We met up with Scott Stanley, Business Technology Consultant for ACG, at our User Conference. See what he had to say about the benefits of using AXIS software, and more.

We had an opportunity to meet with Lisa Boardman, Travel Product Manager at CAA Niagara, at our User Conference. See what she had to say about the AXIS Travel Accounting System, the club’s experiences with product implementation and Campana staff, and more.

AAA Pioneer Valley has its roots in the Auto Club of Springfield, which started back in 1901. They currently have four locations and serve close to 200,000 members throughout Western Massachusetts.

We spoke with Vice President – Automotive, Joe Ferraro, to discuss the club’s Road Service success.

Tell me about your role in the club and how you got involved?

Joe: Joe Ferraro, Vice President, Automotive.
I oversee all automotive, such as the service provider network, call centre, the fleet, etc. I started in 1985, originally as a part-time job in high school and through college. I started full time in 1991 and eventually worked my way up through the ranks.

Think about your club’s goals. How can AXIS align to it or help you achieve it?

Joe: Our biggest initiative has been in our fleet, steadily grown in the last several years. ERS MobilePlus has helped, and Vehicle Inspection; they both help to run the fleet better. It’s allowed us to grow our fleet with a good degree of success.

What Benefits have you seen since implementing the AXIS software?

Joe: We’ve been on AXIS since 1998, and basically, over the years, the employees have grown their knowledge and experience. Essentially, we want to improve efficiencies, using the system better, and AXIS has been working with our team to get better at what they do.

What benefits are the most important to your club?

Joe: Integration – the ability to have all the different modules integrate is by far and above the best value for us.

Once you’ve earned a member, how do you keep them as a member?

Joe: Ultimately, we deliver an exceptional service experience. When you combine that with the members’ wants and needs, you stand a good chance of retaining them as a customer.

What’s the one big thing we’re missing in Road Service?

Joe: I think Road Service has lost focus on SmartSpot; needs to be more organic. It represents a good opportunity to be more efficient, and it hasn’t evolved enough through the years through operations. Should there be a team of clubs that talk about the long-term goals? Maybe. I think both AXIS and the clubs that use SmartSpot need to think a little outside the box.

Using the road service system to be more representative of what goes on in the real world.

SmartSpot has been good, but it also has its limitations. Overall development and strategy is something that is missing.

What are the top 3 things that you love about Road Service?

Joe:

• Integration – being able to see 360 degree of the member.
• Ability to use the data to customize reporting.
• Support from the AXIS team – you do a great job, always there and very helpful.

What have your successes been in Road Service and how has AXIS helped you?

Joe: Being able to expand the fleet, look at the data and integrate, and evaluate the results, has led us to benchmark to our potential.

How has AXIS helped you meet/exceed your accreditation?

Joe: We had our accreditation last year, which was for a full 5-year accreditation. That is extremely difficult to get in this day and age. AXIS has helped by creating the customer reports, looking at the areas of concern, and being able to pull the data and look at where we need to be. In other words, measure specific areas, help target areas where we thought we were in trouble with our accreditation.

A Bit About Joe:

Joe Ferraro is Vice President of Automotive Services for AAA Pioneer Valley located in West Springfield, Massachusetts. He has worked for AAA for more than thirty years. In his current role with the organization, he oversees all aspects of the Club’s automotive operations including the service provider network, call center and club-owned fleet.

Joe’s career originally started by turning his passion for music into a degree in Music Education from Berklee College of Music in Boston. A few years later he decided to turn his other interest in automobiles into a full time career at AAA. During his off-hours he enjoys DIY projects, cheering on the Boston Red Sox and Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots, but most especially being a dad to his three beautiful children.

Click here to download the success story

CAA Niagara has been serving Members in the Niagara Region for over 100 years. They have been a user of the AXIS system and all three of its major components (Member Relationship Management (MRM), Travel, and Road Service) for the past 21 years.

Until now, CAA Niagara’s business leaders have relied on pre-defined reports within AXIS and their IT department to generate new reports. It would take time for IT to deliver a new report and they would often need to explain outlying results before the report could be fully utilized.

