Wintouch Customers
Wintouch Member Management solution provides online access for members
Reprinted with permission from Viking Magazine
By Jolene Johnson
Snowbirds who summer in Wisconsin and winter in Florida are just some of the members who will appreciate the new IBM iSeries software technology at Sons of Norway. With it, the Headquarters will be able to keep better track of members’ most current addresses, even if members move every six months. IT Director Rachele Hockert, a 12-year Sons of Norway employee, talks to Viking about the latest and greatest software program.
Q: You graduated from San Diego State with a degree in computer science. How long have you worked in the IT world?
A: As of January I will have been in IT for 20 years. Before I moved here from Newport Beach in California some 13 years ago, I worked for the companies Island Pacific Systems Corp, Tokos’s Medical Corp, and QuestComp Corp.
Q: How excited are you about the new software at the Headquarters?
A: It’s great! In October, we launched a new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution called Wintouch® Member Management. The software will allow us to better serve our members. It’ll help us to more easily communicate with all our members in North America and Norway by tracking member involvement and member interest.
Q: What is the benefit of keeping track of what members are doing in the organization?
A: For example, let’s say we are having a seminar about rosemaling, and we want to tell members about it. Instead of SPAM emailing everybody, we can send a message just to the members who are interested in rosemaling, such as someone who took a class on this subject. Plus, we have upcoming online surveys of members’ interests and online registration for events that will allow people to choose additional times when they want to be notified by the organization. In this system, we’re also able to enter other contacts – not just members – we meet at various events, such as Norsk Høstfest. This provides us an opportunity to grow our membership. We meet people interested in the event, and then we want to continue the relationship and, hopefully, get them to join.
Q: For members, what are some of the direct effects of this new program?
A: We have something called an Online Member Portal. With this secure portal, our members can now access and change their addresses, phone number and email addresses online. And it will go directly into our database, which will save the organization a lot of time and money. Also, we just launched Online Member Renewal. And we’re in the process of revamping both the Financial and Foundation sections of our website. Members and non-members alike will be able to make Foundation donations and pay their renewals online with their credit card – all very safe and secure because of the AS/400 server we use.
Q: How new is this Wintouch application—and not just to Sons of Norway?
A: Wintouch Member Management is brand new, created just for organizations like ours to manage members, donors and prospective members. The software even lets us link family members, which is important to an organization like ours that wants to promote our heritage. We chose Wintouch because we wanted a native AS/400 application so we could stay with the server that holds our entire membership database and Headquarters software. Touchtone has concentrated on the AS/400 for a long, long time and has over eight years of experience in CRM. They were able to quickly and easily integrate our existing server, applications and data. This gives us the ability to continue using the hardware and software that has worked for us for a number of years while essentially giving it a facelift – Internet access.
Q: How does the technology compare to 12 years ago when you first started?
A: We have really advanced quite a bit in the last few years with our technology. Our Online Member Portal uses the very newest technology available. And it’s feeding information our members put in directly into our existing server – unheard of when I started in IT. It’s pretty rare, at least I’ve never see a company get this kind of an technology upgrade without replacing everything (very expensive) and switching platforms which makes Headquarters staff learn all new software programs (very painful.) Wintouch has been relatively easy for the staff to learn and it makes access to a lot of the other data on the server much easier.
A lot of people think the IBM AS/400 server is “old” technology just because it’s been around since the late 80s/early 90s (an eon in computer life – if you think seven years to one equals dog to human years, it’s more like one year equals 10 years for computers!) but the AS/400 is one of the most secure, stable and least hacked systems in computer history. That makes our membership database a lot less vulnerable to outside attack – unlike some others today – and our online transactions are much, much more secure.