Client Overview
With more than 1.3 million members, the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) serves close to 1,200 local associations and boards as well as 54 state and territory associations of REALTORS®. More than 50% of state realtor associations (with hundreds of thousands of individual members) depend on the custom REALTORS® Association Management Cooperative (RAMCO) Dynamics 365-driven AMS platform.
Key Insights
They Maximize
Their CRM Potential
with a gorgeous, powerful member portal.
Efficiency
Generates Value
by automating the dues generation process.
Flexible Communication
With Their Members
changed their workflow and end user satisfaction.
The Challenge
Developing an association management software (AMS) with a nuanced integration to the national member database and credit card processing system was something nobody had been able to achieve ten years ago. That hypothetical AMS would also need to be flexible enough to handle the myriad business rules of over 1,100 state and local associations.
Since each of those associations had their own processes for things like collecting dues and other information or delivering education, it was too complex and expensive a prospect to develop unique vendor systems for every association. It was a perfect storm of many, many competing and specific requirements, the need for a complicated integration with an older system that housed all their data, and unparalleled flexibility to accommodate new users.
The Approach
NAR’s ongoing commitment to understanding their end users’ needs is the most important ingredient in the recipe for this success story. They relentlessly press the executives at the 1,100 associations they serve to understand what those teams and members need to do their work every day.
What do the individual members they serve expect and need? Those kinds of questions drove the innovation of an AMS that has been adopted by more REALTOR® associations than anything else on the market. With more than seven years of refinement and ongoing development, Cobalt built the RAMCO AMS to be powered by Dynamics 365, and, so far, we’ve been able to turn out custom implementations for more than 160 of NAR’s key associations.
Explore the modules used in this project
Insights
Some of the associations RAMCO serves have 150 individual members with an IT staff of two or three people. Others have an IT staff of 30+ and serve upwards of 47,000 individual members. The flexibility and adaptability of RAMCO’s AMS mean that those smaller associations can offer their end users an experience and interface that is just as sophisticated as the larger organizations.
Payment plans, MLS and Key Fees, meeting and class registration functionality — they can offer more to their members than ever before without needing to write code or hire a larger IT department. That’s the power of Cobalt’s AMS expertise and innovation making the most of Dynamics 365’s flexibility.
Our Members Have a Flexible Solution
Since launching the RAMCO AMS in 2009, we have experienced tremendous adoption among REALTOR® associations. The flexibility of the Dynamics 365 platform allows us to quickly grow and adapt to the changing needs of our subscribers, and Cobalt’s additions to their own AMS layer provide additional benefits. We could not have achieved the success we enjoy without the power of the underlying platform and the dedication and expertise of the Cobalt team.”
Mike Cutlip, Director, RAMCO