Members are the source and the guarantee of sales, but a company’s resources are finite. Spending them on the members who are worth more is the whole argument for targeted marketing, and it is why membership systems get built.
In recent years both listed companies and small chains have come round to the same conclusion: member data has to be managed digitally rather than in a ledger. Membership system development grew out of that, as a platform for handling the information properly.
So what does such a system have to do to meet the need?
What the system is
It is the IT system a company uses to manage its members. Through a member-number structure it records every member’s details and builds a picture of interests, buying habits and intent.
As network technology matured and internal systems became more capable, competition on member management intensified. Modern management depends on handling a large volume of data, and a company that wants to hold its position has to turn that data into shared knowledge rather than leave it in a spreadsheet. That is where the resource value gets optimised.
The four functions that matter
1. Member management
Members sit at different tiers with different discounts, and higher tiers carry more rights, including remaining sessions of a given service. A customer without a card can pay cash and have the spend credited to a nominated card, with the card number entered manually. All of it feeds one record, which is what makes the management model work rather than just exist.
2. Point of sale
The system takes the transaction: product sales and service sales, card payment or cash. Once connected to the website it also handles announcements, member enquiries and notices, so the same record is updated from both sides.
3. Records on demand
Looking a customer up should take seconds, not a phone call to another branch. Fast access is what surfaces a potential member, and what lets staff know it is someone’s birthday before the day rather than after it.
4. Service categories
Different services need different management, and the system should classify them: beauty, fitness, massage and health, and so on. Categories mapped to member records are what make it possible to store points against actual consumption and to offer the next service at the right moment.
What separates a working system from a purchased one
The four functions are ordinary. What decides whether the system earns its cost is whether the records are complete and whether staff use them. A system installed and left alone produces a database; a system used at the counter and before a campaign produces revenue.
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