The Challenge
AME Church selected Streampoint Solutions Inc. to help elevate their organization to the next level. There were some challenges that needed to be addressed, including how to introduce a membership solution to the church, streamline the registration process for all parties involved, create an app to eliminate the use of paper print out for reviewing legislation and increase sales from the online store.
The Solution
Our goal for AME Church was to provide a total integration solution. We were able to tie the entire process, from start to finish, within one system managed by one team. This ensured total control and transparency on our end.
Membership
To introduce a membership system to the entire AME community, we first had to look at the audience behaviors, technical abilities and how to deploy a membership card structure. The typical process of sending a membership card would not work in this case. In our work, we distributed cards at each church meeting, where they would be assisted in activating their membership card. During this activation, we were able to capture additional demographic information in order to better understand their delegation and thereby tailor future youth events.
The incentive for the signup was that each membership card would start offering discounts at community partner stores, events, and so on. This further helped boost the economy of the AME Church community.
Housing
To maximize occupancy of hotel bookings and avoid pirates stealing those rooms–yes, they exist–, we integrated our housing booking solution with the registration process. The housing system determined which room blocks a specific type of attendee would be allocated. This also helped keep delegation groups together and minimize attrition issues as well.
Swag Shipping Calculator
AME Church wanted to encourage the sales of swag prior to the conference via the online registration system. One issue that came to mind during the planning process was how to charge for shipping. We discussed the option of building a custom package and weight calculator that would total the weight of all items in the cart and have that feature streamlined within the registration process. This provided an all-encompassing solution that not only enabled the attendee to register and book their accommodations, but also have their swag shipped and delivered accurately.
Registration
With this fully integrated solution, attendees were encouraged to use their new memberships during the registration process: all for the effort to get the church membership driven.
Quorum Counter
Before a legislation can be voted upon, a quorum must be met. We headed to the drawing board with a couple of options ranging from beacons, RFID and handheld scanning to track that enough individuals were present to start the vote. With each solution ranges a pro and con relating to cost, implementation, usage and accuracy.
We had to come up with a low cost option and, working with engineering and programming, we were successfully able to link a handheld scanner through a router to an API, then to our back office. This gave almost real-time quorum data based on region.
Let the voting begin.
