ROYAL INSTITUTION OF CHARTERED SURVEYORS: Exploring new terrain.

Although it's long-established, maybe even old-fashioned, the RICS has found there's a lot it can do with interactive media to better serve its members, reports Greg Brooks

Since its beginnings in 1868, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has witnessed the advancement of radio and the development of TV. Now it's playing a part in the mass media of the 21st Century: the Internet.

Trade bodies don't immediately spring to mind when thinking about organisations that are using interactivity at the forefront of their business. However, RICS has recently undertaken an overhaul of its Web strategy that's changing the way it communicates with its members, businesses, the media and the public. It's a strategy that has lessons for any organisation with a mandate to represent such a large membership base.

Giving members the say

As one of the world's leading sources of land, property, construction and related environmental knowledge, RICS supports 110,000 members worldwide. Its remit is to promote best practice, represent consumers' interests and provide impartial advice to society, businesses, governments and global organisations.

The first step of this development was to create a coherent strategy that would enable the Institution to communicate more effectively with its global audience and open up its vast library of technical and market information. RICS underwent a detailed consultation process with its members and staff to assess what was required from a Web site. The findings of that consultation were then used to draw up a specification for the project that was put out to tender.

Cara McDonagh, head of new media at RICS, says that the development of the strategy was a painstaking process. "It was a slowly, slowly approach. We did a huge amount of consultation internally and externally to ensure that all the stakeholders were involved at all stages," she says. "We asked members what they wanted from a Web service and in lots of respects they set the agenda as to what went into the site."

Fernhart New Media was selected as the Institution's agency, tasked with providing a solution that would bring RICS into the digital age.

On the technical side, RICS needed an entirely new platform on which to run its interactive services. It took a strategic decision to implement a .Net platform, making it easier for the back end to plug into existing technology. This was overseen by technology agency Diagonal Solutions.

The development of the new site's design and services, carried out by Fernhart, included the addition of community message boards in the member's area of the Web site.

The development of community boards gives members an open forum for discussing issues and making suggestions. For large member-based organisations like RICS, the ability to take advantage of the communication potential of the Internet is becoming a vital component of how they work in the digital age.

"Discussion forums have exceeded our expectations, giving us a fantastic insight into what's important to our members," says McDonagh. "There was no insight into many of our members before; it went no further than what was written on application forms."

Other member-based organisations are also harnessing the power of the Internet to find out about their members and their needs.

"Our interactive service gives us the chance to put to the test things we have always thought about our membership, but never really known," says Rob Ledger, head of new media at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP). "We can now engage 3,000 people very quickly and cost-effectively. The Internet brings our members into the heart of our organisation."

The development of interactive services has allowed organisations like these to re-engage with their members. Whereas once a member may have received a quarterly update via a newsletter through the post that covered their entire industry, they can now receive specific information online about their area of practice.

The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is another organisation that's embracing the Internet as a means of communicating with members, whom it believes its interactive services allow it to better serve.

"ICE has an international membership," says Dr Matthew Smith, head of ebusiness at Thomas Telford, the Institution's commercial arm. "Like most membership organisations, we've probably neglected what our members have wanted in the last few years. We've been guilty of giving them what we think they want. Now they can tell us exactly what they do want, rather than accepting what's being given to them."

Reaching further out

ICE is also using new technology to widen its focus across the whole of the UK, using its Web presence to support its regional membership and also to run virtual events that help members it wouldn't have been possible to reach before.

"When you have an organisation as diverse as ICE, it's almost impossible to run events for everyone," says Dr Smith. "Doing it virtually makes it much more cost-effective."

The CSP is also using its interactive services to change the mindset of the organisation, to give it a renewed countrywide focus.

"We've been a very London-based organisation and have not represented our 45,000 members," admits Ledger. "But now the interactive side of the organisation is working alongside our branch networks. We're undergoing a change and launching a community-networking site that will allow different groups to share documents and information with each other within the same areas of practice that are affected by the same issues."

