ElectionsOnline and Association Technology Solutions (ATS) have established a business partnership aimed at offering an integration bridge between Evote and the iMIS association management system (AMS). Offered by Advanced Solutions International (ASI), iMIS is one of the association industry’s most well established and widely used association management systems. Now, any organization using iMIS may integrate that system with ElectionsOnline’s Evote. I’ve written before about some of the advantages of integrating Evote into your own site, but in addition to what’s stated there, an iMIS integration also means:
- Advanced results reporting. By capturing who has voted (but not how they voted) in iMIS, you may run reports that extend well beyond the election results offered by ElectionsOnline. For example, you may use the reporting tools already built in to iMIS to determine the gender, age, geographic location, and much more of those who participated in a voting event. Such insight may provide business intelligence on why people of a particular demographic are more likely to vote than others, and prompt your organization to look deeper into how that might have an impact on election results.
- Emailing voters. By using the iMIS emailing capabilities (even if those capabilities are offered through a 3rd party system and not native to iMIS itself), you have the ability to control the look, feel and messaging of any emails pertaining to an election. This freedom means there’s also a risk of the email sent to announce the start of an election not being crafted so as to maximize effectiveness so check out 6 Tips for Crafting Election Emails for pointers on how to not hang yourself just because you have a long enough rope!
Association Technology Solutions
Without understanding the architecture of the iMIS system inside and out, it would be virtually impossible for anyone to come along and create an integration between iMIS and a peripheral solution like the ElectionsOnline voting system. This is where Association Technology Solutions comes in. They are one of a very few companies with the know-how to do this and have established themselves as a leading specialist in creating bridge integrations between iMIS and 3rd-party solutions. This bridge approach essentially “shields” developers from having to understand how iMIS works on the inside and makes it not only possible, but quite simple, to pass data back and forth between your website’s presentation layer and the iMIS AMS without needing a full understanding of the iMIS system itself.
The ATS bridge is universal, meaning that regardless of the reseller from which your organization may have purchased iMIS, the bridge will work. There are some core properties of the iMIS system that are common to all installations regardless of reseller and these core properties are where the ATS bridge performs its integration to ensure universal compatibility for all iMIS clients.
To Learn More
For iMIS clients who wish to learn more about taking advantage of this integration, please contact ElectionsOnline.