To deliver information more effectively, Kevin Ruthven, Director of IT, decided to invest resources into putting in place a new and improved reporting solution. The solution would provide the business a self-serve environment where they could slice and dice the information to provide broader and deeper insights into their operations.

Getting Started

CAA Niagara’s first step was to create a data warehouse. They signed up for the AXIS BI Support service, which provided them with an easy way to populate their SQL data warehouse with over 8,000 fields of AXIS data that they had collected over several years.

Using AXIS data and other sources, CAA Niagara has accumulated a considerable amount of information. They needed to choose the right tools to bring it to life. The club decided on Microsoft Power BI® and hired a consultant to help them kickstart the process and set up the infrastructure, train users, and impart best practices.

After deciding on the Power BI solution, the next step for the club was to figure out what reports would be useful to produce. To start, they settled on two report categories:

1. High-level dashboards with KPIs that management can access from their desktop or mobile devices, allowing them to take the pulse of the company at a glance. This includes actual versus target goals for a variety of KPIs, including financial information, renewal rates, membership counts, etc.
2. Multi-dimensional reports by business line. These reports are meant to display information within different business lines in ways that allow the club to measure and analyze what they are doing.

Creating Reports for Business Lines

Membership Rewards and Road Service were the first areas of the business to embark on this process. When Dave Moreno, the associate director of Road Service at CAA Niagara, started at the club in 2018, he was pleased to learn that the club had so much data he could delve into and analyze. With his analysis, he set out a goal of reducing costs and improving operations in Road Service. To get a working set of reports for analysis, Dave met with Richard Johnson (the Power BI reporting analyst) every other week and presented him with a list of questions he wanted answered. Richard would then build the report and pass it back to Dave which often sparked a new round of questions and additional visualization requests. This process has resulted in a suite of Power BI reports that Dave can filter and slice to provide business insights.

Power BI Example Report – Emergency Road Service

Benefits Achieved

Power BI, combined with the rich data provided through the AXIS BI Support solution, has allowed CAA Niagara to realize many benefits, including:

1. Significant time savings – using Power BI with the data in their Microsoft SQL Server ® database, they were able to build in weeks something that would have taken them months to build previously.
2. A self-serve environment – admin staff, supervisors, managers, and senior leaders can all access appropriate reports easily at the office, from home, and even on their mobile devices. They can leverage Power BI visualizations to find anomalies in the data and can then dig deeper to understand the cause without having to make additional requests for data from the IT Department.
3. Data Consolidation – previously the club had over 100 separate static reports available to management using SQL reports. A single Power BI report often consolidates the information from a dozen SQL reports into one Power BI report. This makes the information easier to find and manage.
4. Ease of use, transparency, and trust in the data – create reports that are easy to read and understand. Power BI allows users to easily drill down to view the information that make up the reports. They can see the data themselves, instead of relying on summary / detail reports that others have built. This transparency increases trust in the data and empowers management to make informed decisions.
5. New insights

• Prove or disprove theories that employees have by removing guesswork.
• Identify where processes are inconsistent; by making processes consistent, the data also becomes more meaningful.
• Look at the operations from different angles and find inefficiencies.
• Employee Renewal Rate. A new metric that CAA Niagara has defined measures the renewal rates of members who have had an interaction with an employee the previous year. This KPI reinforces the notion that every interaction the employees have with members has an impact on their likelihood to renew.

Key to Success

CAA Niagara’s accomplishments in under a year are significant. The club attributes the following key steps to their success:

1. Obtain executive buy-in. Significant time and financial resources are required.
2. Communication and collaboration. Meet with Strategic Business Unit (SBU) leaders regularly throughout the process. Have them review the reports throughout the creation process and make sure they have a good understanding of their data. These regular meetings ensure efficiency and accuracy in the reports.
3. Ensure the BI Report maker has strong SQL and programming skills, or that they have access to people who do have these skills.

