With the recent launch of Microsoft's latest CRM product, Dynamics CRM 2011, we take a look at what end-users can expect from the 'out-of-the-box' CRM solution and its relevance to membership and donation driven organisations.

Potential adopters would like to know that despite Dynamics based solutions essentially adapting a sales-centric product, will your offering carry the depth and functionality that more mature, bespoke membership products have progressively incorporated?

The key thing that Silverbear has done in the creation of its membership management services solution is to spend time to clearly and fully understand the nature of the membership management world. We have then taken that experience and knowledge, and customised Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and extended it, to offer the features and functionality that a complete end-to-end membership management solution should. The solution still retains the sales management features of the "out of the box" Dynamics CRM product but now using it to track membership renewals, new subscriptions, donations, membership purchases, event bookings, and all of the financial transactions that a busy membership organisation has to deal with on a day to day basis. Extending core functionality to add direct debit processing, address validation, credit card processing, event management, qualification and professional development management, committee management and other membership functions means that the Silverbear membership "out of the box" delivers a fully functioning membership management that can be easily extended and integrated to/from as required. The powerful in-built marketing and communication features of Dynamics CRM have also been retained and have been extended to offer survey and invitation management, both vital features in a membership management solution. As the heart of an integrated multi-channel membership strategy, Dynamics CRM, in the form of Silverbear's Membership Management Services offering, offers the ideal platform to develop and manage any membership base.

Membership management is heavily dependent on the accuracy and visibility of key contact information, and the fluency and automation of recurring processes including renewals and mailings. How does your system streamline this activity?

One of the key strengths of the underlying Microsoft Dynamics CRM product is its workflow management capabilities which are available within the user interface and as background processes. These capabilities have been harnessed in the Silverbear Membership Management solution for on-screen validation of key data (such as addresses, phone numbers ,email addresses, etc) and for the automation of common membership management functions such as the handling of renewals and recurring payments by direct debit and/or credit cards. The powerful, automated campaign management features of the core Microsoft Dynamics CRM product, and its tight integration with Microsoft Outlook and other Office products such as Word (for mail merges), makes outbound communication management – both electronic and hard copy – straightforward whilst still offering very powerful and sophisticated marketing capabilities.

A dedicated, tightly integrated and accessible finance system often features highly on a membership manager's CRM wish list. Can users effortlessly track, record and report transactions on subscriptions, products, events and donations?

Absolutely, all financial transactions can be handled directly from within the Silverbear Membership Management solution with invoices being created for subscriptions, products, events, donations and other kinds of purchases. At the same time, the solution manages all incoming payments – including automated direct debit and credit card payment handling – and offers the membership manager the ability to stay on top of financial activity at all times. Refunds and credit notes may also be automatically generated, for example in the case of event cancellation or management cancellation, as required. Whilst Silverbear's Membership Management solution can handle all of the common financial transactions that the membership organisation will have to deal with, it can also seamlessly integrate with the organisation's dedicated financial applications where required to give complete "closed loop" financial management.

How much scope is there, firstly for end-user configuration, particularly in managing forms, fields and tables, and secondly, in customisation and introducing ad-hoc functionality, work chiefly conducted by the implementation-partner?

The core Microsoft Dynamics CRM product offers unlimited scope for customisation and configuration both by the end user and by an implementation partner. Screen, field and table customisation - together with dashboards, reports, custom views of the data, and custom workflow processes – are all available to the end user and allow for easy extension and customisation of the solution to meet specific membership needs. A technology enabled membership organisation or implementation partner can really go to town on extending the core solution and can integrate it with many complimentary technologies such as optical character readers for documenting scanning, telephony systems, and virtually any other complimentary solutions. To date, we haven't found a problem that Microsoft Dynamics CRM can't address via configuration and customisation, and this power is now available to the end customer as well as the implementation vendor.

Membership event planners must consolidate several items of intricately related information, including contacts, venues, fees, schedules and resources, before relaying all this to the relevant parties. Could you outline how a typical event might be managed in your system?

