Executive Director’s Letter

Dear members and friends of the Alliance:

As the summer draws to a close, and so ends the brief respite from the frenetic pace of our busy careers, now is a good opportunity to assess what we accomplished in the last year and recommit ourselves to improve the things we could have done better.

The results from the 2010 Smart Card Alliance Annual Member Survey have been tabulated and analyzed. Our members responded in great numbers, with 47.3% of all member organizations participating. One question we ask is for members to give us a score on a 100 point scale that indicates satisfaction with the Alliance, with a score of 80 or higher meaning “clearly satisfied.” Our average satisfaction rating for 2009/2010 was 85.2. In addition 89.1% of the survey respondents gave the Alliance a score of 80 or higher, which is the highest percentage of clearly satisfied members that we have ever had. The Board of Directors , the staff and I consider this figure to be the best measure of whether the Smart Card Alliance is fulfilling its mission in the eyes of our supporters and the overall smart card industry.

Below is a summary of the important statistics and observations derived from the survey.

• Conference attendance. Approximately one-third of the survey respondents attended one or more Alliance conference events in the past year. 73% of the respondents used their member-only complimentary registration pass to attend one of these events.
• LEAP and CSCIP Certification program. 80% of the respondents were aware of the LEAP education and advancement program and the CSCIP professional certification program. That is very high awareness given that this program was only announced in September 2009. These new professional development and training programs now total 100 enrolled LEAP members , with 52 people having completed their CSCIP certification.
• Smart Card Alliance communications. The highest rated Alliance communications activities were: email announcements about upcoming events (90%); Smart Card Talk monthly newsletter (88%); and the Daily Smart Card Alliance Industry News Summary (84%).
• Smart Card Alliance resources/deliverables. The highest rated Alliance resources and deliverables were: white papers and reports on the members-only website (85%); industry news on the Smart Card Alliance web site (79%); and past conference proceedings on the members-only website (70%).
• Smart Card Alliance meetings and events value. The highest rated conferences, meetings and events value were: Alliance Annual Conference (80%); the Industry and Technology Council meetings (72%).
• Smart Card Alliance membership benefits. The highest value placed on membership benefits were: networking (94%); overall awareness building of the benefits of smart card technology (94%); visibility of vertical market smart card initiatives (92%); and early understanding of industry trends (92%).

As with all previous member surveys, there were a number of excellent suggestions for improvements to Smart Card Alliance activities and operations in the future. Several people recommended various website improvements, indicating that the website was too text-heavy. We listened and have initiated a new project to add more audio, video, and slideshow content to allow people another option to reading our lengthy white papers. It was also suggested that we should be aggressively recruiting new members and doing more outreach into new markets, especially to end users like retailers, and major stakeholders in emerging markets like mobile payments, higher education, and EMV payments. Efforts to address these shortcomings are also underway. Also, it was suggested that we have more of an international focus, so that we’re not limiting the Smart Card Alliance reach to the U.S., Canada, and Latin America and so that we can gain additional insight from our European and Asian neighbors.

This valuable input from our members and suggestions for improvements will help shape the future of the Smart Card Alliance. Congratulations to Tracey Breckenridge, National Account Manager, Gemalto, as this year’s winner of the Annual Survey drawing; she’ll receive an Apple iPod 8Gb MP3 player. I thank all of our current members who participated in the survey and the many others who support the Alliance in so many ways. For any organizations and government agencies who are not currently members of the Smart Card Alliance, please visit the membership information website for further information about becoming a member.

Sincerely,
Randy Vanderhoof
Executive Director