Education Union in Australia

The Education Union is a large union of public educators in South Australia. The union has around 13,000 members and represents teachers at preschool, primary, secondary schools and TAFE sectors.
Members have access to a range of benefits including access to information, resources, advocacy, and legal advice.

The union were using iMIS 2017 to manage their membership and were looking to upgrade to iMIS EMS and the Hub Union Suite for iMIS EMS.
However, the union has a highly complex membership and billing structure. Most members are on salary-based pricing that automatically increases each year. Their iMIS system also accounts for part-time work by adjusting increment timing and allows staff to place memberships on hold (for example, during periods of leave). This setup is very flexible and highly customised, and all this functionality needed to be configured within the standard iMIS for Unions EMS template.

Zentso has worked closely with the union to understand and configure their complex requirements, particularly where they extended beyond the standard union template. This involved designing and implementing solutions tailored to their specific operational needs.

Requirements were mapped out and given a rating in order of complexity. Cloudtoolz, Zentso’s integration and automation platform, was used to configure tailored automations and extensions to the standard iMIS union template with iMIS. Zentso provided coaching to the Union’s team to help them work on the customisations themselves, directly in Cloudtoolz.

As a result of using Cloudtoolz, the long-term upgradeability and integrity of the iMIS with Union Suite system will be retained. Union staff with a technical aptitude can now also use the experience of Cloudtoolz to build solutions for future work.

Zidebar, the configurable sidebar for office applications, is used by the union to allow staff to centralise member and case records in one system, even if people are working in Outlook. Staff can upload emails and files from Outlook, store them in SharePoint, and have them automatically link back to relevant records in iMIS.

Managing electoral rolls and ballots was also a key part of the union’s activity. Within iMIS, the team can produce electoral rolls and updates to organise elections and view the member electoral roll. They can also record ballot results from each workplace, and report on totals.

The union are using the following features of the Union Suite for iMIS:
• Call centre module – to record details of member interactions and be able to retrieve and report on these interactions, including creating call lists and scripts.
• Case Management Module – Create, update and manage cases efficiently.
• Union Member Pay App – to manage dues payments, contributions, and other financial transactions for members.
• ActiveCampaign integration – The marketing automation platform is used to send personalised communications to members via a 2-way integration
• Organiser module – helps organisers manage their membership patch out of iMIS. Includes a dashboard, report and simplified view of records.
• Custom reports – Build your own reports that stay constantly up to date

The union’s move to iMIS EMS represents a major step forward in modernising their systems while retaining the functionality their operations rely on.

Zentso was able to configure the union’s complex membership, billing, and case‑management processes in a fully cloud‑based environment, which will be automatically upgraded. This was made possible using the flexibility of Cloudtoolz alongside the depth of the iMIS for Unions EMS template.

The result is a future‑proof solution that empowers the union to serve its members more efficiently, innovate faster, and confidently evolve as their needs grow.