About TUI
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) represents over 22,000 teachers and lecturers across post-primary, higher and further education. With 57 branches across 19 areas, the TUI is the voice of educators in schools, colleges, technological universities, further education centres and specialist settings across Ireland.
As a union, the TUI negotiates nationally and locally on behalf of its members, provides legal and professional support, and delivers a wide range of benefits. To keep pace with rising expectations for digital services, and to streamline its core operations, the TUI set out on a journey to replace its ageing membership system with a modern, future-proof platform.
The Challenge
TUI’s legacy membership system was more than 20 years old. It had been customised heavily over the years and was increasingly expensive to maintain. With most members paying by Deduction at Source (DAS), accuracy and reliability in payment processing were critical.
Key challenges included:
- Fragmented systems – manual processes, siloed data and reliance on CSVs and Outlook.
- No quick access to member number breakdown by branch or area and no real time information
- Growing member expectations – demand for self-service, mobile access, and personalised engagement.
- Future growth – the need to scale easily, support branches and reps, and provide better management insight.
The Solution
Working with smartimpact, the TUI implemented a new Membership Relationship Management (MRM) system and members’ portal, powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365. At its core was a smarter, automated DAS collection process for subscription processing and reconciliation.
Highlights of the new solution:
✔ Unified MRM – a single source of truth for all members, reps and contacts.
✔ DAS automation – intelligent parsing of employer files for faster, more accurate reconciliation.
✔ Member Portal & App – online join, DAS forms, membership updates, news, events and self-service tools.
✔ Branch & Rep Portals – secure access for local officers to support members directly.
✔ Smart dashboards & reporting – real-time insight into membership, income, arrears and engagement.
✔ Strong GDPR & security framework – vital for sensitive member and employment data.
The Benefits
The new platform has already delivered major efficiency and service improvements:
- DAS auto parsing reduced manual processing effort
- Automated validation checks improved data quality and freed up staff time
- Automated communications to keep members informed and reduce overheads for manual intervention
- Improved member experience
- Over 18,000 members pay via DAS seamlessly
- Streamlined membership joining process resulting in reduced onboarding time
- Members can update their details, book onto events, and engage with their branch via the new member portal
- Better financial visibility
- Real-time dashboards show income by branch, employer and member status
- Automated management of branch funds based upon membership income
- Finance and audit teams can access monthly DAS breakdowns instantly
- Flexible design supports phased rollout of new features
- smartAI suite already being rolled out for case management, communications and reporting