Silverbear has designed, developed and sells a dedicated event and delegate management product called evocos (www.evocos.com). This leading edge event and delegate management solution is used by organisations of all shapes and sizes to manage events of all shapes and sizes. From individual meetings, workshops and training events, through to multi-day, multi-session conferences, evocos is able to offer a comprehensive solution to the event management team. Providing resource, venue, speaker, invitation, follow-up and payment management, evocos is ideal for running membership centric events. Silverbear has taken its own event management product, evocos, and seamlessly integrated it with Microsoft Dynamics CRM so that the complete Silverbear Membership Services offering is able to offer unparalleled event management capabilities to the membership base. Qualification and training management, subscription event benefits (such as corporate membership subscriptions that offer a number of free event or conference spaces as a benefit of taking out that membership level) can now all be handled in one place. Delegates can be booked onto events from the web site or directly within the membership management application in a seamless and powerful fashion. Event payments and refunds are seamlessly handled, and event attendance and feedback records are all stored, automatically, in one central location. When you tie this event management functionality – which is expanding on a monthly basis as the core evocos product develops according to its own product roadmap – with the powerful marketing and membership management capabilities built into the Silverbear Membership Management offering, Silverbear believes that it is in a unique position to offer a wholly integrated event management capability to its membership management customers.

Almost all member interactions are conducted via the web. Registering members, updating details, online transactions and administering events and activities are typical requirements. How is your solution tuned to communicating with an online audience and accommodating bespoke web development?

"Out of the box" Silverbear's Membership Management Services offering includes a powerful membership web portal offering that provides seamless integration to the core MS Dynamics CRM Membership Management application. This powerful web portal offers comprehensive content management together with complete membership management features – such as profile and subscription – and also offers additional value added capabilities such as the provision of forums, blogs, galleries, member directories, and a complete e-commerce capability. All interactions that take place on the web portal are automatically recorded in the core Membership Management application allowing for a single view of the member to be generated completely automatically.

Where membership organisations already have a web site that they are happy with, the Silverbear Membership Management offering offers a comprehensive integration capability that can be used to provide powerful, integrated web self service to the membership base through that existing site. Profile management, subscription management, and activity tracking and recording are all available from the integration services, and allow an existing web site to be easily extended. The integration services capability also allows for activity recording to take place in the central membership management application, thus providing the single view of customer and all of their activities – online and offline – in one place, a marketing and membership managers dream.

Online joining can be an elaborate procedure, with several member and sub-member types, membership dependencies, and the reciprocation and verification of personal details. With a focus on reducing membership administration, improving data integrity and minimising paperwork, does your system offer the flexibility to manage details online and alert, validate and report where necessary?

Absolutely, the online subscription and application process can be as simple or as complex and comprehensive as a particular organisation or membership grade requires. Due to the integrated nature of the online experience and the core Membership Management application, it is possible to use powerful automated workflows to drive all stages of a membership application process and to ensure that the right people engage with the joining process at the right time and do the right things in a timely fashion. The integrated and automated nature of this application processing ensures that data integrity is maintained at all times, that there is a single view of what is happening with regards to membership applications easily accessible by both the membership organisation and the individual or organisation seeking membership, and that the process runs as smoothly as possible.

Many membership organisations are looking for a solution which will either provide, or integrate with, a document management system, allowing them to keep a full, consistent record of their engagement with members and the information they produce / provide for them. How would your membership solution help address this challenge?

"Out of the box" the Silverbear Membership Management Solution, based as it is on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, has built-in document management using a version of Microsoft SharePoint. This capability allows documents to be captured, processed (via powerful workflow capabilities, for application approvals, etc.) and stored alongside member records at all levels. Document management is, actually, a particularly powerful aspect of the Silverbear Membership Management solution for this very reason.

In managing membership applications, accreditations and other tightly regulated processes, many of our clients employ a Case Management system to provide a clear and auditable framework of documents and protocols. Does your solution include any features and functionality which would deliver this requirement?

Absolutely, the Silverbear Membership Management Solution offers complete, flexible and configurable "case" management capabilities to support all of the membership management processes – applications, accreditations, renewals etc. – that a membership organisation requires. These capabilities are primarily driven by the incredibly powerful built-in workflow capabilities of the base Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 solution that allow us, and the membership organisation themselves, to model any of their business processes via workflow and for the solution to provide the necessary automation in order to ensure that the relevant process, or processes, are handled as smoothly and efficiently as possible for the particular organisation utilising the solution.

All images featured in this article are not representative of Silverbear's Membership Management Solution