Results · American Society of Civil Engineers

In four weeks, the questions changed.

ASCE serves 160,000 members. When their staff started using A2 Atlas on their own, they began by counting members. By the end of the month they were asking Atlas which members to convert — and whether a giveaway would pay for itself.

How many? → What should we do?

295
Questions asked
Across 80 sessions, in 28 days
1 → 12
People using it
Every chat seat at ASCE, from one in week one
70
Charts built
By staff, in chat, with no analyst in the loop
89%
Commercial
Revenue, pricing and benefit value — not headcount
ASCE  ·  THE ESCALATIONA question gets smarter by climbing.
How many?
15–19 Jul · counting
Changing how?
20–23 Jul · trends
Connected how?
24 Jul · two domains
Worth what?
29 Jul–8 Aug · value
So do what?
12 Aug · decisions
28 days later
Four weeks of learning. Each rung a harder question than the one before it, and none of them was prompted by us.
ASCE  ·  THE SIDE EFFECTDepartments started reading each other’s data.
Membership
Publications
Benefits
Events
Finance
one question
Staff could layer membership over publications over events over finance.
“Do joins drive purchases?”
MEMBERSHIP + PUBLICATIONS
“What does a benefit cost against what it returns?”
BENEFITS + FINANCE
They stopped asking about their own department and started asking about the association.
Institutional knowledge that used to live in four heads now lives in one view.
ASCE  ·  ADOPTIONAnd the prerequisite was curiosity.
WHAT IT TOOK TO START
A query languageNOT NEEDED
A report requestNOT NEEDED
Waiting on an analystNOT NEEDED
Curiosity.
After a short introduction,
people simply chatted.
One person started asking questions.
Four weeks later, twelve colleagues were. And the busiest day was the last one.
A2 Atlas
from Association Analytics

Or read it below ↓

The escalation

A question gets smarter by climbing.

Read left to right and you can watch four weeks of learning happen. Each rung is a harder question than the one before it, and none of them was prompted by us.

How many? 15–19 Jul · counting Changing how? 20–23 Jul · trends Connected how? 24 Jul · two domains at once Worth what? 29 Jul–8 Aug · value So do what? 12 Aug · decisions 28 days later
RUNG 1

How many members do we have by grade, country, region, age and tenure?

Counting. Verifying that the numbers match what they already knew.

RUNG 2

What does three years of new-member joins look like? Where are the younger cohorts?

Movement over time, rather than a figure on a day.

RUNG 3

Do new-member joins correlate with product purchases?

The first question that needed two departments' data to answer.

RUNG 4

What is the free-PDH benefit actually delivering? How does member pricing compare with list, by product code?

Value, not volume. Questions with a finance answer.

RUNG 5

Which group should we convert for revenue? Would comping an e-book to auto-renew joiners pay for itself?

A recommendation, and a hypothetical. Atlas is being asked to help decide.

The side effect

Departments started reading each other's data.

The question that asks whether joins drive purchases belongs to two teams at once. So does the one about what a benefit costs against what it returns. Once staff could layer membership over publications over events over finance, they stopped asking about their own department and started asking about the association.

Institutional knowledge that used to live in four heads now lives in one view.

Membership Publications Benefits Events Finance one question

What they built

Four charts about how many members they have.

Sixty-six about what those members are worth. ASCE's staff built 70 charts in four weeks, and the subjects tell you what analytics is actually for once counting stops being the hard part.

89% commercial

  • Publications & product economics27
  • Member benefit value14
  • Revenue & non-dues revenue11
  • Monthly instalment programme8
  • Membership counts & growth4
  • Retention & renewal2
  • Events & conference attendance2
  • Member vs list pricing2

Adoption

And the prerequisite was curiosity.

There was a short introduction. After that, people simply chatted — no query language, no report to request, no waiting. One person started asking questions. Four weeks later twelve colleagues were — and in the four weeks to 12 August, the busiest day was the last one.

Questions asked per week, and how many people asked them

0 40 80 120 16 10 69 91 109 1 person 2 people 6 people 6 people 8 people 13 Jul 20 Jul 27 Jul 3 Aug 10 Aug 3 days only
Weeks begin Monday. The final week covers Monday to Wednesday only — it was already the largest week in the record when this was measured.

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