Matrix Group International

Tag: Strategy

  • Getting Started with eLearning and How Mobile is Transforming Professional Development

    Getting Started with eLearning and How Mobile is Transforming Professional Development

    At the ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) Tech Conference last week, I attended a terrific session called “Anytime, Anywhere eLearning: How Mobile Transforms Education.” Wendy Rath and Mary Rehm of PRMIA (Professional Risk Managers’ International Association), as well as Ken Parker from NextThought, did a terrific job of articulating PRMIA’s eLearning journey.

     

    Background on PRMIA and its Professional Development Program:

    PRMIA is a professional society that creates an open forum for the development and promotion of the risk profession. A big part of how PRMIA accomplishes its mission is professional development and education. But recently, PRMIA education appeared to be in trouble. Registrations were way down and the association had to cancel a number of meetings.

    What did PRMIA decide to do? Instead of just blasting out more emails, PRMIA decided to go deep and learn more about what’s really happening with their members and their educational needs and objectives.
     
    PRMIA conducted a member survey and learned:
    • Members want more learning opportunities, not less.
    • Members are constrained in terms of time and money.
    • Members want online learning.

    The eLearning Solution

    Knowing what they learned about members’ education need and desires, PRMIA got to work.
    • They took a long, hard look at their technology and realized that much of it was already conducive to eLearning. Much of it supported a mobile experience. The rub was that PRMIA was not taking advantage of these features.
    • PRMIA invested in a new learning mangement platform; they selected Articulate Storyline.
    • They started re-developing their in person courses to be offered online.
    • They offered courses online, in real time, but also recorded courses for on demand viewing later.

    Lessons Learned

    After about a year of effort and redevelopment, here’s what PRMIA learned:
    • When re-developing courses, their winning formula was to split up a course into 10 nano lessons, each about 5-10 minutes long.
    • The sessions work best when they are standalone, i.e., members can pick and choose the sessions that interest them, and don’t need to have taken any prerequisites in order to take a specific sesson.
    • When offering online courses, you need a really dynamic speaker AND really great slides. Otherwise, it’s hard to keep the attention of the students.
    • eLearning must be mobile-friendly. Test out your online courses yourself on a phone and tablet and make sure you can navigate the environment easily.
    • Solicit feedback from registrants and have a plan to respond to comments.
    Is your organization ready for an eLearning strategy? 
  • Lessons from a CIO on Work, Senior Staff Engagement and the Permission-Based Economy

    Lessons from a CIO on Work, Senior Staff Engagement and the Permission-Based Economy

    At AMS Fest a couple of weeks ago, I got a chance to sit down with Reggie Henry, Chief Information and Engagement Officer at the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE).

    I always ask Reggie “what’s new?” and “what are you thinking about?” Reggie *never* fails to impress me his insights and curiosity. Here are some of the things he’s been pondering lately:

    We need to change how we work. Reggie says there isn’t a shortage of tools out there to facilitate work and collaboration, but we’re still too focused on the tools themselves, whether it’s Microsoft Word, or Slack or Skype. Instead, he says the tools should be secondary to the goals and the work, which is why he loves Office 365.

    He gave me a tour of how ASAE uses Office 365 and it’s breathtaking. Every team has projects and each project has notes, conversations, reports and so much more. Staff work within each project to share information, ask questions, author documents, etc. They make great use of Teams, Planner and Delve and I have to admit to being really jealous!

    Senior staff need to use the tools. Reggie says organizations are innovating and investing in fabulous tools and systems, but senior staff are not using them and that’s a mistake. Senior staff need to show their staff that they, too, are interested in the tools, that they are part of the conversations, and willing to try new things.
     

    Be wiling to forget what we know to design the future. Reggie and I talked about how “experts” are often the enemy of innovation because experts think something can’t be done, what can go wrong, what has gone wrong, etc. But how many awesome things have happened because someone didn’t believe it couldn’t be done? I’m thinking about the fabulous badge builder that a junior staff person created in MatrixMaxx. He asked his Product Manager what her dream functionality was and then he just did it.

