Member Account Access
Produced by: Red Rock Partners. All Rights Reserved. Copyright ©2000.

One of the hot topics today for country clubs is in the arena of giving your membership access to their personal account information. When looking at this as a possibility, there are three key points to consider: where does the data come from; how is the data displayed to the member; and is it secure. Red Rock Partners will address these three points in a fashion that is relevant to the needs of a country club general manager. When you have finished reading this article, you will be able to more clearly understand the process of opening up your club management data to your membership.

The benefits of member account access. A leading club software site states that  about 70 percent of a club's membership uses e-mail and browses the web. This translates to an opportunity to offload some of your internal processes using web technology. It is also an opportunity to leverage the technology to promote club goals. Following is a small list of benefits a club can offer to their membership using a member account access module:

• Give members the ability to view and print statements online.
• Members can view transaction details, answering most accounting questions.
• Real-time access to member food minimums and balances.
• View and print current-month charges.
• Automatically post online payments via check or charge
• Member access to account history.

In most cases, offering these options to your membership will offload a large percentage of your incoming calls to the accounting personnel at the club, freeing up more of their time to pursue their primary tasks.

Where the data comes from. Most country clubs are running some flavor of club management software. Popular software programs include Jonas (www.gjonas.com),
Club Data (www.clubdata.com), Club Systems Group (www.clubsys.com), and Club Systems, Inc. (www.clubsoftwareinc.com). These software programs are databases, containing information such as member number, member name, accounting information, and personal information. The information you can deliver to your membership via member account access modules is only limited to the data that your club management software stores in it's database. For a complete listing of the type of information contained in your software's database, consult your user manual, or contact your software representative.

How data is displayed to the Member. Moving data from the club management database onto the club web site ranges from a simple module installation to a complex programming task. Most implementations of a member access module tend to be somewhere in the middle. Take, for instance, Jonas Club Management Software. Jonas provides two modules that plug into the Jonas Software. The first module is for authenticating a member when they log into the web site (compare the member name and member number to the Jonas database); the second module actually pulls the requested information from the database and sends it to the web site. Once the data is received at the web site, the web page formats and displays it according to predefined rules set up by your web designer. Sound pretty simply? Well, it is if your web site designer has the capabilities to install the modules correctly, and integrate the data into the website. To attempt this on your own, or with an unknowledgeable web designer, can lead to more and more complexities, putting at risk your entire club management software solution.

Security of the data and the database. When providing member account access, there is a chance that the integrity of the database could be at risk to hackers. This is the same risk that you take when you provide always-on Internet access to your employees. As with any solution that involves the Internet, it is always best to err on the side of caution. With that in mind, member account access is generally handled by exporting information out of the database and delivering it to a secure area on your web server. Using this methodology completely takes away the chance that an evil-minded person could access your club management software and damage the data. An example of this can be found in Club Data's implementation of a member access module. The software automatically puts information into a file, and sends that file to the web site on a regular basis. The web designer then writes some code to access and display that information, based on the member name and number of the person accessing the web site. As you can see, the person accessing the web site is never connecting to the Club Data database. They are only connecting to a file sent by the Club Data software to the web site. You, as a club manager, can determine exactly what information should be sent to the web site by the Club Data software.

On a side note, transmitting member names and numbers via the Internet can cause some security concerns for your membership. This is easily addressed by working with your web site designer to make the login page secure. This is done using state-of-the-art encryption technology via something called Secure Socket Layers. Talk to your web designer for more information on how SSL (Secure Socket Layers) can be implemented on your member access login page.

Wrapping it all up. Once your club has an established web page, it is time to start looking at leveraging the technology. How great would it be if your knowledge workers could focus on doing their primary tasks, rather than answering redundant, mundane questions? The value of this goes beyond looking for financial ROI. The value is found in the abstracts of employees working more efficiently; clubs needing fewer employees; and being able to offer more timely and accurate service to your membership. Can you afford to not consider this solution?

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