Platforms are all the rage these days. The digitisation of the world has created a number of new businesses where customers and suppliers interact through an online platform – think of Ebay, Facebook or Depop. The key characteristic of a platform is that they reduce search and transaction costs.
Platforms as a concept are older than the online revolution, for example shopping centres like Westfield are platforms that bring retailers and customers together in one place. Membership organisations are a very old form of platform, they bring together a network of people to share ideas and exchange services – reducing the cost of searching for ideas and the cost of services.
In the digital revolution, however, many membership organisations have struggled to translate their offline platform activity into effective online platforms. To help you to consider how this could be done I thought it would be worthwhile to consider three key concepts of platforms.
Who should participate in your online platform?
The most obvious answer is your members, however the answer isn’t always straightforward and for some organisations they may want to open up their platform to non-members. Some organisations may even want part of their platform to be a place where services are offered, for example training on a learning platform. All this goes to the heart of what your organisation does and who want participating and interacting. You may even want different areas of your platform available to allow different types of interaction for different groups, for example closed forums for members, but open public areas to search for members or information. Working out who you want on your platform and why will help you define your participants.
What are the rules of your platform?
Once you know who is going to be accessing your platform, you need to be clear about what they are allowed to do. For some platforms it is about networking, others it is about offering services or finding ideas, in all cases there will be an exchange of information. Clearly defining who can do what is important to make sure that all participants are clear what is expected of them and what they can and cannot do. Governance is one of the trickiest things to get right, if you make your platform too restrictive then participants can’t easily find and share ideas or services. If you make the rules too loose you platform can become a free-for-all that turns people off from taking part as they are not clear why they are using your platform.
Who should pay for your platform?
At some point somebody has to pay for the platform. Either the membership is subsidizing the platform through their subscriptions or services are provided or revenue is raised through advertising and data harvesting. Understanding who is using your platform and why will help you define who should pay. In most platform models those groups who benefit most from the platform’s existence are the ones who should make the largest contribution. In traditional models benefit might be defined financially, membership however works beyond simple transactions and benefit should be defined more widely to include broader personal and social benefits.
Online platforms are a tremendous opportunity for membership organisations, they are a 21st century version of what membership organisations have always done – bringing people together to share ideas and knowledge. Getting it right for your membership will allow you to reach new members and audiences and expand the success of your organisation.
If you want to find out more about platforms take a look at this great article "Strategy Decisions for Multisided Platforms" that inspired this post.