The RICS development has also allowed UK members to take part in discussions online with colleagues in the same area of practice and even in other territories. "The main way members network is through regional events," says McDonagh. "Now they're getting to know international members through the site."

RICS gets 25% of its traffic from outside the UK, but has an 80% membership base inside the UK. The site is now growing the Institution's international profile and reach.

Building architecture

The success of the RICS site relies on its ability to allow individual members to focus on their own areas of practice. RICS members work in every area from housing markets to the antiques business, and letting them access relevant information and talk to relevant members was vital.

The Institution decided to create its own taxonomy: literally, a dictionary of terminology of everything that a surveyor is involved in. This detailed index of the publications that RICS publishes, online and offline, provided the underlying architecture for the site.

"It was a case of as much consultation as possible," says Robin Viner, team leader for content management at RICS. "We did a mini audit looking at our own structure in-house, the structure of the different departments, everything down to the classification we use in the library."

Having completed the consultation, which took six months from September 2003 to February 2004, Viner led an external assessment to ask groups for their input. The result was the architecture the site uses for the classification and retrieval of information, one of the key remits of the Institution as a source of knowledge.

The taxonomy is now being implemented in the RICS internal structure. It's being rolled out progressively across all its departments and, according to Viner, is now being used to "discern trends and address members' needs".

McDonagh believes that the development of the taxonomy was vital to the project, as it no longer pushes members into groups they don't have anything in common with. "Rather than us pigeonholing our members, they can choose from the buffet of information available," she says. "The taxonomy will grow from our side as every department adds to it."

Although not necessarily the most exciting part of the project, the creation of the taxonomy has been one of the most important factors in making the organisation more useful to its members. Since it was implemented, there has been a 400% rise in the online recording of continuous professional development. This is the means by which members of professional associations maintain, improve and broaden the knowledge and skills they require in their professional lives.

The institution has also seen 14,000 members registering on the site in its first live month. It's attracting 100,000 users a month, according to figures from WebtraffIQ, with the average number of pages viewed per visit rising from 4.6 to 6.4. The community discussion forums have proved to be a big hit with members, with an average of 20 new discussion threads added per week.

McDonagh is pleased with the development so far. "It's now more about the user and less about our internal structure," she says.

RICS has also discovered that there are many more members of the public visiting the site than it had expected. This discovery is influencing its future plans and has already led to the launch of public-facing services, such as the ability to locate surveyors in your local area.

"There's much more public involvement than we expected," says McDonagh. "We want to open that up in 2005. The find-a-surveyor service has already been very well received and the figures are rising each month."

RICS is now looking to develop its site further and upgrades will now come as a direct result of member feedback, login stats and search results, to drive content and focus effort on navigation to improving usability. It also plans to launch member subscription payments online, develop a specific careers zone and add a job Web site. And it's launching an SMS campaign to encourage members to register on the site, and a viral email campaign to market it.

Showing the way

The continuing fight for RICS, and other member-based organisations with a Web presence, is that despite the initial success they may have had with their services, there's still a lot of work to be done educating their members about services and the use of technology.

"The problem we've had is engaging people," says CSP's Ledger. "The level of interactive literacy is higher here than it would be at RICS, I imagine, but we're not immediately sure what our members will be ready for."

Educating its members about the services it now offers online is vital to the continuing success of RICS's development into an interactive organisation. However, the Institution has to perform a delicate balancing act between the old-world methods of some of its members and the need to drag the organisation into the digital age.

"We have to keep pushing things, but not alienate our membership," says McDonagh. "We receive requests in every form, from handwritten letters on embossed paper to SMS messages. We have phased our services in slowly and we've had to help with the education of our members."

COMPANY HISTORY

1868 Institution of Surveyors formed

1881 Royal Charter granted

1891 Membership by examination becomes compulsory

1921 Royal patronage by George V

1966 RICS sets up Agricultural, General Practice, Land & Mining Surveying, and Quantity Surveying divisions

1996 First Web site goes live

2000 Merger with Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers. UK regional network established

September 2004 New Web site goes live

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