by Aubrey Mellos | Feb 15, 2016 | Blog
For many of you, offering a professional learning portfolio is core to your association’s mission. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons our community exists in the first place. Your members need to remain abreast of what’s happening in their profession, and they depend on you as their primary (and trusted) source for lifelong learning opportunities.
We all agree with the above, right? Right! OK great. Now, pause for a moment and ask yourself if you give commensurate attention to your Learning Management System (LMS) based on the level of significance your organization places on professional education. Does your association even have an LMS?
Historically, associations have viewed Association Management Systems (AMS) as their most important software, and treated other solutions (including LMSs) as auxiliary “components.” But, there’s a noticeable shift in the industry as folks are challenging this infrastructure and mode of thinking. Change-makers are disrupting the status quo by positioning their LMS and AMS as equal partners. They’re taking advantage of powerful integrations and in doing so, exceeding the traditional LMS/AMS expectations from members and staff.
When we designed Elevate LMS, your priorities led the charge. We wanted to give you a solution that would position your learning portfolio as a centerpiece in your community. To deliver on our commitment, we went beyond just developing an award-winning software…we also established robust integrations with our AMS colleagues.
Here’s why an Elevate LMS-AMS integration is valuable to you:
Friendly User Experience
Members expect seamless online experiences when they engage with their association. A place where single-sign-on is a standard (not a luxury), and an ecosystem of interconnected technologies exists. Our LMS-AMS integration delivers on those expectations, plus so much more. For example, this integration makes it possible for Elevate to curate tailored learning paths for individuals based on information in their AMS profiles.
Centralized Data
Many experts believe data is an organization’s most important asset. While that’s subjective, we can all agree data is very important. Unfortunately, many associations have been collecting/storing data in a variety of repositories, each married to a different technology. We believe it’s OK to store data in a few places, as long as the key data ultimately flows back to the AMS. Our integrations ensure critical data about your learners is sent from your Elevate LMS to your AMS.
Robust Reporting
Piggybacking on the topic of data, an integration allows you to look at micro and macro layers of critical information. You can monitor a learner’s progress, as well as analyze community trends (e.g. blockbuster courses and superstar users). In short, you’ll have powerful data that can (and should) be used to calibrate your learning portfolio for continued growth and success. For example, once you know who your most engaged learners are, what are you going to do to ensure they remain happy?
Multiple AMS Partners
To make your lives easier, we proactively established integration partnerships with many AMS providers. And, this is an ongoing initiative as we continue to expand our network, and build deeper integrations with current partners. LMS implementations can be challenging enough, but worrying about whether or not Elevate is compatible with your current (or future) AMS doesn’t have to be a contributor. Elevate plays nice with everyone, allowing for a seamless insertion within your technology ecosystem.
To learn more about Elevate LMS-AMS integration features and/or our integration partners, please contact Meghan Gowen, Vice President of Sales, at mgowen@commpartners.com.
by Aubrey Mellos | Feb 2, 2016 | News
Are you an iMIS customer looking for a top-notch—fully integrated—learning management system?
Is it important that your members have a seamless experience across your technology platforms?
Are personalized, curated learning tracks an education strategy you wish to pursue?
Is clean, aggregated member data something your association finds valuable?
If you answered yes to any of the aforementioned questions, you’ll be happy to know CommPartners has you covered! We teamed up with Association Technology Solutions to create a robust integration bridge between our award-winning learning management system (LMS), Elevate and iMIS AMS. This integration empowers our mutual customers with a unified process for authentication, registration and reporting to optimally leverage the value of both applications.
Here are a few ways the integration will benefit your staff and community:
Friendly User Experience
Members expect seamless online experiences when they engage with their association. A place where single-sign-on is a standard (not a luxury), and an ecosystem of interconnected technologies exists. Our LMS/AMS integration delivers on those expectations, plus so much more. For example, this integration makes it possible for Elevate to curate tailored learning paths for individuals based on information in their iMIS profiles. Talk about the ultimate learning experience!
Centralized Data
Many experts believe data is an organization’s most important asset. While that’s subjective, we can all agree data is very important. Unfortunately, many associations have been collecting/storing data in a variety of repositories, each married to a different technology. We believe it’s OK to store data in a few places, as long as the data ultimately flows back to the AMS. Our iMIS integration ensures critical data about your learners is sent from your Elevate LMS to your iMIS AMS.
Robust Reporting
Piggybacking on the topic of data, Elevate allows you to look at micro and macro layers of critical information. You can monitor a learner’s progress, as well as analyze community trends (e.g. blockbuster courses and superstar users). In short, Elevate provides you with powerful data that can (and should) be used to calibrate your learning portfolio for continued growth and success. For example, once you know who your most engaged learners are, what are you going to do to ensure they remain happy?
