American Society of Agronomy

Making peak seasons a snap

As the certifying body for agronomists, the American Society of Agronomy (ASA) tracks its members’ continuing education (CE) units. During peak training seasons, the ASA website was overrun with member queries. The nonprofit needed a technology upgrade to serve members and support staff.

The Challenge

Members were supposed to check their certification status on the ASA website, but it couldn’t handle queries during peak training seasons. Reports would take minutes to open or fail, leading to frustrating phone calls. When members finally retrieved their CE reports, they were difficult to read. Internal systems didn’t work well either. The master compliance report became so massive it was unstable. It took four days a month for staff to pull data and email members their certification status.

The Solution

Wipfli assessed the ASA’s technology needs and helped it select and launch new tools to optimize queries and reporting. The ASA chose Microsoft’s Power BI and Azure cloud to give it more query power during peak seasons. Wipfli also helped the ASA restructure its reports so they’re easier to read. Now CE reports use color, icons and a simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” indicator to illustrate a member’s compliance.

Wipfli has solved problems we didn’t think were possible to fix. And with Wipfli, we’re continuing to make more and more improvements to our technology.

Ian Popkewitz, IT/Operations Department Director

The results

Now reports are reliable, accurate and fast — most open instantly. Member reports are accessible on mobile devices, too. Staff can pull compliance data and email members about their certification status in minutes, not days. Power BI reduced the number of service calls related to CE reports and took a load of stress off staff.

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Making peak seasons a snap

The Challenge

The Solution

The results

Services Engaged