By Stephanie Mercado, CAE, Executive Director/CEO, National Association of Health Care Quality
For as long as I’ve been working in association management (18 years) I’ve experienced the pressures of keeping the membership value proposition strong. But today, I feel the pressure more than ever. I attribute this heightening sense of urgency to two things: an increasingly demanding customer and rapid advancement of technology.
Associations often fail to realize that we work in a B2C (business to consumer) environment. Guess who else serves those customers? Amazon. Nordstrom. Thermador.
If Alexa can be your personal assistant, and Nordstrom can have your purchases ready for pick up in 1 hour or less, and your oven can preheat itself for you, what must associations do to add value to membership?
How do you balance offering future products and services with the products and services that have gotten your organization to where it is today?
NAHQ’s board and staff are asking and answering these hard questions. Here is our approach.
First, start where you are with what you have. Take inventory of your top products, with this dual criteria in mind: 1. Which products provide the most value to the customer and mission? and (not or) 2. Which products generate the most revenue for the organization? Every other product or service goes on the nice-to-have list. Why? In order to find capacity to create new value you will need to redirect time, talent and resources for technology solutions to the new offerings that are needed to satisfy your customers.
In NAHQ’s case, we offer the only accredited certification in healthcare quality, the CPHQ. The CPHQ was created in 1983, and NAHQ has leveraged that credential and grown certificants by 50% in the last 4 years. We now boast 11,000+ certificants. This product met the dual criteria and is now an anchoring product for NAHQ’s overall value proposition.
Next, work hard to define value for the organization. Why does your organization exist? Do the products and services that met the dual criteria meet the mission? What else is needed to round out value with that offering? For NAHQ this means extending our mission to advance a coordinated, competent healthcare quality workforce by going beyond certification. We are bundling our products on either end of the spectrum (beginner through advanced) and we are in the process of developing an online solution for recertification that ties the full spectrum of the career journey into one cohesive experience for our members so that when quality professionals think of their career development, they think of NAHQ.
These seemingly simple steps are difficult to manage from a staff and volunteer perspective. It takes time and effort (think months and years, not days and weeks) to get a shared vision for the future of the organization. It’s hard to give up programs or services that have a small but loyal following. Do it anyway. Drilling down and keeping only programs and services that appeal to the majority of your membership will help you stay relevant in a rapidly changing environment.