IASA 2011: Taking the Pulse of the Industry

What do you think?

The publications committee of IASA wants to know how members feel on a variety of industry-related topics. And thus was born the Industry Pulse, IASA's monthly membership polling service.

“In the spring of 2010, the publications committee was brainstorming on new ideas to better serve the membership,” says Victoria Newman, sales and marketing vice president with KeyMark and an IASA volunteer. “One of the things we discussed was how do we let people know how they compare to their peers in different efforts, whether it is around accounting, investments, technology or operations.”

The Industry Pulse is a short three-to-five-question poll that takes just a few minutes to complete, according to Newman. Questions are sent electronically to the membership at the beginning of each month and members have a week to 10 days to respond. The committee then takes the responses, analyzes them, and reports the findings to members.

The Industry Pulse has been in operation for over a year now and Newman feels the responses have been interesting for the membership to study.

“Different members of the executive committee have been using the results for all kinds of presentations,” she says. “The results are sent out to the chapters for their use and they've been used for the roundtables at the annual conference.”

Questions, Please

The topics have varied, ranging from how insurers are using social media, their technology focus for the year, their views on healthcare reform, and a poll on disaster recovery/business interruption.

Celeska Fredianelli, accounting manager, North Pointe Insurance Co. and chairman of the IASA Publications committee, wasn't sure if a monthly poll would work, but she was proven wrong.

“At the beginning of the year everyone is working hard and it's hard to get responses, but we did a poll asking how often we should do this,” she says. “We asked if we should pull back to quarterly, but monthly won.”

Since IASA has a varied membership between finance and technology, the responses are varied as well.

“We make sure we clarify the demographics of the respondents,” says Newman. “We've been able to sort [the respondents] by job title, the size of the company, and then sort the results. That's helped with the analysis.”

“We're also taking into account our associate members that are vendors,” says Fredianelli. “We are looking at responses from both sides of the table.”

Numbers Building

The earliest polls got as few as 30 respondents, but it has continued to grow each month, inching above 110 respondents recently, according to Newman.

Fredianelli hopes to increase awareness among the membership of IASA, particularly at the annual conference. To do that, the publications committee is doing a Conference Buzz with one poll question each day over the three days of the conference.

“When you go in and update your profile there will be a one-question buzz that we are going to tweet,” she says.

Those questions will include how the members responded to the keynote address from Al Gore; what their technology focus will be over the next 12 months; and what attracts attendees to specific exhibitor booths. The attendees will be given between three to five choices for their responses.

Under Analysis

The publications committee has decided to revisit some questions on an annual basis to see if the membership is changing its focus on anything, according to Fredianelli. 

“Now that we have a year under our belt, we can compare results with a broader analysis and the changes from the previous year,” she says. “It's exciting to have polls to look back on to see if things have changed.”

Deb Smallwood, founder of Strategy Meets Action, is a member of the publications committee and has helped the committee analyze the data from the polls.

“Deb Smallwood has been a huge help and a big contributor to the analysis, but it seems like every month someone else takes a crack at the analysis,” says Newman.

Distribution

The questions are sent out to IASA's entire distribution list and anyone on that list is allowed to respond, but Newman reports the results are only available to the membership.

“We are using that as a drive to help increase membership and show value,” she says.

The questions also are being published in the IASA magazine The Interpreter and its electronic version. Fredianelli believes this additional exposure has helped increase the number of responses.

“It's been successful, but one year is not enough time to get it where we want it to be,” she says. K