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Alessandro Cortese, CEO of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO)
Associations observe a growing pressure on increasing their financial and business performance. Why is that?
Associations are becoming more and more complex organizations, which strive to maximize their financial performance in order to offer an increasing set of relevant services and benefits to their members. While the traditional idea looks at associations as simple businesses, aiming at providing services through their revenue mainly received by the membership dues, reality shows that associations have developed professional structures aiming at maximizing their revenue potential in order to obtain resources to best meet their mission.
Large associations are today not very different from for-profit companies, in the sense that they aim at maximizing, through relevant business models and business plans, their financial performance and maximize the profit making on projects and activities. The growth is then to be into value for the members and the stakeholders. Associations are today clearly studying their markets, segmenting their customers, studying what products and services will best meets the need of the trade or professional categories they intend to serve.
At the same time with the growth of the business, associations see an increasing professional development of their staff. More and more association executives had experiences in the for-profit world and have brought their experience in the sector of what is traditionally called not-for-profit. While it remains true that associations do not look at creating profits to be shared between shareholders at the end of the year, the same mechanisms to monitor financial performance and organizational quality, can allow associations to grow the value distributed to the members and the stakeholders, this through increased quality in the on-going activities and additional services and benefits.
CEOs want Key Performance Indicators from organisations representing them, not just their businesses. Which KPIs do they look for?
KPIs are of course an important part of the process of monitoring a business and its performance. Associations have a need to monitor their performance. Some KPIs are very common to many associations. For instance, monitoring in detail the trend in membership is something that all associations in a way or another need to do. Depending on their business phase, some organizations might look at the growth of members in absolute terms, others might focus more on the retention of members, others might create a complex scorecard to show the interaction of the membership growth and the sales in other areas.
At the same time, similar KPI schemes can be defined for Congress registrations, subscriptions to teaching courses, book sales, sponsorship, fundraising… It is very common practice, to define a set of KPIs, aligned to the business strategy of the organization and to monitor those regularly. A good set of KPIs allows constant and effective reporting and communication between the staff and the leadership of an association.
A CEO will bring his specific point of view by selecting KPIs which allow effective monitoring but also which allow communicating the performance of the society to all stakeholders in a way which will be understood. Also, the set of KPIs will reflect the management style and the focus given on certain aspects of the society. In this sense, good KPIs can be a mix of quantitative indicators, mainly allowing to monitor revenues in accordance to a marketing plan, with qualitative indicators, more giving a sense of the relevancy of the organization through surveys to the members and customers.
It is important for a CEO to bring a style of communication and transparency. A good CEO, to quote a famous business book, is a broker of ideas. He or she needs to listen carefully to all ideas expressed by the board and the key opinion leaders of his or her organization. The CEO needs then to create a collective vision in terms of management, which allows those ideas to find a place in the business plan and a business model. The choice of KPIs becomes an essential pillar to making sure that all those ideas become part of the plan of the society, once validated by a strategic plan. The choice of KPIs remains probably the main and most effective way for a CEO to communicate and align staff and leadership against common strategy.
How did ESTRO find its business model and strategy?
The process was relatively straightforward. It started with a meeting of the board enlarged to the key leaders of the society, for instance the ones chairing committees. This group met for three days in a nice venue, in order to share their expectations for the following years. This meeting was the starting point of all efforts to define a strategy and a business plan. It is crucial that all the key opinion leaders, as soon as possible in the process, become aligned to a common vision and set of expectations.
It is a negotiation between different needs and opinions, it needs to happen at the beginning of the process. The good strategy will tell what to do, but most important, what not to do. The negotiation between priorities has to happen at the same time of the negotiation of expectations about what the Society should or shouldn’t do, with everyone in the room.
This is the reason why it was crucial for us to organize such a strategic retreat. Following the indication of the key priorities for a cycle of three years, we then looked at consulting in order to have a check on our internal processes. As a result we identified the key reasons for our organizations, the opportunities, and we identified a set of benchmarks in order to improve our internal processes. This all goes into a master implementation plan, where each component of the society (committees, task forces…) has a specific role to play. This step was very important to define an effective budgeting and financial forecasting process and to define a business planning process. The following part was on the management and it consisted in translating the priorities into a sustainable plan, which would use as efficiently as possible available resources and will draft a plan for growth.
Does the membership of ESTRO “pay off”? Please explain how.
Estro is a scientific society. Our members are radiation oncologists and related professionals, mainly active in Europe. In this sense, our members have needs, which are common to many scientific and medical societies. First objective is to create opportunities of scientific exchange. The second objective is to create opportunities of education. Altogether, the mission of the society is to promote radiation oncology as a discipline and to promote its benefits to the patients.
The membership of the society therefore needs to create sufficient value through communication channels (newsletters, websites…) and educational opportunities (online portal of resources). The membership has also to play another role, by being the gateway to access the events and activities at special conditions only available to members. Finally it is a recognition system between peers, as a member of a medical society needs to be accepted by the Board, signifying that the member is an active professional. From a content point of view, the membership pays off by creating all information which a radiation oncologist needs in order to keep his or her practice up to date. From the financial standpoint, the membership is paid back through special fees which are only made available to members, when registering for meetings and teaching courses.
ESTRO was founded in Milan, but for your Anniversary Congress from 8 to 12 May 2011 you chose the Excel Centre in London. Why?
In fact, the first scientific Congress of ESTRO took place in London 30 years ago, while the founding meeting of the Society took place the year before in Milan. The board decided therefore to celebrate the anniversary by organizing a special event in the same city where the first Congress took place. The choice of the Excel Centre in London was determined by analysing what centers were available at the dates we were looking for and selecting the one which would have allowed us to bring our exhibition without technical limitations. The corporate partners of our society have specific needs in terms of exhibiting their treatment machines. The exhibition area needs to allow them to bring their latest products and meet their customers, our members. We therefore need to look for centers which allow our exhibition to take place without limitations, as the Excel in London.
The European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO) was founded in Milan in September 1980 as a Society of individual members and is the only European society to represent all professionals involved in the management of cancer patients using radiotherapy. Today ESTRO has over 5000 members in all European countries and beyond. www.estro.org