Comspec Consulting has become the first (and only) UK-based service partner for Wild Apricot. Listed on the Services Partners section of the Wild Apricot site alongside partners from the US, Canada, Australia and South Africa, Comspec is able to provide local assistance to small UK associations and charities looking to implement this very cost-effective cloud-based membership and website management system.
Comspec successfully demonstrated its competence to the Wild Apricot team, based on the www.pataglos.org.uk reference site. PATA - the playgroups association for Gloucestershire's under-fives groups, nurseries and out-of-school clubs - was struggling to maintain its membership of over 250 groups and 1,500 individuals on an MS-Access database that has been in place for more than 15 years. Membership renewals now take place without a single merging, label-printing, and manual reminder process!
As a training organisation, PATA is now live with course registration through the Wild Apricot events facility, including online payment by PayPal. Comspec was also able to replace the Dreamweaver-created/Contribute-maintained website as part of the Wild Apricot system, greatly simplifying web content management, and opening up the whole system to multiple administrators, many of whom are home-based. Not only is the website easier to maintain, it is also better looking than the previous one.
For newsletters and email blasts, Wild Apricot has replaced Mail Chimp, simplifying list management and integrating opt-outs. Combined with email membership renewal and training course confirmations, the savings in postage costs alone are already offsetting the monthly cost of Wild Apricot.
Comspec is able to offer similar consulting services to help with evaluation, initial setup, data migration, and training for other organisations throughout the UK.
Doug Miles, chief consultant at Comspec Consulting, today announced new services to help associations, charities and membership organizations looking to use cloud or SaaS membership management systems. While very cost-effective and easy to use once up and running, these services don't generally come with any help "on-the-ground," which can make evaluation, implementation and data migration difficult for small organizations with no in-house IT function.
As Miles says, "Most of these SaaS services are based in the US or Canada, so there's little support or experience on hand in the UK - particularly in terms of currency and tax. They all tend to have free trial periods, which is great, but it's much easier to evaluate the features and functions using your own membership data, and migrating from existing databases or spread sheets can be quite difficult for non-technical people."
Compsec has chosen an imaginative way to price its evaluation, migration, and implementation services - by the day, per member, as a proportion of the system cost, or as a proportion of member income.
Contact info@comspec.co.uk
Address: Comspec Consulting, Hasfield, Gloucester, GL19 4LE, UK
Phone: +44 (0)1452 780565
Email: here
