To replace an inefficient and burdensome membership management solution. The client is an S&P 500 company in the consumer products industry that offers a global professional membership program. However, their management processes and policies were man-heavy operations with limited visibility to identify and then mitigate requests and activities. Since the program offered reduced product prices, the fear was numerous members were taking advantage of these visibility issues and reselling the product in second hand markets. This solution did not provide ability to flag malicious or fraud activity, resulting in lost of revenue. The company sought to establish a new centralize solution for clear, efficient governance, management and accounting.

The new solution replaced the heavily manual process with a core framework to provide automation, check & balances and visibility to efficiently manage and govern the company's members. The solution consisted of two primary areas, interactive web portals and a central membership database.

Interactive Web Portals

The interactive solution contained a public facing web portal for application submissions which includes professional information, document proof, and authorized payment. Since the client offered the membership globally, the web portal was configurable to handled multiple country localization including languages and currencies.

A back-end process audited applications to identify incomplete, duplicate and malicious submissions. A full report was presented in a secure management web portal for the approval decision. The management portal also provided authorized users the ability to manage existing memberships, monitor activity for potential malicious usage and other customer service responsibilities.

Central Member Database

An analytical database was established to capture and organize all actions to create a complete view of their members. Additional data system references include point of sales (POS), e-commerce sales, customer relation management (CRM) and email server provider’s (ESP) deployment logs. Other responsibilities include:

• Tracking and managing historical data
• Organizing and validating inbound data
• Individual and household grouping
• Best mailable address integration
• Campaign and contact history management
• Analytical aggregations & segmentation

The process to build the complete solution was initiated by a design session to identify the current and ideal solution. This outcome translated into requirement documentation where all team members (technical & non-technical) could understand and engage. It provided the road map. Overall, Agile methodology was practiced throughout the project to provide visibility and adapt to new business rules and expectations introduced after the initial discovery phase. Strategy continued in each project phase to ensure the most efficient and accurate solution was established.

The global application web portal provides a consistent and engaging experience for the applicant. The secured management web portal provides functionality to monitor and engage in member’s activities proactively to maximize revenue and other goals. Overall, the new solution unified and automated the client’s processes and policies for all global regions to establish complete transparency. It identified omissions, increased visibility, and introduced new auditing triggers while reducing overhead costs and malicious activities.