Clients will sometimes say to me: "Can't you just tell me what the best association management system is so that I can buy it?" Frankly, that's like saying "tell me the best car to buy."
There are hundreds of software packages for membership management. There are dozens of software packages for association management (which typically involves more than just membership management). The question is: why? Why are there so many choices?
The simple answer is, there is usually more than one solution to any given problem. And in the case of managing the data for your association, there are literally dozens (if not hundreds) of technology solutions available. I personally track nearly 30 different vendors providing association management software to the association market.
And just like buying a car, you have to decide what's important to you, what features you need, and how the product will better serve you. The good news is, you have plenty of options to choose from; the bad news is, you have plenty of options to choose from.
The reality is, there isn't a single best solutions for all organizations. So you need to do your homework, identifying what your needs are, and which packages can best address those needs.
There really are better packages. Face it consultants make a living, sometimes even better then the software vendors, from facilitating the selection process. And associations typically want to use an “independant consultant” instead of an informed staff member making a sole decision.
If you are buying a car you can get viable research from Consumer Reports, JD Powers, Edmunds, etc to narrow the choices down real fast.
Software in this class is vastly different as there is little if any true independant research such as Forrester, Gartner, Yankee and little if any worthwhile industry news. So your left with sifting through promised functionality and a consultant who has seen it before should be able to offer up biased opinion based upon their insight and experiences.
Thanks for your thoughts, Mark. I agree there are better packages, but I think there are also “classes” of software. That is, there are packages appropriate for really large organizations (like yours) and others that are more appropriate for smaller organizations. Thus my position that there is no easy answer to “which system is best?”