    How prepared are you for the permission-based economy? We’re moving toward the day when organizations need to get permission for nearly everything they do with member and customer data, from location services, to cookies, to purchase history, to demographics. Is your organization ready to handle this level of granularity in your handling, storage and use of your customer data?

    Many thanks to Reggie for his insights!

  • How to Have a Really Great Search on Your Website

    How to Have a Really Great Search on Your Website

    We hear this a lot from people who manage websites and navigate websites, “the site search sucks!” So what can you do to make search not suck on your site?

    Here at Matrix Group, we believe a good site search is the result of many things:

    • Good search technology. There are many products on the market, from the free Google custom search, to the very pricey Google Search Appliance, to commercial products like SearchBlox and open source products like Solr and Lucene. Your vendor can help you navigate the products and find one that is right for you. We like SearchBlox and here’s my Director of Software Engineering on the many reasons why we prefer to implement SearchBlox these days.
    • Effective site search setup. I’m working with a client on a search project and here are just some of her organization’s requirements: she needs her search to index multiple websites, allow filtering of the results by category and source website, index members-only content, support featured results, and allow some content collections to be prioritized over others. A good search solution supports all of these requirements and more. A good search partner helps you develop effective requirements and can implement the solution properly.
    • Good, deep content. Our association and nonprofit clients rarely lack good content, but it is important to take stock of your content, archive what’s outdated or redundant, and keep only the best online. I ask clients to meet as an organization and come up with the topics that they want to be known for on the web, and then audit their content to see if they have ample content on that topic. For example, if I ran Worldchefs and I wanted my site to be known on the web as the place to go if you want to be a culinary chef, I would make sure we have the following types of content:
      • How to be a chef
      • The training you need to become a chef
      • How it takes to become a chef
      • Training for chefs
      • The qualities of a great chef
      • Are great chefs born or made?
      • Etc.
    • Good content preparation. It’s not enough to have good content. Your content has to be optimized for search. Here are some example of best practices: descriptive and unique title tags and H1 headlines on all pages, properties populated in PDF documents, all content available to be crawled, and categories populated and displayed on the page and in metadata.
    • A good understanding of what good search results look like. Sometimes, clients tell me their search sucks. So I ask them to give me examples of 20 searches that people conduct on their site and what great search results look like. If they can’t tell me, we work together to define it. Only then can we refine the search technology, weight the content, and customize the results for the best results.
    • Search analytics. How will you know that your site search is working (or not working?) if you don’t have good analytics? Did you even know that you can have search analytics? Here are some examples: you can track the volume of searches, the search terms being entered, the number of results, and so much more. If you have analytics, be sure to look regularly at what people are searching for and then conduct those searches yourself. Are the results what you expect and want visitors to see?

    My biggest concern with site search is that people complain a lot about it but organizations are rarely willing to invest the time and money to have a really great search. Search is undervalued in that way. I hope that with this post, more organizations understand what goes into having a really great search.

     

  • An Executive Director’s Guide to Getting the Most Out of Your Next Conference

    I recently had coffee with Carol Singer Neuvelt, Executive Director of NAEM. NAEM is a professional association that empowers corporate leaders to advance environmental stewardship, create safe and healthy workplaces, and promote global sustainability.

    Carol says that one of NAEM’s biggest member benefits is its peer-led educational program, during which members share what they’ve done at their companies.

    “How do you make sure members get the most out of these conferences?” I asked Carol.

    Turns out Carol has three rules for getting the most out of a conference and she doesn’t hesitate to remind her members of these three rules at every turn.