Bonus Feature
Elevate also includes a complimentary webinar platform. Learning objects come in many forms, and we encourage you to offer a continuum of programs that appeal to different content areas and learning modalities. After all, a knowledge community is only as good as the resources and learning opportunities found within. To help expand your Elevate learning community with formal web programs and/or informal learning connections, you have a complimentary, fully-integrated webinar tool, EventCenter™.
To learn more about Elevate LMS and our integration with iMIS, please contact Meghan Gowen, Vice President of Sales, at mgowen@commpartners.com.
by Aubrey Mellos | Jan 13, 2016 | News
Columbia, MD – January 13, 2016. CommPartners announces a new partnership with leading Association Management System provider, ACGI Software, to offer both client communities a seamless solution for integrating Elevate, CommPartners’ award-winning Learning Management System, and ACGI Software’s, Association Anywhere AMS. With this integration, clients of both organizations will have a unified process for authentication, registration and reporting to optimally leverage the value of both applications.
CommPartners provides the only LMS with fully integrated and embedded webinar, livestream and multimedia software to support learning, how and when it occurs. The connection between live, peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges and traditional continuing education programs leads to improved learning outcomes, as well as increased participation with an association’s education offerings.
“We’ve had an outstanding relationship with ACGI Software for over 15 years,” shared Rich Finstein, CEO of CommPartners. “We respect their approach to customer service and the integrity and reputation they bring to our community. This new partnership leverages the best of both applications on behalf of our clients.”
“ACGI truly values its longstanding relationship with CommPartners. We are embarking on this new partnership with great excitement as associations and credentialing organizations will highly benefit from the integration between ACGI’s technology platform and the Elevate LMS,” said Arj Devadas, VP of Sales and Marketing for ACGI Software.
CommPartners’ Elevate LMS is used by leading associations such as Society of Petroleum Engineers, Americans for the Arts, American Healthcare Association and American Health Lawyers Association. Over 1,000 associations look to CommPartners to support their education requirements.
To learn more about CommPartners and Elevate LMS please contact Meghan Gowen at mgowen@commpartners.com or (443)539-4851.
About CommPartners:
CommPartners is a leading provider of online education and event solutions for the Association Community. At the core of the company’s solutions is our Elevate Learning Suite, the ideal environment to allow organizations to engage their communities through knowledge. Elevate, the only LMS that integrates webinars, virtual conferences and eLearning options including courses, blended learning, videos, podcasts and topical discussions. The CommPartners team is diverse, and together we share a common passion: we are strategic thinkers, dedicated to the advancement of your organization’s mission through exceptional online learning.
About ACGI Software:
ACGI Software develops and delivers cloud-based software for associations and credentialing organizations. The company’s Association Anywhere® association management system (AMS) and Certelligence™ credentialing management system (CMS) are built on a secure, enterprise-class database platform. Highly configurable and extensible through integrations with web, mobile and back-office applications, ACGI has significant industry expertise gained from 20 years of working with some of the nation’s best-known associations and credentialing organizations. Learn more about ACGI by visiting www.acgisoftware.com.
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by Aubrey Mellos | Jan 8, 2016 | Customer Stories
Prior to my arrival at CommPartners, I had the honor of serving as the Director of Professional Development at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Like many of you, my department was charged with offering a diverse portfolio of continuing education programs and generating a significant amount of non-dues revenue each year. And, as I’m sure many of you can also relate, we had constant pressure to produce more programs and increase non-dues revenue, without additional resources.
Luckily for me, I led a team of extremely savvy, hard-working professionals who were passionate about their work, committed to excellence and always willing to do more. However, I knew they were already operating at full capacity, so increasing their workloads was not a sustainable solution, nor was it appropriate. Instead, I had to take a step back and audit the business model and see what superfluous and antiquated processes were in-place. During that evaluation, something struck me…we weren’t aligned with the best vendor-partners (for our needs), and/or we weren’t leveraging them to their fullest extent.
To help shed light on what I’m talking about, I’ll use ASHA’s webinar product-line as an example. When I arrived at ASHA, the department was using a self-service tool from a supplier that was nonresponsive (in a timeframe conducive to our needs), expensive, and unable/unwilling to handle support-related issues from our participants during live programs. Additionally, it wasn’t in their scope to train our subject matter experts on the platform or share the latest adult-based learning practices. In short, we had to do everything and anything related to our webinars (i.e. speaker training, platform setup, teleconference reservations, program script, reminder messages to registrants, customer support during live-programs, post-event archive conversion/posting, the list goes on and on). Even though our webinars were profitable, it took a lot of work to produce a two-hour program and I couldn’t help but question the opportunity cost of our process.
