Defining What Success Looks Like Everyone wants a better AMS: fewer headaches, more automation, smoother processes. But unless you define what “better” actually means in clear, measurable terms, you risk selecting a system that doesn’t truly meet your organization’s needs.
This is your opportunity to pause and align on a few critical questions. What are we really trying to achieve? What problems are we solving? What would success look like in practice?
A modern AMS should enable growth, not create barriers. That means automating manual processes like renewals, invoicing, and reporting, improving the member experience from onboarding through long-term engagement, and giving staff tools that make their jobs easier, not harder.
Establishing Core Functional Requirements Once goals are defined, the next step is translating them into functional requirements that can guide system selection.
At a minimum, a modern AMS should be capable of managing complex membership structures, including individual, organizational, and tiered models. It should also support online event registration and continuing education tracking, providing flexibility for various program formats.
Integration is key. The system should connect seamlessly with your website, accounting software, and email marketing platform to ensure consistent data flow and reduce manual entry. Staff should be able to generate reports easily and independently, without relying on IT for everyday tasks.
Equally important is the member-facing experience. A user-friendly, mobile-accessible member portal is no longer optional. It must be intuitive, reliable, and designed to encourage engagement. If members aren’t using the portal, it isn’t doing its job.
Identifying Pain Points and Hidden Costs To build a solid requirements foundation, you also need to understand where you’re currently losing time and money.
Maybe your staff spends hours manually reconciling event payments each month. Perhaps basic member questions pile up because your portal is too clunky to navigate. Or maybe you’re maintaining dozens of Excel-based workarounds because your current AMS can’t generate the data you need.
These aren’t just annoyances. They are symptoms of inefficiency with real financial and operational impact.
Building Alignment Across Departments Requirement gathering is a team effort. Every department interacts with your AMS differently, and their perspectives are crucial to building a system that works across the organization. This process is not just about gathering feedback; it’s about prioritizing needs and identifying areas of consensus.
Departmental priorities might include:
- Membership: Streamlined renewal workflows and advanced segmentation
- Events: Flexible registration forms and real-time attendance tracking
- Finance: Clean, consistent data exports to accounting systems
- Communications: Better targeting and email tool integration
- IT: A reliable, low-maintenance system with fewer support tickets
You may not reach full agreement, but the goal is to surface the most critical requirements and ensure they are reflected in your selection criteria.
Turning Frustration Into Requirements The frustration your team experiences with the current system is a valuable diagnostic tool. Complaints often point directly to system limitations that need to be addressed. When captured thoughtfully, these can be translated into actionable, testable requirements.
For example:
- "We need better reporting" becomes:
Staff must be able to generate real-time renewal reports filtered by date, chapter, and status without IT support.
- "It’s hard to find things" becomes:
The AMS must include advanced search functionality across members, transactions, events, and communications.
- "No one uses the member portal" becomes:
The portal must be mobile-friendly and allow members to renew, register, and update their profiles in five clicks or fewer.
By converting pain points into clear requirements, you create a shared understanding of what success looks like and what you expect from potential vendors.
Laying the Foundation for a Successful Selection Requirement gathering may not be glamorous, but it is foundational. When done well, it anchors your AMS project in reality rather than assumptions. It provides a roadmap that helps your internal team stay focused, holds vendors accountable, and ensures that your eventual solution meets your organization’s true needs.
This stage takes time and thoughtful coordination, but skipping it increases the risk of missed functionality, internal misalignment, and long-term frustration.
Conclusion Goal setting and requirement gathering are not simply administrative steps in the AMS process. They are strategic exercises that translate organizational pain points into a vision for the future. By investing in this phase, you set the stage for smarter selection, smoother implementation, and lasting impact.