Water Environment Federation (WEF)

Water Environment Federation (WEF)
601 Wythe Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-1994
703-684-2400
[www.wef.org]
Contact: Susan Whitney

CEO: Quincalee Brown, PhD, CAE
Budget: $20 Million
Staff Size: 100 - 120

Plexus Consulting Group, LLC
1620 Eye Street, NW
Suite 210
Washington, DC 20006
Phone:  202-785-8940
Fax:      202-785-8949
Email:   info@plexusconsulting.com

Vital Stats:

The Water Environment Federation (WEF) network includes more than 100,000 water quality professionals from 77 Member Associations in 31 countries.

The Challenge | The Solution | The Process | Unintended Consequences | Measurements & Results | Lessons Learned

The Challenge

How to use the website to compete effectively with "Dot.coms" and maintain WEF's position as the industry's leading source of water quality information?

In 1996, WEF developed its first website, which featured general brochure ware and online technical discussion groups that formed the backbone of the site. In 1998, WEF realized that to maintain its leadership position in the industry, it would have to develop a more sophisticated e-commerce model, expand its web-based content and improve the site's user-friendliness. In recent years, Dot.coms have been making significant inroads into the wastewater industry. To remain competitive, it was imperative for WEF to leverage technology and take a leadership position in the industry as an agent of change.

The Solution

To develop a website that remains one step ahead of the competition.

The development of the new and improved website involved a ten-month process which began in January 1999 with the establishment of the New Media department and led to the launch of a new and improved website in October 1999. However, this was just the beginning of an ongoing continuous improvement process. By November 1999, WEF's leadership was keenly aware of for-profit competition and leery of "giving away" free information for which members pay. After a peer review, WEF decided to create "MyWEF", a portal designed to allow members to develop their own personalized sites, complete with customized content and an online library. With 2,400 pages of content, MyWEF leverages leading edge technology to disseminate water quality information in a user-friendly manner that helps to cross-promote the association's products, services and technical resources.

The Process

"Our agent of change."

The process behind the development of WEF's Internet initiatives involved the following steps:

• Establishment of New Media Department
• Development of working groups to set priorities
• Development of program area business plans
• Development of Request for Proposal for Web development firms
• Launch development (May - October 1999)
• Launch development (April - September 2000) of MyWEF.
• New Media Department

When WEF realized that its website required expanded content and enhanced user-friendliness, it formed a New Media Department in January 1999. During 1999, the Department had one executive resource and was subsequently expanded in 2000 to accommodate in-house programming. However, the Department outsources all e-commerce coding functions and receives significant leverage from diverse WEF program areas to help develop online content.

WEF's Customer Service Center and New Media Department are responsible for troubleshooting, and all customer service representatives have specialized reference binders with screen shots to capture every step of every MyWEF application. WEF's customer database is pre-populated using membership records to streamline order servicing. WEF continues to rely heavily on capturing customer data during the registration process to help develop a good working profile of user requirements and preferences.

Working Groups
After the establishment of the New Media Department, WEF formed several working groups corresponding to each program department (i.e., advertising, customer service) to set priorities for MyWEF. What did each department want to achieve online and how realistic were these goals given existing resources?

Business Plans
WEF developed an e-commerce business plan for each program area and linked business plan goals to the organization's strategic initiatives as outlined in the comprehensive strategic plan. WEF's overarching goal is to "customize the visitor experience."

RFP
The priorities established by the working groups were consolidated and developed into a Request for Proposal, which was subsequently submitted to Web development firms. Based on a thorough review of candidates, WEF selected Results Direct to build its e-commerce capabilities and Blueflame, Inc. to build its portal. The key to success involved identifying and implementing effective software tools to bring the content online.

Launch
Although WEF began the actual development of its second generation Website in May 1999, the overall process, which culminated in an October 1999 launch, took ten months from start to finish. The development of MyWEF started in April 2000 and launched in September 2000.

