“I think that the new site has greatly contributed to the evolution of our membership rate and has allowed us to attract new people (…) I totally recommend the Netanswer solution, its implementation has radically changed the management of our association in the right direction and for several years!”
Maxime Hua, Treasurer, AIVP – Association des anciens élèves de l’EIVP
Can you introduce me to the AIVP association?
The AIVP is the association of former students of the EIVP – Ecole des Ingénieurs de la Ville de Paris.
For nearly 63 years, the school has been training engineers for the city: building, roads, public lighting, transport (rail, road…) and in all possible branches: from the construction company, to the public decision-maker, including design offices, project management assistants…
The aim of the Alumni Association, since its creation in 1978, is to represent all the students and alumni of EIVP.
Our mission is to
- to accompany the new outgoing classes
- strengthen the alumni network
- support student life
- share ideas and professional experiences
- act for employment and professional integration
To date, our association has 3,000 alumni and over 150 active members in 2021.
What has Netanswer done for you since it was set up in the development of your association?
- From a global perspective
The new website developed by Netanswer allows us to offer a much simpler and more intuitive interface for our members. This new platform allows us to better centralise the tools, information and different data of our members (event registrations, directory updates, job postings, number of connections…) and to better communicate with our community.
Before Netanswer, we had a website developed by a small web development company. Each of our members had a space where they could fill in their information via a rather austere form. For the association, there was no information logging or database management.
Our site was based on the WordPress platform, relying on multiple more or less stable plugins. The cost of developing and maintaining this site cost us, at the time, almost the same as what we invested in Netanswer.
- On community animation
For a year now, we have been working with Netanswer and I consider this new site to be a real catalyst. We have evolved our community animation and our communication strategies with the arrival of new motivated members who have developed new actions for the association: interviews of former members on their professional career, sports (basketball and handball group)…
We publish all our news and events on the website, which allows us to centralise information. We then relay them on our social networks to bring traffic to the site. This allows our members to find out about the news or the event and to say to themselves:
“Oh yes, I have to update my details on the website to be always up to date and receive information from the association, to know when there are new events, a conference…”
Having an up-to-date and qualified database is the sinews of war, and this is what allows us – among other things – to animate our community.
Alumni see our news via social networks, visit the site, recruiters and alumni post jobs and we can relay these opportunities on our social networks almost every week.
I think the new site has been a big part of our membership growth and has helped us bring in new people (more traffic). Four or five years ago, we were supposed to have 20 or 30 subscribers out of all our members, we are now at more than 150 subscribers for the year 2021. This is a very important progression for us.
- On the relationship with recruiters
The implementation of our new site has also allowed us to have a better relationship with the recruiters and the posting of offers on the site. In the old solution, we had a form where the recruiter could post his job offer but I don’t even know if he could have a follow-up or manage the expiry of his offer.
With the Netanswer solution, we are currently thinking about developing offers for recruiters to be promoted, partnerships with companies, afterworks or conferences focused on recruitment by bringing in recruitment agencies and headhunters.
- On the qualification of the database
We have at our disposal many KPIs on the quality of our database: the distribution of the means of contact, the scoring of the members, the return of emails with erroneous email addresses… We have not yet fully exploited it but it is already a real advantage for the management and future development of our association.
It is also a notable difference compared to our old site. On wordpress, I had no information on the quality of my database, no indicators. I had to export a CSV file and process it manually by cross-referencing the data.
The data management tools offer us a real time saving, a gain in performance. We can improve the quality of our database with numerous indicators and data correction tools.
What are the main benefits of our solution for the management of your association?
Since we had almost nothing before, I would like to say: everything. The Netanswer solution has revolutionised our association management.
We now have centralised information, an intuitive interface both in the back office (for the association’s administrators) and in the front office (for our members) and access that is easy to give to site administrators or group administrators.
For example, we have tried to develop the “group” aspect, especially for the sports teams. There is a person in charge of basketball who is not part of the association’s board and yet he has access to the management of his group, he is the administrator.
He has the possibility to manage his members, create events… He created a paying event for the 2021/2022 season where there is a contribution to make with an online payment. He was able to manage the registrations from A to Z without me, as treasurer of the association and manager of the handball team, having to intervene. He did it all by himself and I saw the money arrive on the Stripe account.
Overall, your solution allows simplification at all levels, whether it’s for the management of the database, the animation of our community or something much finer like the autonomy of our group administrators for the management of their group. It’s easy to use.
What do you think are the biggest advantages of our solution?
I see two main advantages:
The first is not necessarily the solution but rather the responsiveness of the customer service and the relationship with our project manager: Chloé.
Chloé takes the time to review the situation every 2 or 3 months, even if I don’t report anything on mantis (ticketing system – customer service). This pushes me to look for and question my use of the solution in order to improve it. Mantis also allows us to report information that is taken into account and corrected quickly when it is considered to be “blocking” or integrated into the next sprints in order to develop the solution.
The second advantage concerns the “scalability” of the solution. The tool evolves regularly, certainly thanks to other customers who have reported their needs. It’s nice to see the tool evolve from week to week with new features and updates to the existing solution.
Do you plan to carry out other projects with Netanswer?
Today, the association is structuring itself internally, and our board of directors is being renewed. This restructuring will enable us to do new things in terms of development.
I would like to see more development of the ambassador role, the groups, and also the company and career aspect with the career interviews and the insertion survey module.
We are also considering developing an online shop with products from the association.
Would you recommend our solution to another association?
Yes, I totally recommend the Netanswer solution, its implementation has radically changed the management of our association in the right direction and for several years!
A QUESTION ?
