Working with the Soap & Detergent Agency

The Soap and Detergent Association (SDA - www.cleaning101.com) is the home of the U.S. Cleaning Product and Oleochemical Industries^SM, a non-profit trade association representing manufacturers of household, industrial, and institutional cleaning products, their ingredients and finished packaging; oleochemical producers; and chemical distributors to the cleaning product industry. SDA, whose members produce more than 90 percent of the cleaning products marketed in the U.S, is committed to enhancing health and the quality of life through sustainable cleaning products and practices.

Early in 2008, SDA began to face multiple challenges with its methods of data management.  “Like most associations, SDA is an organization that places a high value on maintaining a strong relationship with its members,” explains SDA’s Manager of Information Technology, Eli Stephanou. “With a rapidly burgeoning member base coupled with an increasing amount of information to organize and manage, SDA needed a robust association management system that could efficiently manage both new and existing data without negatively impacting our member relations. Our old system of management just couldn’t do this. In fact, the greatest difficulties we experienced dealt primarily with our prior management tool’s inoperability with simple day to day tasks such as data verification and validation. These inefficiencies led to a time consuming process of cross-checking information, a delay in creating valuable reports and, most importantly, a decrease in member communication.”

SDA began its search for a new association management system. “It was paramount that we chose a piece of software that would help our organization move as far away from inefficiencies as possible,” Stephanou continues. “For example, features that would increase our staff’s productivity - such as an easy to use and intuitive software interface that give us real-time member information updates and would help decrease manual data input and cross checking procedures - were critical in our selection process. After testing various systems and speaking with multiple AMS providers, we became familiar with Euclid’s premiere AMS, ClearVantage 7 through a vendor hired to assess all of the products in our market space. After all was said and done, Euclid was the highest rated AMS based on established criteria, credibility, and compelling reliability in the marketplace. ClearVantage was the right choice.”

Euclid quickly went to work with SDA to implement ClearVantage. “Throughout the entire implementation process [and now post implementation], Euclid’s staff of professionals was always quick to respond.  Any inquiries or issues that we had – they made sure to go that ‘extra mile’ to build a customized solution that would meet our every need,” explains Stephanou.

Amongst the hundreds of functions that help improve its operations, SDA is most pleased with ClearVantage’s ability to enhance communications – something that, according to Stephanou, was one of the most important features a new AMS had to offer. “ClearVantage’s integration with Microsoft Outlook has drastically improved the way we talk to our members. As an example, any user on our staff can easily create a distribution list of contacts based on specific committees within ClearVantage. In other words, we can now go into Outlook, pull up a targeted list based on criteria within ClearVantage, and send out a specific communication within just a few seconds, saving our staff time and making our procedures much more effective.”

SDA is also one of Euclid’s first clients to utilize Mobile Member, a tool that allows users to access their organization’s membership database “on the go” from almost any mobile device, including the Blackberry, Droid and iPhone. “ClearVantage’s mobile integration is especially useful for our staff members that are frequently out of the office,” Stephanou notes. “CV Mobile gives us the ability to view just about any type of information from the palm of our hand. We are able to access our database, view action items and reports, conduct a member search, view detailed lists, update member information, and even register individuals for events, all in real time!”     

Since going live with the software, SDA has found ClearVantage to be incredibly helpful in its day to day operations. Explains Stephanou: “We are now able to leverage our data in new and powerful ways, and we only anticipate these benefits to grow as we continue to utilize ClearVantage to its fullest.”