A membership platform is rarely just a website. It holds the member record, takes payments, manages renewals, runs events and controls access to content. Each of those connects to other systems and other teams. A brief that lists features without settling how those parts fit together leaves the most expensive questions unanswered.
1. Which system owns the member record
The CRM, the website or a dedicated membership system: one of them has to be the authority on who a member is, what they have paid for and what they can access. Without that decision, each supplier will assume a different answer, and the integrations they price will not be comparable.
2. What happens at renewal
Renewals are where most of the revenue sits and most of the complexity hides: grace periods, lapsed members, grade changes, Direct Debits and organisational memberships with several named contacts. Write down how renewal works today, exceptions included, before asking anyone to rebuild it.
3. Which integrations stay, and which go
- Keep it, and connect the new platform to it
- Replace it as part of the project
- Retire it, and move what it does elsewhere
- Leave it for now, and plan the change for later
4. What data moves, and in what state
Years of member data carry duplicates, retired grades, half-finished records and fields used for things they were never meant for. Decide how far back to migrate, who will clean what, and who signs off the result. Data work is often the largest hidden cost in a membership project.
The gaps in a brief get filled with assumptions, and assumptions get priced as contingency.
5. Who will run it day to day
A platform your own team manages needs different tools and training from one a supplier runs for you. Decide who will publish content, change prices, add events and own each integration, and make that part of the brief.
These are the questions a Blueprint answers. Three weeks of workshops, audit and planning produce a costed plan and a decision log that any supplier can price against, whether or not that supplier is us.
