The Journey of Launching Relevate One

When we started planning Relevate One, just chasing the next iteration of association management software didn’t interest us – we were pursuing a higher purpose.

Your Association Management System should streamline and centralize your operations, but today’s technology just isn’t cutting it. We want MLS and association staff to easily manage their organizations while agents have everything they need right at their fingertips.

We didn’t just imagine an AMS that could do all of this and more. We built it. Meet Relevate One.

Disconnected Systems & Constant Workarounds

If you’ve worked in an association or MLS organization, you’ve likely experienced the nightmare of disconnected tools. You must juggle one system for accounting, another for education, a third for communication, and more beyond that. 

These tools weren’t built to work together, so you’re left piecing everything together just to keep things running.

Having multiple systems that don’t communicate with one another doesn’t just cost time; it drains energy, creates confusion, and increases the chances of human error. Even the most basic questions can turn into a time-consuming puzzle. 

It’s a disservice to your staff when they have to jump between portals, emails, and spreadsheets just to complete basic tasks.

Relevate has been in the AMS industry since the 80s, so this wasn’t a complete surprise to us. It’s how things have always been. But we’ve heard the same thing again and again: there has to be a better way.

When the development and product design team began to dig deeper into the problem, we clearly saw how association and MLS organizations have been forced to operate in an environment that didn’t set them up for success. 

Something had to change.

Listen, then Build

We didn’t begin with a roadmap or a list of features that an Association Management System needs. We started by asking questions.

We sought to understand where associations felt friction, what challenges they faced, and where they knew their work could be simplified, but their current systems failed. Talking to association leaders, staff, and members we got the answers we needed to build a solution to truly evolve their day-to-day business.

Once we had what we needed, we began designing the next generation of Association Management software with a clear focus on simplicity, flexibility, and real-world usefulness. Every feature tested and validated by real users.

“With every feature designed, we’d ask for real feedback, and the clarity we gained from those sessions would sometimes change our entire perspective,” said the Director of Design. “It wasn’t enough to put ourselves in the shoes of the user. We had to walk miles wearing those shoes, so we could shed our biases and fully feel their pain.”

Designing Relevate One wasn’t about trendy features or flashy technology, it was about solving real, tangible roadblocks that the average staff and association member was actively struggling with every day. 

Unprecedented Flexibility

Once we understood the scope of our solution, something became clear: Relevate One wasn’t just an ambitious idea, it was an incredibly complex project from a development standpoint. 

Unlike usual projects where features are mostly static and predictable, Relevate One had to be deeply flexible, and we couldn’t take anything for granted. When we asked clients what a single feature needed to handle, the answer was often just one word: “Everything.”

“Relevate One posed one of the biggest engineering challenges we’d encountered so far. We weren’t just solving problems for one association,” noted the Director of Engineering. “We needed to consider the dozens of ways in which people from different associations work, and we had to build an all-in-one solution that could help them without disturbing current workflows or giving them a platform that would take months to learn.”

Take the Rule Builder, for example. This feature lets clients define custom data structures and configure business logic through a user-friendly interface; essentially giving them the power to build and apply their own rules across the platform. Those rules had to scale across tens of thousands of unique configurations, depending on how each organization runs, becoming the unique solution for any association’s use case.

The Accounting System was another beast. Relevate One handles everything internally, and this feature alone took months to build. However, with careful testing, implementation, and many rounds of user feedback, we built a cutting edge solution at scale. The system is able to automatically generate transaction reports, reconciliations, and financial summaries to give the user a complete accounting visibility in one place.

After more than three years of development, dozens of focus groups, validating features, building automations, and hundreds of hours brainstorming the best approach, Relevate One has finally come to life. 

What we’ve built with Relevate One puts the power back in the hands of our users, as tested first-hand. It’s a system built on shared pride, designed to shift the way we all conduct business. 

Finally, All In One

Relevate One is already setting a new standard for the way associations and MLS organizations operate, and the day-to-day of members — putting them at the forefront of the industry. 

Outdated member records or slow updates are a thing of the past. With Relevate One, information stays current automatically, which ensures accuracy in membership status, billing cycles, and communication. The platform integrates smoothly with existing systems, which completely eliminates manual data entry and human error. 

For members, Relevate One provides a self-service portal that works the way they expect modern software to work. They can register for events, renew certifications, check deadlines, and access resources, and much more. All from one place.

Associations and MLS organizations have been forced to live with outdated software for far too long, and with the release of Relevate One we have finally designed an all-in-one solution — allowing us all to breathe easier.

All this to say, we will not stop here.

What Comes Next

This platform was never meant to be a static product. It’s meant to evolve alongside our clients, their needs, and the industry itself; taking it from zero to ONE. 

New features are already in development, but our approach won’t change. Listening to our users has been core to the development of Relevate One, and we will continue to hear from you..

“Our mission is to keep associations ahead of the curve,” said Mark Richburg, CEO of Relevate. “By constantly evolving our software, we make sure our clients have the best tools available today—and tomorrow.”

If you’ve ever found yourself hating your AMS and thinking, “There has to be a better way,” there is. Get ready to Relevate with Relevate One. Book a demo and experience it for yourself.