in email format. We needed Wicket to speak with Mailchimp (what we believe to be best-in-business) seamlessly. This is what we achieved with Wicket, not only providing our national office access, but all of our components as well. The integration has provided us with an enormous jump in efficiency, and ability to react quickly for communications when required. This may not be new to many of you reading this, but to see an email address change done within the Wicket platform, and immdiately access Mailchimp and see the change within seconds, was a great leap forward for our organization. The next step was how well it integrated with our website, and again with our components (on differing platforms). To again see a member onboarded, and immediately be provided members-only access as well as single sign on abilities with our components sites, provided an unparalleled experience for our members.
We encourage you to reach out to Wicket if you are looking for a postive change to your organization. The team is exceptional to work with, the AMS platform is user-friendly, the ability to use other best-in-service applications, has resulted in improved processes, better staff engagement, and ultimately, more satisfied members.
Best of luck in your search.
