How the Recording Academy® transformed the nominee and member experience with IBM Consulting

Everyone knows about the Recording Academy’s GRAMMY Awards® ceremony, music’s only peer-recognized accolade and highest achievement. But what goes on at the Academy the other 364 days of the year?

Besides hosting Music’s Biggest Night®, the Recording Academy is hard at work year-round ensuring the recording arts remain a thriving part of the world’s shared cultural heritage. As a member-based society of music professionals, the not-for-profit represents the voices of performers, songwriters, producers, engineers and all music professionals.

A call for modernization

Ever since its founding in 1956, members have been the lifeblood of the Academy. But engaging these 22,000-plus members—including Recording Academy, Latin Recording Academy®, voting, nonvoting, student, lifetime and online members—is a growing challenge in today’s fast-paced digital environment.

“This is the digital age. And digital experiences define your brand, whether you’re a retailer, a bank, or the Recording Academy,” says Panos Panay, President of the Recording Academy.

To better engage its members and attract new ones, the Recording Academy needed to modernize. To migrate its legacy CRM database to a cloud-based solution, the Academy turned to IBM.

IBM Consulting™ is helping the Academy optimize its implementation of Salesforce Experience Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud platforms as part of the Academy’s overall digital transformation based on hybrid cloud and AI.

Work smarter with AI, automation and intelligent workflows

Named a leader in IDC’s 2021 Worldwide Salesforce Implementation Services MarketScape Report, IBM has a unique ability to solve clients’ most pressing business problems. We accomplish this via a full range of consulting services spanning strategy, design, integration and technology to create intelligent experiences, drive innovation at scale and capture growth opportunities. IBM is the undisputed leader in AI-powered intelligent experiences on the Salesforce platform, enabling end-to-end digital transformation through our offerings, capabilities, accelerators and technologies.

Phase one

Shortly after the Recording Academy embarked on its Salesforce journey this past year, the music organization realized they did not have enough time or sufficient resources to unlock the full value of the Experience and Marketing platforms. So they developed an initial two-phase engagement to triage non-negotiable processes before addressing long-term engagement and scalability.

In the first phase of engagement, IBM Consulting helped the Academy team develop a roadmap focused on nominations, ticketing and membership renewal journeys.

Prior to the implementation, the email journey for nominees was managed manually in an un-integrated process. With just weeks left to send out nominee email notifications, IBM Consulting began conducting IBM Garage™ workshops with the Recording Academy team that included mockups of what the journey might look like. An end-to-end model for accelerating digital transformation, IBM Garage helps generate innovative ideas and equips organizations with the experts, practices and technologies to rapidly turn those ideas into business value. Through this process, the Academy revamped its email journey in time for the 65th GRAMMY® nominations.

During this phase, IBM Consulting was able to help the Academy speed the development of Salesforce functionality using pre-built accelerators that saved 1,000 development hours and allowed the Recording Academy to customize the experience.

Now from the moment a GRAMMY nominee receives their first email notification, they’re taken on an engaging and easy-to-follow journey, where they can access all the exciting GRAMMY-related information such as events leading up to the ceremony and how to buy tickets. Where the marketing team previously handled all communications manually, now they can create an automated journey.

Phase two

For the Recording Academy, a critical part of this new journey includes retaining and recruiting members. With the previous legacy system, it was difficult for members and nonmembers to navigate renewals and signups through email journeys. Now nominees who are already members of the Academy can quickly access the renewal portal, and nominees who are not members can easily sign up, through a fully automated process.

Insights on the red carpet

IBM Consulting is also working with the Recording Academy to enhance the fan experience of the red carpet with GRAMMY Insights with IBM Watson®.

365 days of better membership service

According to IBM’s latest State of Salesforce report, the best performing companies are 70% more likely to have established intelligent workflows in their companies; 86% of those who have established intelligent workflows say they have increased customer service and satisfaction.

Experts from IBM Consulting continue working closely with the Recording Academy team to unlock the next wave of value from the Salesforce platforms so the nonprofit can grow and scale. This ongoing partnership allows the world’s leading society of music professionals to enhance their member experiences year-round so it can build on its mission “to recognize excellence in the recording arts and sciences, cultivate the well-being of the music community and ensure that music remains an indelible part of our culture.”

Source: ibm.com