Unintended Consequences

At the inception of this process, WEF never realized the extent to which technical support would be required to deliver seminal association publications to an international audience. By outsourcing to a technical support company with specialized PDF experience, WEF has been able to make available online by chapter its conference paper, periodical articles and publications. The cost savings realized by disseminating leading-edge technical information over the Internet are just beginning to be felt. Moreover, the marketing value of MyWEF is far more extensive than originally imagined. The portal allows WEF to customize product offerings, significantly improving the association's ability to deliver value to members.

Measurements & Results

"Our competencies are their weaknesses."

In developing and upgrading the MyWEF portal, WEF has noticed that the competition is not so fearsome after all. Moreover, potential competitors are always chasing a moving target since WEF routinely collects information and responds to customer needs on an ongoing basis. The association's key strengths are the competition's key weaknesses. While commercial competitors are hunting for ways to service fragmented industries for profit, they lack several key elements that characterize professional societies:

• The industry knowledge base
• Loyal and passionate membership
• Neutral third party status

With more than 100,000 water quality professionals from 77 Member Associations in 31 countries, WEF combines leading-edge industry knowledge with a level of third-party neutrality that no commercial competitor can match, however sophisticated their technology capabilities may be. Competitors cannot claim "to have the health of the industry at heart," and this has been a comforting revelation to WEF.

Also, WEF's customer base is technically literate and probably more comfortable with using e-media than less sophisticated user groups. As a result, it makes sense for WEF to direct more and more of its marketing activities to the Web. The association has found that My WEF reaches a broad, international member base in "real time". Moreover, WEF's online library with access to book chapters, periodical articles and conference papers for immediate PDF dowload or on CD-Rom and the addition of an online Skillsbuilder, as its first step into online learning, has significantly improved cost-effectiveness and service quality to the association's members.

According to a Web trends summary:

• 32 percent of the association's sales from January 2001 - December 2001 were Web-based, up from 21 percent in 2000
  
• Of these sales:
  • 40 percent are to members
  • 54 percent are to non-members

The ease of ordering and delivery has been matched by a significant decline in WEF's cost of service. Online membership has increased dramatically, and WEF appears to be reaching a much wider audience of potential members than originally anticipated. By enabling WEF to do an end-run around the time and expense involved in shipping products overseas, WEF has become an effective tool for tapping a previously hard- to-reach group of international members, who can now acess:

• An online library
• Books and periodicals in PDF format
• Online conference papers
• Moderated and un-moderated chat sessions

In 1999, WEF logged 54,000 user sessions per month. In 2000, the number of user sessions per month averaged between 69,000 and 70,000. To date in 2001, WEF has averaged 98,000 user sessions per month. WEF also hit a milestone by reaching 126,000 user sessions per month in August 2001.

Lessons Learned

"Just do it. Beg for forgiveness later."

One of the biggest challenges that associations face in developing leading edge Internet portals involves the culture clash between information age expectations and decision-by-committee operating environments. WEF's board, executive committee and officers knew that in order for the association to maintain its position as the leading authority on water quality information, its technical delivery capabilities would have to dominate the market as well. After making a significant capital contribution to develop the program, WEF's leaders and volunteers stood back. They understood the need to enable rapid decision-making.

Some other observations that emerged from this experience include:

• E-commerce is driven by member needs
  Balancing member needs and program area needs is critical
• An effective model requires effective mediation to balance customer and internal needs
• A leading-edge website is always a work in progress -- feedback loops drive continuous improvement
• In working with technology, the only constant is change

By housing the website in a neutral New Media Department, WEF has created an objective venue for in-house mediation to keep the focus on what is best for the user. While internal departments may on occasion disagree about website content priorities, the new media group has emerged as a conciliator to ensure that information is not duplicated and to settle any impasse as objectively as possible from the user's point of view. For Jack Benson, WEF's Deputy Executive Director, creating MyWEF "involves a continual process of improvement that requires constant communication in a fluid environment. You never know what technology will bring you six months from now. That's what is great about working in this environment."