NUCLEUS ANALYTICS BLOG

Published by SAS, May 2020 - Data Scientist Kirk Borne on the value of universal understanding of data and its effect on society.

InformationWeek just ran an interesting article titled “Why Everyone’s Data and Analytics Strategy Just Blew Up”. They sum it up starkly: "Customer behavior has changed and company operations have changed. If your data and analytics strategy isn't keeping up with what's happening, then you have important work to do, quickly." We couldn’t agree more – you need Fast Data.

On April 14^th, Associations Now published an article titled “How the COVID-19 Crisis Is Accelerating the Shift to Online Member Engagement.” In putting forth these ideas, ASAE is emphasizing to the member industry the fact that trends towards online member engagement are not new and not subtle – just that they are accelerating in response to the pandemic.

Gravitate is thrilled to announce that we added a self-service visualization builder to the Nucleus Data Analytics platform.  Self-Service is a game-changer for our clients as they can now add an unlimited number of charts and graphs to Nucleus without needing our help. 

Making the case for Data Analytics being budget-neutral in Year One

At most associations, it is difficult to argue that better information is not a good thing – that better understanding your current members, potential members, and the broader constituency would not benefit the organization.

It’s also difficult to argue that Data Analytics, in today’s era of so much member data spread across so many systems, does not provide better information. 

Gravitate attended four association-focused conferences in the last quarter of 2019 – AMSFest, Community Brands Xperience, Higher Logic HUG, and ASAE Tech.  

At each conference, we asked participants “What is your greatest data challenge?” and thought the results were interesting.  The responses clustered as follows:

Community Brands recently published a large-scale study that detailed 8 strategies association executives can use to modernize their organizations for 2020. In recent years, “Modernize” has become a buzzword for associations looking to make the most out of available technology in the same way that “superfood” has become a buzzword used to sell kale and blueberries. While navigating the world of quinoa and chia seeds can be frustrating, difficult, and often tasteless, it is almost undeniably good for you - as is properly-executed “Modernization.”

Inefficient as it sounds today, it was not uncommon in the 1990’s to hear that an association was going to build their own Association Management System (AMS) rather than purchase an existing one.  When we heard that, we’d generally put a reminder in our sales tracking system to contact them again in 18 months. By then, most would have spent a lot of money, failed to achieve the goals established by the organization, and lost some or all the technical staff who were working on the project.  For those who persevered and were mildly successful, they were still challenged with retaining their key technical talent and keeping the system up to date. By the mid-2000s, you seldom heard of an association taking this approach.

Excerpted from "Competing on Analytics" by Thomas H. Davenport of Harvard Business Review

Early in my career, I was asked by a large scientific society to write a report for them that compared year-over-year and month-over-month membership renewal numbers.  They were running a SQL-based association management system (AMS) so I embarked on a journey to write a complex stored procedure to support a Crystal Report. For those of you who have experience writing stored procedures, I had to employ many temporary tables and While Loops to achieve the desired outcome.