The challenge
Unions operate differently to traditional associations. Most AMS solutions manage individual or corporate members, but unions need to reflect reps, employers, workplaces and collective agreements.
Memberships also work differently; union dues depend on salary and conditions, are often collected through spreadsheet driven payroll deductions or direct debits monthly or weekly and may fall into arrears or require complex waiver business logic.
Unions need robust case management to support members and handle grievances, yet most AMSs lack this as standard. Vast volumes of documents and notes must be carefully documented and securely stored against a case as many cases may reach tribunal or court.
To fill these gaps, unions often heavily customise generic AMSs with limited success since this leads to high technical debt from complex customisations which break during upgrades, leaving unions overly reliant on staff or partners to maintain the system. The cost and risk of ownership of such systems becomes untenable.
The solution
The Union Innovation Hub (UHUB), an ASI partner organisation owned and supported by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), took up the challenge to create a packaged vertical market solution and selected CloudToolz, from Zentso, to be the foundation platform to build their next union solution strongly integrating with iMIS.
Using CloudToolz, UHUB created the Hub Union Suite for iMIS: a standard way to implement iMIS for unions, with the processes, data structures, forms and apps a union needs already in place. They wanted to create a ready-to-go solution that would significantly reduce the time to value and the robustness of the solution.
After years of development, the core template was in use, but it still needed adjusting for each union and was becoming harder to maintain on an older version of iMIS (2017). UHUB approached Zentso for help with join forms and business processes, and that work grew into building the standardised template on CloudToolz, Zentso’s business process orchestration tool.
Why CloudToolz?
- Scalable – unlike other platforms that have transactional price models that inflate as you scale, CloudToolz is designed to handle high-volume processing without per-transaction charges, providing more predictable costs as transaction volumes grow.
- Rapid – AI-aided, visual drag-and-drop builders accelerate the development of workflows, applications, and forms.
- Robust – automated monitoring of all processes gives you unbridled transparency into automated processes.
- Release orchestration – package software and create and deploy controlled releases
- Independent: Run complex business logic, SQL-based data processing, integrations and custom applications outside the core membership system, allowing iMIS to remain the system of record without extensive customisation.
CloudToolz gives iMIS customers an application, integration and automation platform that sits alongside iMIS, combining SQL processing, workflows, custom applications and integration connectors. It takes on the heavy processing while iMIS remains the system of record. Within the suite, it provides:
- Flowz: Visual workflow orchestration, scheduling, customer business logic and automation.
- BeyondFormz: Configureable forms and interfaces, including form authoring and integration with workflows.
- SQL and data processing: Bulk transformations, staging, validation and processing outside the core iMIS runtime.
- Integration connectors: Reusable connections to iMIS, payment providers, document management and external services, containing over 300 premade connectors, easy to extend with existing workflow components and by writing your own.
- Operational Monitoring: workflow execution history, diagnostics, error handling, and visibility of each business process, such as successful versus failed payments.
A worked example
The following example illustrates a real business process implemented through CloudToolz workflows as part of the Hub Union Suite, demonstrating how complex union membership and payment requirements can be automated.
Take a union member who pays monthly dues through payroll deduction, where her dues are a percentage of her salary. She moves from full-time to part-time employment. Here is what CloudToolz does:
Step 1: Her new dues are calculated and checked
Staff record her new hours and salary from the date they take effect. CloudToolz automatically recalculates her dues using the union’s pricing and proration rules, checks her salary history for gaps or overlaps that could produce the wrong amount, and shows staff the result before anything is saved. It holds the change back if her membership is suspended, a payment is in progress or another change is pending and sends it to an approver first where the union requires one.
Step 2: The change is applied and the employer is updated
A change dated today applies immediately, and a future-dated one applies automatically on its date. CloudToolz orchestrates the updates to her membership and financial records in iMIS, tracking the outcome and handling exceptions, so staff and the member see the same figures. Because her employer collects her dues, no invoice or card charge is raised. The employer sees the new amount in iMIS and can print it as a PDF or report for payroll. When the employer’s payment arrives, CloudToolz matches it to members automatically, and anything it can’t match goes to staff for review rather than being lost.
Step 3: Arrears are managed if the money doesn’t arrive
If the employer stops deducting, CloudToolz spots that her membership is no longer paid up and, after the union’s grace period, opens an arrears case. The case moves through stages the union configures, and the status stays up to date in iMIS. She can be moved to paying directly and billed for what is outstanding. Once she pays, she returns to good standing automatically, and in the meantime her online account shows a clear message and a way to sort out payment herself.
The result
Since its launch in 2020, the Hub’s shared implementation model has supported more than 40 union system implementations, demonstrating how a standardised approach can be adopted across organisations with different operational requirements.
CloudToolz has been central to building the template: the core Union Member Pay App (UMPA), for example, was built in eight months using CloudToolz.
The suite now covers many core areas including those four:
- Organiser/Rep and workplace management: a dashboard for organisers/reps to manage their worksites, view records, report and create campaigns.
- Union Member Pay App (UMPA): dues payments, contributions and other financial transactions.
- Case management and grievances: categorising cases, linking members and workplaces, and keeping notes, documents and security under control.
- Telephone campaigns: a script builder, real-time dashboard and reporting.
Could this work for your association vertical?
The Hub Union Suite shows what is possible when a sector-specific template is built on iMIS and CloudToolz. The same model can work for other partners or organisations who serve a particular vertical market of membership organisations.
Partners can retain ownership of their vertical-specifc solution IP under an agreed commercial model, while CloudToolz provides the underlying application and automation platform. The build follows a gap-led method (a gap analysis, phased mini-roadmaps for each gap, then an MVP), so development stays structured rather than open-ended. A first-adopter client can sponsor the build, which shares the investment load. Zentso takes on parts of the build and trains and mentors your team on CloudToolz as you go.
Pre-built membership and iMIS connectors carry much of the non-core work, which lowers your go-to-market cost and time. We also help you run the vertical as a product, covering feature requests, roadmap, releases and release communications. Packaged and versioned releases reach every client from one platform and the result is recurring revenue across the vertical. You essentially run a full SAAS templates solution.
Thinking about a vertical of your own? Contact us to talk through how it could work for you
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