California Hotel and Lodging Association
The California Hotel and Lodging Association (CHLA) supports, defends, and advocates for the rights and interests of the lodging industry in the state of California, providing governmental advocacy, professional education, and industry communication programs on behalf of its members as it has done since its inception in 1893.
Key Results
Achieved in-depth reporting and data capture
Improved data
tracking for more
hygienic data
Reduced the number
of email bounces
The Challenge
The California Hotel and Lodging Association supports the hard-working men and women of California’s world-famous hospitality industry with advocacy, education, and member gatherings.
But there was another type of “gathering” CHLA was struggling with: collecting, understanding, and reporting data about its members. Thanks to an “archaic” legacy association management system (AMS) that CHLA described as “inflexible” and “rigidly basic,” CHLA was unable to create the custom reports needed to analyze the unique information it cared about, and couldn’t reliably capture and maintain that data from its members in the first place.
Looking for a total overhaul of its legacy association software with a platform-based solution that would allow it to better track and serve its members, CHLA turned to Salesforce® and Fonteva.
The Solution
To completely understand CHLA’s unique data capture, reporting, communication, and member experience demands from its association software Fonteva worked closely with CHLA to configure its ideal platform.
“With Salesforce and Fonteva, we didn’t just get a CRM; we improved everything. The flexibility in what we capture, the reminders, the notes, the automation…everything is better.”
Now, CHLA has the in-depth reporting and robust data capture it needs to track, serve, and impress its members. “The reporting is so much better than what we were able to do before. Tracking donations, for example: we know which people have donated, which hotels they represent, and if people move, I can still follow and track them and continue to grow that relationship,” Ragatz says. “And if we decide we want to track something new, the flexibility to simply drag and drop fields like we do now opens an entire world of possibilities.”
And the data that CHLA captures is now more hygienic, reliable, and valuable than ever before. “The ability to clean up the data is huge. Now, I can see all the junk and clean it out automatically, and create best practice feedback loops, too,” explains Ragatz. “We went from about 800 bounces per email to just 30, and those usually have easy explanations.”
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, Ragatz’s job is to make life easier for the CHLA staff she supports, and Fonteva has allowed her to do just that. “I think success is changing something old. You really don’t know how much time you’re going to save until you start looking at every little thing you can do now,” she says. “The whole group’s numbers are going up, so Fonteva must be doing something right.”
Robust data capture and reporting with unmatched flexibility? That’s a getaway with no reservation required, powered by Fonteva.