    1. Learn something. This sounds so obvious, but how many of us decide to learn something? Carol says that if we go into each session with an open mind and a keen intention to learn at least one thing, the conference will be a success.
    2. Participate in the conversation. Carol says passively attending a conference is not enough. We should ask questions during sessions, interact with the speakers and attendees during the breaks, post comments on social media, and otherwise make our voices heard.
    3. Make a friend. This is my favorite pro tip from Carol. She’s basically telling us to get off our phones and make a new friend. At lunch, during dinner, at breakfast, during a reception. Introduce yourself, explain what you do and why you’re at the conference, and look for ways to connect with others.

    I loved these tips so much, I had to share. They’re so obvious and yet so wise and so needed. I hope you’ll think about these tips as you head out to your next conference and encourage your staff and co-workers to do the same.

  • What Does Digital Transformation Mean for an Association or Non-Profit?

    What Does Digital Transformation Mean for an Association or Non-Profit?

    What does digital transformation mean for an association or non-profit? What does this transformation look like?

    These were two of the questions posed by Teri Carden, Founder of ReviewMyAMS and organizer of AMS Fest 2017, held a couple of weeks ago in Chicago. AMS Fest is a conference devoted to bringing together Association Management Software (AMS) companies and association executives looking for a new system to power their organizations.

    I saw lots of scribbled answers about using data to make better decisions, paying attention to data, having advanced analytics, next generation data maturity, etc.

    To be honest, these answers leave me cold. If an organization has great analytics and uses it to make better decisions, has it been digitally transformed?

    Webster defines transformation as “an act, process, or instance of transforming or being transformed.” The verb transform has multiple meanings:

    1. to change in composition or structure
    2. to change the outward form or appearance of
    3. to change in character or condition

    To transform something, therefore, is to make it new or completely different. If organizations do something different or differently, it has not necessarily been transformed.

    In my mind, an organization has been transformed when it no longer recognizes itself. When it engages in activities and behaviors that would have been unthinkable five years ago. When its decision-making and governance have been upended. When it attracts and retains a different class of members and staff. When members say “I don’t recognize my association.”

    And while a transformation is not necessarily positive, I think the only type of transformation we should concern ourselves with is the kind that is positive – the kind that results in growth, and ushers in a period of self-renewal.

    Data and data analytics no doubt play a huge role in any digital transformation, and even paying attention to data may represent a big change in some organizations. But analytics is only a means to the transformation that many organizations seek and desire today.

  • When Redesigning Your Website, Don’t Confuse Goals with Requirements

    When Redesigning Your Website, Don’t Confuse Goals with Requirements

    I read a lot of RFPs and I attend a lot of website redesign kickoff meetings. The most important questions I ask are, “Why redesign? Why now?”

    I usually get answers like:

    • Our website needs to mobile-friendly
    • The website needs a faceted search
    • Our site search sucks
    • The website isn’t user-friendly

    While these are all perfectly good reasons, I think of these statements as requirements, not goals.

    When Matrix Group is working on a project, we strive to understand the measures of success. If we launch a site that is gorgeous, user-friendly, mobile-friendly and has a great search, will we have been successful? Sure… BUT is the new site generating membership leads, encouraging downloads of research, generating more revenue, raising awareness through better ranking in search, and ultimately bringing in more members and customers?

    Those are the goals we want to ferret out during kickoffs and discovery. How is the new site ultimately supporting the strategic and growth goals of your association?

    In my mind, we won’t know the answer for six to 12 months after launch. That’s scary. It’s so much easier to say the new site is a success because the board loves it and it’s easier to update. But after spending $50,000, $100,000, $150,000 or more and countless staff hours, don’t you want to be able to point to more quantitative results related to your mission and strategic plan?

  • How Google Docs and Google Slides Changed Biz Dev at Matrix Group

    How Google Docs and Google Slides Changed Biz Dev at Matrix Group

    A few years ago, Matrix Group Creative Director Alex Pineda suggested that we ditch PowerPoint and move to Google Slides. The reason? Collaborating on a PPT file is really hard. We used to pass around huge files via email or rely on the network share. Alex came up with a beautiful template and the rest is history.