After assessing the aforementioned situation with my team, we agreed it was time for a change and that meant parting ways with our self-service vendor—an easy decision once CommPartners shared their fully managed webinar approach with us. With CommPartners onboard, we immediately realized a 50% reduction in work associated with webinars…an incredible savings on all counts. We invested that “extra time” towards thinking more intentionally about future webinar programming and concentrating on hot-button topics that would likely garner large audiences (and revenue). Additionally, we were now positioned to host more webinars than ever before. Although it would take us a little over a year to measure the impact of these calibrations, it was worth the wait! In 2014, we offered 16 new webinars and made $385k; in 2015, we offered 19 new webinars and made $567k. That’s a revenue increase of 47% in just ONE year!
We applied the same analysis on all of our product lines and vendor-partners, made similar adjustments, and observed positive results akin to our webinars. Leaning on our vendor-partners to collaborate with us on a much deeper level and act as true extensions of our staff was the best decision we made. It enabled us to focus on our core competencies and objectives, while offloading auxiliary responsibilities to our vendor-partners, who were better equipped at handling those tasks. The collective amount of saved time allowed us to plan more strategically for the future, invest in new formats and initiatives, and expand our continuing education portfolio and revenue streams.
Want to explore how CommPartners can help you focus on your core competencies and objectives? Shoot us an email at info@commpartners.com or give us a call at 443.539.4858 and let’s chat!
Written by Christopher Urena
ASHA Professional Development
by Aubrey Mellos | Jan 4, 2016 | News
(Columbia, MD – Dec. 4, 2016) CommPartners, an award-winning Learning Management System, Web Events, and eLearning provider, is honored to be recognized by Talented Learning as the association community’s second-best LMS provider. Released in 2014, the once newcomer, Elevate, is now standing-out amid the competition, having earned its place as a distinguished frontrunner. Elevate customers describe the platform as one of the sleekest, most flexible and cost-effective solutions, making it the perfect fit for associations of any size and type.
What differentiates Elevate LMS from the rest?
Nimble & Intuitive Infrastructure
Tired of being coerced into static, cookie-cutter layouts with little customization options? Elevate takes an alternate approach and empowers each customer with full latitude of their design and layout specifications. This flexible platform, intact with SSO integration points, allows for parity among all technologies a customer employs, and delivers a seamless, intuitive experience for participants, and staff.
Free Integrated Webinar Tool
Learning objects come in many forms, and CommPartners encourages customers to offer a continuum of programs that appeal to different content areas and learning modalities. After all, a knowledge community is only as good as the resources and learning opportunities found within. To help customers expand their Elevate learning community with formal web programs and/or informal learning connections, CommPartners provides a complimentary, fully-integrated webinar tool, EventCenter™.
Low-Cost Disruptor
CommPartners understands that association professionals have a responsibility to be faithful stewards of their organization’s resources. Indeed, investing in a successful professional education program requires a financial commitment, but costs shouldn’t out-pace efforts and growth. Elevate has all the expected bells and whistles—plus more—with a sensible, sustainable fee structure.
Understanding of Professional Learning
Unlike other LMS providers that focus solely on the nuts and bolts of their technology, CommPartners specializes in a deeper, more holistic approach. Their unwavering philosophy is straightforward—learning strategy first, and technology second. CommPartners has a diverse group of professionals with backgrounds in instructional design, event management, technology development and customization, association leadership, and client-partner advocacy, providing their customers with unparalleled service, expertise and assurance.
“This unique platform was created in response to the ultimate LMS wish-list of education professionals,” shares Chief Elevate Developer and COO, John Volentine. “We listened to what the community needed, carefully studied learning trends, scanned the competitive environment, and relied on our historical experience to develop and launch our very own Learning Management System. From its initial conception, my goal with Elevate has always been to serve our loyal association community with a robust platform that can help them grow, remain relevant, and generate revenue. I can confidently say we delivered on all counts and look forward to seeing their successes.”
About CommPartners
CommPartners provides online education and event services to the association community. The company‘s mission is focused on providing a well-planned and intelligent approach to sharing of knowledge, with a core focus on creating positive user experiences. Over 1,300 associations have selected CommPartners to manage their eLearning programs. The CommPartners team is diverse, and together they share a common passion: to be strategic thinkers, dedicated to advancing a client’s mission through exceptional education programs.
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