Lessons Learned

Throughout this process, CAA Niagara realized it is necessary to understand what events may have affected the data. A sudden spike or dip in a report may not indicate great success or failure; sometimes it represents a change in the data itself. For example, the addition of pre-existing products and services to Lifetime Value and Product Index.

Stay focused. Prioritize your data collection efforts and reporting needs. Implementing a BI solution requires commitment and dedicated resources. Keep the momentum going. You can’t afford to be distracted and come back to this later; if you do, you’ll have lost valuable time and precious knowledge.

BI is not an IT responsibility, though at first it will feel like it. The collection, secure storage, and accessibility of data is certainly within IT’s scope, but when it comes to data interpretation, action and associated results, this requires leadership from the business units themselves. They are accountable for leveraging the insights gained from BI and driving change to produce results.

What’s Next for CAA Niagara?

Based on their analysis, operational changes were implemented in the Road Service department, and they are now able to begin evaluating the impact of these changes (e.g. cost savings & member satisfaction) and adjust as needed. They have recently hired a business analyst to ensure continued focus on BI. The club plans to create a BI Governance committee to help provide structure and clarity to the entire BI process.

CAA Niagara has been serving Members in the Niagara Region for over 100 years. They have been a user of the AXIS system and all three of its major components (Member Relationship Management (MRM), Travel, and Road Service) for the past 21 years.

Until now, CAA Niagara’s business leaders have relied on pre-defined reports within AXIS and their IT department to generate new reports. It would take time for IT to deliver a new report and they would often need to explain outlying results before the report could be fully utilized.

To deliver information more effectively, Kevin Ruthven, Director of IT, decided to invest resources into putting in place a new and improved reporting solution. The solution would provide the business a self-serve environment where they could slice and dice the information to provide broader and deeper insights into their operations.

Click here to download the success story

AAA Western & Central New York has served the Upstate New York communities for over a century and currently serves nearly 855,000 members.

We spoke with Director of Applications Management, Tracey Guarino, to discuss the club”s success.

Tell me about your role in the club and how you got involved?

Tracey: Tracey Guarino, Director of Applications Management.
I oversee all critical systems application management – this includes support, maintenance, and development. I also oversee enterprise report writing and the club’s business intelligence systems.

Think about your club’s goals. How can AXIS align to it or help you achieve it?

Tracey: Our club’s main goal is to be the most caring and helpful organization that anyone can join. We do this by building member relationships through trust and providing easily-accessed products and services.

We are continuously implementing new services and products to increase membership value. We exist for our members, and judge everything we do by how well it serves their needs.

How can AXIS Help?

Tracey: By supporting the automation and streamlining of member interactions. We want a system that is flexible and efficient. We would like to collaboratively develop an overall solution that is easy to use so the agents/advisors can spend their time focusing on the members’ needs and not on processing the requests.

What Benefits have you seen since implementing the AXIS software?

Tracey: In the past the largest benefit of AXIS was the fully integrated system. I still think integration is important, however the largest benefit today is the system stability.

What benefits are the most important to your club?

Tracey: System availability is essential. AAA is a 24/7 operation. The AXIS system has a 99.9% availability rate, which includes scheduled maintenance.

Once you’ve earned a member, how do you keep them as a member?

Tracey: We try to keep our members by continuously increasing the value of AAA membership, by offering new programs, new member discounts, excellent service, and being helpful and caring with every interaction.

What’s the one big thing we’re missing in Membership/Road Service/Travel?

Tracey:Overall, we have faced numerous challenges trying to get data from AXIS. AXIS provides a solid platform for processing service requests and purchases, but getting at the data can be challenging. We have tools that enable extraction of the data; however, the data is not always stored in a format that allows easy extraction or interpretation.

For Membership, we would like to see variable membership pricing based on tenure, LTV, and/or other customizable options. Membership corrections tend to be lengthy and time consuming and we would like an easier method to correct errors.

System access is a big challenge, but we are in the process of building flexibility to enable non-traditional system access. This will include web-based access to allow us to expand our workforce.

Using the road service system to be more representative of what goes on in the real world.

SmartSpot has been good, but it also has its limitations. Overall development and strategy is something that is missing.