    Today, when the marketing or biz dev team is working on the slides for a webinar or pitch, we all gather in one room (the remote folks call in from home), get on a conference line, share the slides and get to work. It is mind-boggling how awesome this experience is. We’ll talk about a new slide, Leah will create it and Alex will make it beautiful. Or I’ll move slides around while Leah is proofreading. In real-time, at such a low cost – it’s ridiculous. No Sharepoint, no programming.

    18 months ago, we decided to give Google Docs a try for drafting proposals. It was fabulous except for one thing. The Google Docs Table of Contents didn’t have page numbers; I guess Google assumed everyone would be viewing documents online. Ugh, this was a dealbreaker because the new biz team creates PDF files of proposals and sends them on to clients, prospects and consultants.

    Then, about a month ago, we realized that Google Docs now has page numbers in the Table of Contents. We decided to give Docs another try. But when should we try? I don’t know about you, but there’s never really a good time in a busy agency to switch to a new system, especially one for authoring proposals.

    But then we had two weeks (a luxury!) on one proposal and we decided to give it a go. We migrated our proposal language and styles, then Alex got to work. He added more color, added editable graphic elements, updated the default font to be our official font, and created graceful table layouts.

    Last week, five of us worked on the proposal in real-time. I wrote up the solution. Nick updated the bios. Bryan checked to make sure all elements were in place and worked up the timeline and budget. Leah proofed and edited. Alex used his designer’s eye to make the proposal gorgeous. “Yay,” Alex said, “I can finally make our proposals look amazing!” Gosh, even the PDF of the proposal looked great.

    I can honestly say that switching to Google Docs has been life-changing.
    • We are no longer passing around large files.
    • We save so much time because we can work at once on the same document.
    • While there is always a document “owner,” everyone can make a contribution.
    • Slides and proposals are now viewable AND editable from my phone!!!

    I still use Word for contracts and tasks orders because clients and attorneys like to work in Word to track changes. Next week, I’ll talk about how Matrix Group uses Google Docs to write up and collaborate on spec documents. Maybe in the future, I’ll negotiate a contract in Google Docs!

    If you haven’t experienced the life-changing magic of collaborating on a Google Doc or Google Slides, now’s the time! And if you’re already on the bandwagon, please share your experiences!

  • Why There is Still Room for a Small, Local Player in the AMS Space

    Why There is Still Room for a Small, Local Player in the AMS Space

    Last month, some of the largest AMS (association management software) companies (YourMembership, Abila, Aptify and NimbleAMS) joined forces to create Community Brands, which they describe as “a powerful and unified family of brands and a connected eco-system of software and services to better serve associations, nonprofits and government entities.”

    One can quibble over whether or not Community Brands will be a “family” of complementary or competing brands. But for a company like Matrix Group, with our web-based MatrixMaxx AMS, the big question is: In this age of mega-mergers, is there still room for a small, local player? Can we compete with the big guys for clients and talent?

    I’m confident that the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

    Many years ago, the book club at Matrix Group read Small Giants by Bo Burlingham, Editor-at-Large at Inc. magazine. In the book, Bo writes about 14 companies that are small and growing or small and choosing to stay small. In all cases, they have chosen excellence over growth.

    Excellence over growth has always been my mantra. If growth made sense in any given year, we went for it, but never at the expense of technical excellence, customer service, customer intimacy and terrific user experience.

    Sure, in many ways, being small, niche and custom is anti-trend. Aren’t we all shopping at Amazon and big box retailers? Aren’t we most impressed by the companies that have big, booming growth and huge total revenue numbers (often ignoring net income; we rarely hear about that). But on the other hand, there’s a movement to support small, local businesses. Think of the millennials who prefer independent coffee shops, bookstores and clothing shops.There’s a reason they prefer small and local and I’d wager it’s because they get a more personalized, friendly, and tailored experience.

