How Feature Suggestions Work With Member Jungle

As you may already know, Member Jungle customers can suggest features they would like to see our development team make a reality. Unfortunately, while many of these suggestions will become a reality, we just logistically can’t implement them all. Our development team is fantastic, but we do legally need to allow them to sleep. 

So today, we are going to cover everything you need to know about feature suggestions at Member Jungle: 

• Why Do We Implement Feature Suggestions
• How Do We Decide Which Feature Suggestions Get Implemented

Why Member Jungle Implements Feature Suggestions

At Member Jungle, our primary goal is to make membership management easy and to help club admins get back to enjoying their clubs. The needs of clubs and the technology available to clubs are constantly evolving. Therefore, the only way we can continue to meet our goals of helping clubs is to keep evolving as well. Even if we didn’t get any feature suggestions, we would still have a development team, and we would still keep making improvements to and releasing new features for our software. 

However, we do get feature suggestions from the clubs we work with, and we always do our best to implement as many suggestions as possible. Because at the end of the day, who knows what clubs need better than those who actually run clubs? 

We value your feedback as it helps us gain a different perspective and identify things we may have missed or not considered during the planning or development process. As our primary users, we appreciate that you may find limitations we hadn’t expected. Sometimes a club will come on board who operate in a field we have never had a customer in before. Those customers often have different needs than those we are used to catering to. This happened not long ago when a few bushwalking clubs signed up with Member Jungle, and put in feature suggestions for quick access to members’ emergency contact details via the mobile app. Due to the importance of being able to reach an emergency contact with outdoor activities, plus we had already had the same functionality suggested on a number of occasions, and we were currently working on account fields, the request was moved up the priority list and this feature has now been added to the Member Jungle system. 

Our system has been built over 17+ years, and we constantly strive to improve and provide new functionality.

Our development team consistently works to adopt feature suggestions and improve and refine Member Jungle to ensure it remains up-to-date with the latest technologies and industry standards. These changes and improvements are tested thoroughly and validated before they go live, ensuring you receive a high-quality and reliable product. By evolving and adapting to your needs, we can ensure that your system will remain up-to-date and helpful for the foreseeable future. 

Why Can’t Member Jungle Implement Every Feature Suggestion? 

One question we hear from customers is “when will my suggestion be added?”, and unfortunately there isn't a simple answer to that. It depends on what the suggestion is, how complicated it is and how similar it is to current projects. 

Some suggestions will be very simple to create, others will be longer and more drawn out, others will already be underway when they are suggested and others will just be too niche or complicated to ever implement. 

Unfortunately, we can not implement every feature suggestion. If we implemented every suggestion made the system would be pulled in 100 different directions and be less useful for it. We instead have to focus on the suggestions that are going to do the most for the most people. By focusing on the suggestions that benefit the most people we can continue to improve the product as a whole for many years to come. 

So unfortunately there is a chance that your feature suggestion will not be implemented, but if so it will only be not implemented to make room for an improvement that will be even more helpful. 

How We Decide Which Feature Suggestions Get Implemented

All feature suggestions from you and other customers are gathered, and at the end of each quarter, we review all feature suggestions based on the following criteria: 

• How much demand is there for the idea - We often see a trend with some things being suggested repeatedly. 
   
• How many people would the change affect - We like to focus on changes that will benefit the most people. 
   
• How much time will the idea save our administrators - As our goal is to make membership management easy and save you time, we like to focus on changes that will directly help club administrators. Sometimes, a small change can have a huge impact.
   
• How long will it take to complete the development - This needs to be considered due to resources and time constraints.
   
• How does it fit in with the general product direction of Member Jungle - We always have a development roadmap planned for at least the next year. So, we need to consider how the suggestions fit into that plan. 

How Does This Affect You And Your Club?

The whole idea of Member Jungle is to help you and your club as much as possible. Our constant improvements are a big part of that, and listening to you and what you need only makes sense. If you are a current customer and have a feature suggestion, please contact us.  

If you are interested in how these constant updates can benefit your club, please read Member Jungle Product Releases: What It Means For Your Club.