Challenge: Grow membership, revenues through provision of value-added services to members, improve operational efficiencies.

 

Solutions: Member Intranet with Content Management System, e-Commerce, Back-end Member Management System.

 

Details: HRANS is the professional association for human resources in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and is the grantor of the Certified Human Resources Professional (CHRP) designation in the two provinces. HRANS represents a diverse group of human resources professionals and business leaders.

 

At the outset of the relationship between InnovaIT and HRANS, the association had slightly less than 500 members and its website was a static HTML presence managed by its Manager of Member Services, Roger Ghegin. It was Ghegin who initiated the project, realizing that the largely informational presence could provide more value for members if some operational functions could be automated and enabled through information technology. Recognizing that the scope was beyond his own capacity, he sought out a partner/ developer able to bring values to the membership and to improve operational efficiency by connecting the membership data to operational reports and automated functions. InnovaIT's founding company (NorthSeas Software) won the RFP and within months a new intranet/extranet had begun to emerge.

 

Over the next six years, the application underwent numerous itierations of development as new ideas and opportunities for additional member values were noted - resulting in functions like an e-commerce payment gateway to enable membership and event registration online, automation of advertising and member information posting to drive new revenues, and automated communication systems to allow the association to better connect with its members. During this period, the membership grew to over 1100 members across three chapters - including one in Prince Edward Island - and HRANS achieved substantial revenues from new online promotional opportunities.

 

By 2008, HRANS was ready to make another step - engaging its Board and Chapters in related content management. It adopted InnovaIT's InnovaCMS Content Management System which allows HRANS to put full content control in the hands of selected content managers within the organization.

 

Development of the application is ongoing as InnovaIT and HRANS continue as partners working through the growth and needs of a vibrant professional community.