As CFA Institute embarks on its new strategy, we see an opportunity to create a more agile, resilient, and sustainable model for supporting society technology needs that better serves both local markets and our global community. 

Over the years, our goal has been to provide societies with the resources to support their most immediate technology needs. Implementation of these efforts, however, has often resulted in sometimes expensive customization efforts, inconsistent uptake of technology solutions across the network, and duplication of efforts and resources between CFA Institute and societies.  

We believe we can evolve this model to create a more effective and sustainable one by centralizing certain core capabilities through solutions that meet most societies’ needs, while still allowing for local flexibility. Centralizing responsibility for most technology solutions will be mutually beneficial, allowing societies and CFA Institute to benefit from economies of scale, more efficiently manage the suite of technology solutions, and create a more integrated and consistent member experience.

Key updates and what to expect in the coming months are as follows:

• Our IT team is embarking on work that will help us to better manage the assignment of society territories, creating greater clarity regarding Natural Society Area assignments.
• Member contact records will soon be available in Salesforce, and society and employer accounts will be linked directly to individual member and candidate Salesforce records. These updates will allow societies to have visibility on members’ and candidates’ key relationships and history, such as a new member’s previous society memberships.
• Additional work is underway to integrate technologies such as Cvent into the Salesforce system. While IT completes this integration, we will pause onboarding new societies onto the Cvent platform. Onboarding will resume in August 2021. Societies currently using Cvent will continue to do so and will not be impacted.
• Some of you will be aware that work has been underway to enable retrieving event data from Cvent and merging it with contact records in Salesforce. This work is being paused briefly to support integration efforts but will resume in August 2021.

As these updates are made, the Society Operations team will provide further instruction and information to societies on how they can access and utilize these updates.

We recognize the importance of gathering society feedback and questions to improve technology. In an effort to formalize this feedback loop, we’re also creating a Society Operations Advisory Council. This council will help to elevate what matters most to societies related to local operations and better understand where there may be unmet needs.

In the coming months, please look out for a more regular cadence of communication related to our society technology approach and what it means for you and your society.