Discover how the largest and oldest chamber of commerce in Africa is enhancing digital transformation with Glue Up.
The Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry is the largest and oldest chamber of commerce on the African continent, founded in 1804. The chamber consists of over 2,186 members and has been serving the community in the Western Cape diligently for 217 years. Despite being over 200 years old, the Cape Chamber is a contemporary chamber of commerce with a diverse portfolio of members worldwide.
The Cape Chamber is a progressive community of member companies that has stayed relevant through digital transformation over the years. How? Elated to share the chamber’s secret to lifelong learning and continued success was Dave Zimmerman, the chamber’s membership manager, who leads a team of consultants in looking after its members to keep them satisfied and grow the member community. Here’s how the Cape Chamber of Commerce advanced its digital transformation with Glue Up.
Taking Chances with a Legacy Bespoke Membership System
Initially, we had a bespoke membership system coded and written for our organisation about 8 to 10 years ago. Over time, the system needed updating and we began looking for the best membership management software in the market.
A Serendipitous Discovery of an Innovative Membership Management Platform
Our Executive Director discovered Glue Up at the 11th World Chamber Congress held in Rio, Brazil a few years ago. Glue Up was one of the speakers at the event, and we were coincidentally looking for a membership management solution at the time. We followed up to get information about Glue Up and went ahead to do some research about the organisation and other competitors in its space. We looked at about five major competitors, including Glue Up.
When we discovered Glue Up, known as Eventbank at the time, it did not offer Xero integration. We relied on Xero for financial management, and the integration was the main feature that we were looking for in a membership management system, besides Glue Up’s events, CRM, and campaigns modules. Because we believed Glue Up was the best fit for our organisation, we opted to hold back and wait until Xero integration was available. One year later, when the integration was finally ready, we eagerly got on board with Glue Up. We appreciate that Glue Up is continuously implementing improvements to serve its clients better.
Glue Up Helps the Cape Chamber Go Virtual After South Africa’s First Lockdown
As an over 200-year-old chamber, we are very proud of how progressive and digitally transformed we have become. We do a lot of digital work and have a substantial digital presence. Within 24 hours of our President announcing the first lockdown during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our Executive Director ensured that all our staff members successfully moved online while working from home. Each staff member was equipped with stable internet, ring lights and green screens in the comfort of their homes.
Glue Up helped us stay connected with our members during the lockdown. We reassured our members of our support and that we were still operational by engaging them through various campaigns and events. Using Glue Up’s Event Management Software, we seamlessly migrated our physical events onto the virtual platform. We moved our communications and event booking and registration onto the Glue Up platform and we have received many compliments from members on the platform’s seamless and easy-to-use experience.
We were at an over 20% adoption rate within no time, with most of our members using their desktops to access the platform. We also have an ongoing campaign encouraging members to download the My Glue app.
Enhancing Digital Transformation with Glue Up
Our greatest achievement with Glue Up is moving our very sensitive and large dataset of over 2,186 member companies to an efficient CRM membership platform. Preparing the data for uploading onto the Glue Up platform took hours of hard work. Additionally, the support of technical and customer support personnel from Kenya, China, Spain and the US helped us complete the process with zero hiccups. It was a great experience getting on group calls with Glue Up teams all over the world just to make our onboarding process painless and successful.
With Glue Up, we give our members a world-class platform for engaging with their memberships and booking events that can be easily accessed through our website. Our members enjoy the seamless experience provided by the ecosystem of interconnected modules integrated with Glue Up’s website solution as well. Glue Up did an amazing job recreating our website and integrating it with our events, communications and CRM.
Glue Up’s My Glue Mobile App Empowers Members to Take More Control of Their Membership
The My Glue app is an all-in-one mobile application that allows our members to manage their membership such as online renewals and payments. They are in more control of their membership which helps relieve the pressure on a small team servicing a very large group of individuals. Members are also able to easily interact with each other and with the organisation. We are excited to test the community module and launch it soon for our members.
The membership directory has also been of great value to our organisation. It has made managing our sensitive large database efficient, simple and secure.
The Cape Chamber Gives its Attendees World-Class Event Experiences With Glue Up
The Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry is known for selling out tickets to their superb events. Members look to us for world-class events as we have a very good track record of having great topics and speakers. Using Glue Up to create and manage our events has elevated our ability to create remarkable events by simply helping us align our ability to give our attendees world-class experiences with a state-of-the-art event booking system. Glue Up’s events module has streamlined all our events processes, making booking and registration a seamless process for our attendees.
The event management platform is easy to use and has made setting up events for our event manager simpler and more efficient. We love that we can customise our event pages to meet our organisation’s brand requirements. Our customer support personnel helped us quickly familiarise ourselves with the events platform and solve any challenges we experienced.
“You really have got nothing to lose by moving to Glue Up. We have gained so much as an organisation, especially through the support and expertise of Glue Up and its ecosystem of interconnected membership management modules. From a user perspective, it's an extremely intuitive, easy-to-learn platform that does what it needs to without confusing you. It has made all the difference for our organisation.”
Dave Zimmerman, Membership Manager of the Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
A Simple Yet Efficient Membership Management Ecosystem for Chambers of Commerce
The Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry is a founder member of the Association of South African Chambers and has recommended Glue Up to all the major regional chambers in South Africa in the association. It has also acted as a reference and has fielded some calls from potential Glue Up clients.
Chambers of Commerce worldwide have adopted Glue Up’s All-In-One Membership Management Platform. From Italian chambers to American and British chambers, these organisations are streamlining their membership and event management processes. Managing members has never been more seamless, simple and efficient.
Get a demo of this first-class cloud platform that is not only made to make day-to-day administration easier for your staff but also empowers your members to take charge of their membership.
