Jake Fabbri, CMO of Fonteva
Event-app developer Guidebook has partnered with association-management software provider Fonteva to provide a mobile solution within Fonteva's platform. Fonteva Mobile is powered by Guidebook and already integrated into Fonteva's events solution. Fonteva, which built its platform around Salesforce, also offers an events-only solution to non-association customers looking for tight Salesforce integration; the new mobile functionality is available to those customers as well.
While mobile apps have become an increasingly popular channel to engage and communicate with members, association planners have long bemoaned the difficulty and expense of integrating different technology components into their stacks. The Guidebook-Fonteva partnership facilitates a more robust, straightforward mobile functionality within the platform they might already be using for membership and events.
"Associations are able to establish unprecedented levels of communication with their members, and members gain instant access to the many benefits associations offer via their preferred delivery method -- an app that looks and performs like any other cutting-edge consumer app they have on their phones," said Jeff Lewis, founder and CEO of Guidebook.
Fonteva has integrated its content-management system with Guidebook's mobile-app-building platform, so that information and participant data flows smoothly between the two. That integration was facilitated by Guidebook's open API, launched last year.
"We didn't want to reinvent the wheel," noted Fonteva CMO Jake Fabbri, "so we looked for a best-in-breed mobile solution and found Guidebook to be the ideal partner."
The event app integration is the first phase of the partnership, Fabbri said, and that is live and now available to Fonteva clients. Meanwhile, work has begun on phase 2, which will allow clients to develop a year-round app on the platform to use for member engagement. "To this point," added Fabbri, "associations have had to create piecemeal solutions when they wanted mobile functionality. We're now able to provide that, fully integrated, on our platform."