| Plexus Consulting Group | Success Stories | ||
| SHRM Develops Customized Internet Site |
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| Society for Human Resource Management/SHRM Foundation (SHRM) |
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Plexus Consulting Group, LLC |
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Vital Stats SHRM is the largest nonprofit organization of its kind in the world
and the global voice of the Human Resource profession. Two thousand
of its 145,000 members are from outside the United States. These members
joined SHRM despite there not being any direct marketing or recruiting
effort outside the US. The majority of non-American members are from
Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and other European nations. In
all, SHRM's has international members in 105 countries. The Challenge | The Solution | The Process |Unforseen Benefits | Measurements & Results | Lessons Learned How to meet member needs and keep up with new developments in Web technology? SHRM began to develop a website in 1995. In the early years, the
site grew organically as the association sought to meet member needs
for increased communication on a wide variety of professional topics.
However, Internet technologies were developing at such a rapid pace
that SHRM felt some pressure to ensure that as the nation's leading
human resource association, its Internet offerings to members were
state-of-the-art. Although SHRM's members were consistently satisfied
with the website, the New Media team saw many opportunities to enhance
Website quality and the speed of delivery. To create a better, more personalized user experience. John Adams, then SHRM's Publisher/Vice President, Publications and New Media and driving force behind SHRM's website, spearheaded the move to migrate the site from an organic growth model to a customized portal. Adams' goal was threefold:
Search engine with artificial intelligence capabilities and user agent to create highly customized and interactive searches
SHRM currently devotes 10-13 full-time staff to managing its New Media program, which includes two full-time editors. The day-to-day challenges of the cross-functional New Media team involve:
Step one involved deciding which features to develop/upgrade and to evaluate and select the right software providers. Step two involved making a decision whether to contract or to host the applications in-house. 'Networking' with technology groups at other associations provided valuable support in making these decisions. Considerations that arose included:
The association relied on a technology integrator to develop the systems initially and was prepared to assume the subsequent maintenance responsibilities in-house. For the online buyers' guide, SHRM worked with a vendor that had developed a robust online buyers' guide application and could host this portion of the site. This application could be customized for individual publishers/clients. In the future, SHRM will seek to streamline content management and
publishing by allowing the "non-techies" to contribute content
directly to the Website. For example, while content is approved and
edited as necessary prior to distribution, SHRM has found that it
saves time and effort to allow the media relations team to provide
press release templates to the Website directly. While SHRM's original goal was to leverage new technologies to improve member service, word about SHRM's activities spread like wildfire in the technology community. Before long, technology firms began to flood SHRM with strategic partnership proposals. To date, nearly 100 proposals have arrived suggesting that SHRM consider sharing revenues from product sales in exchange for providing links to its online member community. "Beyond banner ads." While traditional banner ads have worked well for SHRM because the
audience is so specific and the advertisers are carefully targeted
to match member interests, SHRM's website improvements have generated
significant sources of unexpected revenue. These include sponsorships
for SHRM's e-bulletin/newsletter. While SHRM uses quantitative measures such as number of unique visitors and page-views, etc., the association also obtains qualitative feedback from user groups. The two primary instruments for gathering audience feedback are:
While the SHRM website is a work in progress and an exercise in continuous improvement, several lessons have emerged to date:
Also, SHRM has found that content becomes much more visible on the
Web and to some degree, this has created a "beast that needs
to be fed." In the relentless drive to improve the quality of
the online experience for members, SHRM's New Media team is constantly
looking for ways to "keep content fresh."
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