    I spoke with a few clients over the past few weeks and they told me that they like working with Matrix Group because:

    • We have an amazing staff
    • Our work is of very high quality
    • We offer superior technical solutions on the AMS and custom sides of the business
    • We are easy to work with, easy to reach
    • We listen and respond to their needs
    • They never feel like just another client among hundreds or thousands
    • We have a track record of success
    • They know we’ll do what it takes to help them be successful
    • They get customized, personal attention and ideas

    While small companies don’t have a monopoly on the above characteristics, somehow, smaller companies are more likely to take the time to really get to know their customers.

    As for the war on talent, I absolutely love this opinion piece by columnist Gene Marks in Inc. Magazine. He talks about why it’s better to work for a small company over a large company. In fact, I have refugees from large firms who tell me they enjoy have a large voice in the company, having an outsized impact on clients’ success, and easy access to senior leadership.

    For sure, going up against a behemoth like Community Brands will be challenging. But I gotta stay true to my core belief that we can compete with any company and help our clients make the world a better place. I know that Matrix Group and the MatrixMaxx AMS can compete based on technical solutions, customer service, price and customer intimacy. No question about it.

     

  • “What’s Special About Today? Life Lesson from a Six-Year-Old”

    “What’s Special About Today? Life Lesson from a Six-Year-Old”

    I was trying to get my 6-year old out of bed the other morning. He wouldn’t budge. Finally, he challenged me by asking, “What’s special about today?”

    That stopped me my in tracks. “What IS special about today?,” I thought. I named a few things: “I’m picking you up early. You have TaeKwonDo. I’m making pasta.” Satisfied, MJ bounded out of bed and ran downstairs. The day proceeded normally, better than normal even.

    As I’ve blogged about in the past, my children make me better by making me see the wonder in life. Is it really special that we’re having pasta tonight? And yet, by simply asking the question and coming up with an answer, I reframe my day and change my perspective. You know, it IS special that we’re having pasta because it’s my son’s favorite pasta and he’s happy when I make it.

    At work, perhaps it’s special that my team hit all their deadlines today. That my most recent project is under budget. That I had a great conversation with my mom. Or that the downstairs deli has an especially great egg salad sandwich today. But how often do we acknowledge and celebrate these victories every day?

    Research shows that feeling awe makes us more spiritual, generous and content. Research also shows that being grateful can transform our lives.

    In 2017, one of my resolutions is to recognize more of these special moments and acknowledge them as special. Now when any member of the family is a sleepyhead in the morning, we ask, “What’s special about today?” It’s a great way to start the day.

  • Members Want Curation and Insight from Their Associations – Part One

    Members Want Curation and Insight from Their Associations – Part One

    One of the best parts of my job is conducting user interviews. Nearly every Matrix Group project starts with a User Persona exercise where we interview staff to glean their most important target audiences. Then a team of Matrix Group staff interview people in each group. Whenever I can, I help conduct these interviews because I like doing them and I learn so much about what members and non-members want, their pain points, their challenges, and what ultimately motivates them to act.

    Over the past year, across industries and professions, across trade association and professional societies, here’s what people have told us:

    • Surfing to find out what’s new is dead. It doesn’t happen anymore. Any web surfing is done to meet a specific need.
    • People are overwhelmed with data and information. When they Google, they get too many results. They find their association home pages too cluttered.
    • Members wants their associations to keep them up to date on important trends and give them insight into the future.
    • Members want fewer emails, shorter emails, less cluttered web pages.

    Over and over again, we heard, “Our association needs to tell us what we should be paying attention to. I don’t want the same news I can get elsewhere. Tell me the 5 or 6 most important things I should be doing, reading, attending.”

    Even if Matrix didn’t do interviews for you this past year, I bet your members would say much the same things. And if your members are hungry for curation and insight, what are YOU going to do about it?