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First, thank you very much for your time and input! The thing is unions in France are really short-handed and do not have a lot of money. Hiring a "top notch"

First, thank you very much for your time and input! The thing is unions in France are really short-handed and do not have a lot of money. Hiring a "top notch" consulting firm to develop the app is not financially doable. I'm not saying, "everyone is doing it wrong". I'm saying "everyone is doing it like it was done in the 1950", because it's true. Now the top brass wants to modernize everything. I just made for them a brand new website, they want a Facebook/Twitter presence and everyone agree that the old "member card" is a problem. My thinking is that for these kind of people, I'd have a better chance of convincing them by showing something already working (I'm totally ready to get a "no" even if I worked on the app 100 hours, I would have learned new skills in the process anyway). Of course, at the beginning we would offer people the choice between the paper card and the e-card.

brudgers 9y ago
I suspect that a well designed app including all the security and authentication and backend infrastructure could easily run take a thousand or more staff hours. Without a learning curve or research. I'd put it another way...if digital cards in the form of a mobile app are viable, then why have cards at all? Just verify paid dues against a database and authenticate using an existing form of id such as a passport or other government issued document. I mean even with a mobile app, sound practice would be to authenticate identity using a third party service rather than something created in house. There's the possibility of a hybrid approach where a physical card is permanent and the cardholder's payment status is verified against a database. And perhaps a delinquent status can be fixed by swiping a credit card using Stripe or a similar service...that might even increase membership renewals by reducing friction. I'd put it this way, building an app using developers without experience is kind of 'doing it like it was done in 2009.' In the interim people's expectations have become higher and building a quality multi-platform app requires more sophistication. Not to mention maintaining one has become more complex as the app store requirements change and hardware diversifies, e.g. the latest iOS requires 64bit compilation. To me, the business problem is not the lack of an app. It is the process of maintaining the union's membership roll. An app doesn't really solve that.
- guilamu 9y ago
  Thanks again for your input, a lot of (good) food for thought!

brudgers 9y ago

I suspect that a well designed app including all the security and authentication and backend infrastructure could easily run take a thousand or more staff hours. Without a learning curve or research. I'd put it another way...if digital cards in the form of a mobile app are viable, then why have cards at all? Just verify paid dues against a database and authenticate using an existing form of id such as a passport or other government issued document. I mean even with a mobile app, sound practice would be to authenticate identity using a third party service rather than something created in house. There's the possibility of a hybrid approach where a physical card is permanent and the cardholder's payment status is verified against a database. And perhaps a delinquent status can be fixed by swiping a credit card using Stripe or a similar service...that might even increase membership renewals by reducing friction. I'd put it this way, building an app using developers without experience is kind of 'doing it like it was done in 2009.' In the interim people's expectations have become higher and building a quality multi-platform app requires more sophistication. Not to mention maintaining one has become more complex as the app store requirements change and hardware diversifies, e.g. the latest iOS requires 64bit compilation. To me, the business problem is not the lack of an app. It is the process of maintaining the union's membership roll. An app doesn't really solve that.

guilamu 9y ago
Thanks again for your input, a lot of (good) food for thought!