It is, however, quite unusual to then take it another step further – to re-evaluate that information and the structure that produces it – to honestly assess the value of that information to the people they’re paid to serve.
But by far most unusual of all is for a client to hold to that standard and doggedly refuse to miss this opportunity to change the way they do business. CAI is that rarest of birds. They broke down long established silos, shared power and responsibility, delegated widely and effectively. They embraced all that the newest technology had to offer and made the internal changes to support it. In short, they refused to accept what “has always been” and focused on understanding the “now.” Scary? Heck yeah!
Customer Spotlight – Community Associations Institute
The result, proudly on display at www.caionline.org, raises the bar in every area of service to members. The new HTML 5/CSS 3 design is bigger, bolder, and visually clever. The site presents users with new and interesting information that has been concisely edited to deliver staff expertise as a clearly value-added benefit. Ironically, the process of providing more highly-refined information to users filled the digital recycle bin with almost 3,000 pages from the former site while reducing the site’s word count by two-thirds. And all this was accomplished, not by a team of copywriters, but by the CAI staff members themselves.
Functionality replaces cold words on the page as CAI makes full use of SharePoint’s enhanced search capabilities to allow members to dig shallow or deep into CAI’s massive document archives. Filterable searches, scoped for specific document libraries and archives, give users access without bulk. Member Learning is seamlessly dovetailed to third-party education sites, secure SharePoint class-specific Discussion Groups, and online registration. CAI’s national and local Events provide user-specific scheduling, registration, attendee rosters, and much more. Federal and State legislation is analyzed and made available to users by region or state. A sophisticated security schema allows non-members to peek into the members’ world and judge for themselves how much CAI has to offer them.
On desktop, tablet, phone or television, CAI has not only raised the bar for themselves but for the entire association community. And that is about as cool as it gets!