The American Urogynecologic Society

The American Urogynecologic Society Benefits from ATS Online Registration and Reporting System

The Client

The American Urogynecologic Society, AUGS for short, is a medical society that serves a smaller medical sub-specialty in gynecology. Their 1,200 members work in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery. These members treat patients with pelvic floor disorders anywhere from urinary incontinence to overactive bladders to pelvic organ prolapse and beyond. Urogynecology was named a subspecialty by the American Board of Medical Specialties in 2011, and the first doctors in this field were board certified in 2013. This is a relatively new and important field of medicine, and AUGS works to provide continuous education for its members through annual conferences.

Colleen Hughes, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for AUGS, has been with the organization for nine years and handles many of their operations and vendor selection and vetting.

“There’s a lot of options out there and it’s tough, especially when you expect a certain product to be a certain way, but once you get into implementation it’s something different.”

The Problem

Before contacting ATS, AUGS used their internal AMS system’s very basic registration component. Due to the ever-evolving complexity of the AUGS annual event, Colleen and the team realized they needed to find a better solution to help manage their event’s growth. These complexities included but were not limited to endless session add-ons and lack of reporting to manage these sessions. “The previous online registration system we used was very clunky; the reporting and exhibitor registration was a huge pain. We initially went with the same company that did our abstract submissions because it made sense.” After a brief foray with the registration component, another partner offered it was time to make another change. “Onsite was a nightmare. It was not smooth, and it was just painful for staff and attendees. If someone wanted to change their registration or add something, you had to re-enter their billing address and their credit card information, which takes forever when there’s a line of attendees. I was looking for a better user experience that made it easy. I don’t want to make it hard to collect money.”

In addition to the challenges mentioned above, one huge pain was creating reports. Colleen would have to pull data from 5 reports to consolidate into one before passing along to her team. “It was taking us hours to put together a weekly report to send out to the team.”

Besides the technical help that Colleen was seeking for AUGS, she searched for a company that would provide excellent customer service and feels like a true partner. “A red flag is our previous vendor wasn’t working with us to come up with a solution or workaround. I was asking how we could fix this, and there was no problem solving or partnership. I like to feel that I have a partner in a vendor, and I didn’t feel that. I was coming up with ideas and trying to finagle the system when, in my eyes, a vendor should be doing that.”

Through an organic Google search, Colleen came across ATS’s website and liked what she saw. “I liked that you all were smaller. That’s not a bad thing to be a smaller company; you can give more attention to your clients.” She looked to ATS for the following:

• A new online registration system that could integrate with their membership platform and handle complex registration rules and add-on packages
• A better onsite experience for both staff and attendees
• Less complicated reporting that is easy to glean from the registration site
• A vendor who is a true partner and provides solutions

The Solution

ATS’s Online Registration team built a beautiful new registration website where members of AUGS could register for the annual conference with ease, including different session add-ons. The online registration system was used onsite in conjunction with a print on demand badge program that made accepting new registrations and payments and made changes to existing registrations smooth and straightforward for staff. With the new systems came a new way of pulling reports from both the online registration system itself and ATS’s online portal, where Colleen could pull post-conference reports for the AUGS team. Virtually any type of report can be pulled from weekly pre-conference registration reports to post-conference attendance records.

The Result

“Your system could definitely handle the sophistication that we needed for our meeting.”

ATS working with Colleen to provide a solution to AUGS’s needs while remaining flexible and in constant communication proved to be a success.

“The reporting alone was super helpful.  I also loved the look and feel of your system, and I liked the fact that there was flexibility.  There also seemed to be more logic with the registration.  Onsite, things were more seamless.  I loved the onsite experience with the badge printing and equipment, and it just made sense to have you all do the pre-registration, too.  I think that made it even better.  From a staff time perspective, this has helped us save money in the long run.  We haven’t had to spend as much time working to fix issues or pulling reports.  I love the project plans you all have put out with deadlines that kind of keeps us on track.  You’re very responsive, so that’s great.  We have a personal relationship and we know who to reach out to.  Customer service is definitely a big thing for me, and just having that personalization is great.”