IBIA: International Bunker Industry Association - web development project
Visit the website: www.ibia.net
About the Client
The International Bunker Industry Association is a worldwide trade association for businesses related to shipping. Their headquarters are in the UK, but members are spread across the world. IBIA needed a new website that fulfilled several internal and external needs. The website itself needed to provide information to potential and existing members - but it needed to run on a system that basically enabled IBIA staff to administrate their entire membership procedure via the web. Their whole membership administration and billing procedure needed to be completely automated via the website.
What we did for Them
- Built an attractive and user-friendly, fully content-managed website
- Moved the entire membership application process online - with online sign-ups, payment of membership fees and administration of member accounts online
- Integrated the site and membership system with the offline accounts system, enabling a seamless transition of transactions from the web system in to Sage.
- Built an auto-renewal feature, which invoices members automatically for their renewal fee each year and takes payment online.
- Built a membership email communication tool, enabling IBIA staff to broadcast email messages to all / selected members of the database
- Enabled the sale of IBIA publications via the web - with different pricing structures automatically calculated for members / non-members
- A large, searchable directory of all members - automatically updated as new members sign up / old memberships lapse
- Built a new-member report feature, which enables staff to download in CSV format a list of all members created between specified dates
The Result
IBIA previously had various, disparate software, databases and systems to administrate their membership. Our new website took the separate systems and migrated them all in to one, centralised online system. The previously awkward and laborious administration of member sign-ups, invoicing, renewals and admin is now almost completely automated - and can be carried out by staff anywhere in the world via a web browser. Administration time is now reduced as members can edit their own details - and the need for specific staff to be in a particular office with access to certain software to run the association is now completely removed - as the whole system runs online.
