98% Faster Member Onboarding: Lessons from LTEN

Disconnected systems and manual processes cause major slowdowns for associations, unions, and non-profits. Tedious administrative tasks dominate staff time, member data is inconsistent, and the organization has trouble growing.

The Life Sciences Trainers & Educators Network (LTEN), a leading nonprofit professional association, faced these same challenges. But they transformed their association with automation, consolidated member logins, and centralizing their membership management. LTEN saw incredible results: 

• 98% faster new member onboarding

• Five times faster application processing

• 20 hours of outsourced accounting no longer needed

About LTEN: The Life Sciences Trainers & Educators Network (LTEN) is a nonprofit professional association supporting training and development professionals across the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, and diagnostics sectors. It serves members with education and networking through an annual conference, certificate programs, webinars, regional events, e-learning, and a monthly digital magazine.

Here’s how they did it, and how your organization can achieve similar results. 

LTEN accepts a Great Things Award for Digital Transformation at the 2025 iNNOVATIONS Conference.

❌ The Problem: Manual Processes and Disconnected Systems Slowing Everyone Down

LTEN relied on disconnected systems that required manual work across nearly every department. Staff tracked member activity, payments, and applications using spreadsheets and multiple platforms, which created inefficiencies and data gaps.

Members managed multiple logins and passwords, and their records lacked key engagement history.

Processes like e-learning access, award applications, and onboarding required staff to manually link records, send credentials, or follow up on incomplete submissions. Staff had limited visibility into member activity and spent significant time on administrative tasks instead of mission-focused work. The system lacked scalability, consistency, and integration, limiting LTEN’s ability to grow.

✅ Solution: Better Internal Processes and Easier Member Experience

LTEN created a better experience for both staff and members by improving their internal processes and reviewing member benefits. Here’s what they did:

1. Centralized member management

LTEN centralized membership, accounting, education, and awards within one system. Integrated reporting and data reduced administrative work and improved efficiency.

By consolidating data into a single platform, LTEN:

• Can understand their members better

• Moved from manual spreadsheets to integrated reporting

Want to consolidate your member data?

We hope so! Here are the three main steps, but you can get more details in our guide, It’s Not You, It’s Your Data Silos.

1. Choose the right membership management platform as your core. It needs three main components: membership management (of course), accounting and finance features that can handle complex billing structures, and website management.
2. Add the departmental modules you need. These could be embedded functionality native to your system, or tightly integrated solutions. Examples are event management, advertising and sponsorships, email marketing, automation, and engagement scoring.
3. Extend with the best integration tools. Your membership management platform should be extensible and able to integrate with the latest solutions. Ideally, you build no-code integrations to simplify things for your staff.

2. Automated mentor pairing, renewal notices, financial processes, and more

LTEN staff automated many processes that cover various aspects of the member experience.

These automations created a better experience for both members and staff. The automated mentor paired reduced the onboarding time from one week to just two hours, a 98% decrease. The financial automations allowed LTEN to eliminate 20 hours per month of outsourced accounting. And the automations across the application process save staff time and support accurate reporting.

Want to automate your processes?

The first step is assessing one of your current processes. Go through each step to understand its purpose. And no, "this is just how it's done" is not a valid reason to keep a process in place. Note any tedious steps or friction areas.

For example, here are some good questions to ask if you want to automate membership renewals:

• What are all the steps involved for staff users and for members? Can we automate, remove, or simplify any steps?

• Why doesn’t our membership organization accept direct debit or email transfer for payment?

• How would it benefit our members and staff if we added a new option, like automatic, recurring payments?

• Have any members or staff complained about the payment process?

See all 6 steps in our article, Streamline and Automate Your Membership Management.

3. Just one password for members to remember

Previously, LTEN members managed multiple logins and passwords, which created friction in the member experience.

LTEN implemented single sign-on (SSO), which was possible after they unified their membership management under one system. SSO removed extra logins and simplified access to the LMS, awards, and event registration.

What Can Your Organization Do Next?

LTEN's success shows how automation benefits both staff and members. And streamlining operations helps your team focus on what matters most: serving your members and advancing your mission. 

 To get started: 

1. Identify your bottlenecks. Are renewals, registrations, or reporting consuming too much time?
2. Unify your data. A Single Source of Truth helps you uncover insights and improve decision-making.
   
3. Prioritize the member experience. Single sign-on and simplified onboarding make it easier for members to engage with your organization.

📘 Read the full LTEN success story.