CRM Module Description 

The heart of our software is its CRM—Customer Relationship Management—module, which includes specialized membership features for associations. Our Association Management System (AMS) is built around companies, contacts, and locations. 

Contact, Companies and Locations 

The CRM module lets you enter contacts into the system. These contacts can be linked to companies, and companies can have multiple offices. People can be associated with different offices and if the affiliate module is included people can be linked to more than one company. 

Membership 

Each contact or company can also have a membership associated with it. Some of our clients manage contact-only memberships, others manage company-only memberships, and a few use both company and contact memberships. 

Company Model 

Our company-based model works well suited for trade and professional associations.  

For trade associations, our model allows a company to have a membership, and all people within that company inherit access through the company’s membership. For example, if a contact works at a member company, you don’t need to assign a separate membership to that individual—they inherit it from the company. 

Companies can also have roles assigned. The most common are primary contact, administrative contact, and billing contact. You can also define custom roles. We've seen clients set up quite detailed role structures—sometimes roles are even used to send targeted communications. Others keep it simple, adding just one or two extra roles to suit their needs. 

In addition to companies and contacts, our system includes offices—or “locations.” This was a long-requested feature. Initially, we made entering an office mandatory to ensure data completeness. That requirement has since been made more flexible. 

To summarize: locations usually have a name and often an address (though not required). Addresses can be geocoded and used for mapping. Metadata like a site ID can be added to track detailed, location-specific information—for example, LEED certifications for buildings. 

When it comes to companies and contacts, it's common to go through a business intelligence design process to define what additional demographic data you want to collect. Each company and contact can have its own set of custom demographics, and you can have multiple demographic sets. 

For instance, in trade associations, you might collect different demographics for suppliers than for regular members. Suppliers might have one set of data—such as industry specialty—while regular members might have an entirely different profile. We support both static and trendline demographics. 

A static demographic means there is no historical record—if a value changes, only the latest is stored. For example, if the number of employees changes from 15 to 20, only “20” will appear. 

A trendline demographic captures data snapshots over time. For example, you might take a snapshot of employee count every January. Comparing these yearly snapshots lets you observe growth or decline over time, which isn’t possible with static data. 

To make trendline demographics meaningful, it's important to standardize when data is collected. Ideally, everyone updates their records during the same timeframe (e.g., annually in January), so you can accurately analyze changes year-over-year or month-over-month. If updates happen sporadically—say, one company in March and another in November—you can only infer general trends, not specific ones. 

This custom shaping of data also applies to contacts. It’s one of the ways you can tailor the CRM to meet the unique needs of your association. For example, in medical associations, we often see detailed educational history collected, along with structured membership transition plans—such as free memberships during residency and automatic upgrades to paid memberships upon certification. 

Trade associations might gather business data—like production volume or revenue—to better understand their members' activities. In these cases, the data is typically collected at the company level, while medical associations tend to focus on contact-level data. 

We also support affiliated contacts, allowing a person to be associated with more than one company. This is especially useful in fields like healthcare, where someone might work at multiple clinics or hospitals. One company is designated as the “primary,” but additional affiliations can be tracked. Each affiliation can have its own contact details (phone, email), and contacts can choose which affiliation(s) appear in business directories. 

A powerful feature of our CRM is interaction tracking. Interactions can be logged at both the company and contact level and are viewable in a stream on the main dashboard. This allows staff to see all recent communications or meetings. When viewing a contact or company record, users can see past interactions logged by other team members. 

You can also pin interactions to the top of a record—for example, if there was a major incident like a fire, and you want anyone viewing that record to be aware before contacting the organization. 

Interactions are customizable. We include common types by default, such as emails, meetings, and phone calls. Some clients add custom interaction types—for example, a "site visit" interaction that includes a checklist or form to capture specific details. 

Our address management system is robust. Addresses can be linked to companies, locations, and contacts. These are linked addresses, meaning you can share one address across multiple records. For instance, if 30 people work for the same company, they can all be linked to a single office address—avoiding data duplication. 

When a contact has a personalized address (e.g., an apartment or office suite within a shared location), we use a third address line on their individual record. That allows for custom room or suite information while still linking to the standard base address—like "200 Bay Street." 

This structure keeps your data clean and consistent while still supporting personalized information where needed.