What are the top 3 things that you love about Road Service?

Tracey:

• AXIS system stability and performance.
• Customization opportunities and cost sharing with the user community.
• Support from people at Campana and the AXIS community. I don’t know of any other technical support where I can text at 2:00 am and get an answer back from someone I know.

What have your successes been in Road Service and how has AXIS helped you?

Tracey:

• MPP Implementation – We can now offer more payment flexibility to suit the lifestyles of our members. This feature has contributed to membership growth and retention.
• Fleet Driver Vehicle Inspection Form – Saves time and ensures safe vehicles.
• Integration with CRM System – Allows us to meet our customized needs.
• Travel “Fly out Menus” & Reference Library — This was a huge success for our club. It allows us to customize menu options and reference library materials to provide defaulted information that saves the users time, while ensuring accuracy and consistency and improving customer service.
  

A Bit About Tracey:

Tracey Guarino joined AAA in 1990 and has held a variety of leadership roles, and currently serves as the Director of Application Management within the Information Technology area. Tracey is responsible for leading the teams that develop, support, configure and maintain the Club’s critical applications. She is also responsible for the Club’s Enterprise Reporting/Business Intelligence Team.

Click here to download the success story

We met up with Jarrett Swereda, Director Information Technology at CAA Saskatchewan, at our User Conference. Hear what he has to say about their recent and upcoming AXIS implementations and the benefits these AXIS applications are providing the club.

We met up with Kevin Ruthven, IT Director for CAA Niagara at our 2019 User Conference. Hear what he has to say about the impact Campana’s BI solution has made on his club and how much he enjoys working with the Campana team.

Michael Dowen, Managing Director of IT, Security & Operations at AAA Northway recently sat down with Campana at our 2019 User Conference. Michael discusses the impact of Campana’s BI solution and the increased productivity he has seen for all employees. His favorite AXIS feature? Ease of integration with other software and being able to access everything through one platform.

CAA Atlantic continues to grow by leaps and bounds with headquarters in Saint John, New Brunswick, and branch offices in Charlottetown, Halifax, Dartmouth, Fredericton, Moncton and St. John’s. They have an extensive fleet of roadside assistance vehicles in every major city center across the region.

Started in 1947, when the Maritime Automobile Association was re-established after World War Two, CAA Atlantic now looks after the four Maritime Canadian provinces. Today, they are known for their road-side assistance, travel agency, insurance benefits, and rewards program.

We sat down with Bret Ross, the Vice President of Information Technology at CAA Atlantic, to discuss how they stay connected to members during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Can you talk a little about your role and key responsibilities at CAA Atlantic? 

My team is responsible for delivering infrastructure, applications, and web and digital offerings to CAA staff and members. We work on a broad spectrum of activities, ranging from implementations to maintenance. Ultimately, through technology, we help the CAA team maximize the value that they bring to our members.

What is the toughest part of your job?

Technology trends evolve at an increasing pace, so I need to make sure that we are in lockstep with those changes. Our decisions are made based on CAA Atlantic’s current and future business goals. We balance strong business capabilities with being cost-effective.

Security is also a big concern when it comes to our members’ confidential data. We make sure that our technology and processes minimize privacy risk and are aligned with industry best practices.

Can you talk a little about your history at CAA Atlantic?

I have been with CAA Atlantic since 2013, starting out as the Director of IT. I got promoted to Vice President in 2020. I was also the Council Chair of the Chief Information Officer’s Council at CAA nation-wide.

Can you tell me a little about CAA Atlantic’s history with Campana?

Since I started here, AXIS was already in place as the core backend system for our club’s business, including membership, roadside assistance, travel, finance, and accounting. In the past six years, the AXIS system has continued to evolve to meet our diverse business needs.

There have been quite a few enhancements, including monthly payment plans for members, business intelligence, new automated travel interfaces, enhanced roadside assistance mobile app, and new support for industry-standard platforms like Linux.

Amongst these new capabilities, a significant one for us was the introduction of AXIS Web Direct in early 2019. This module provided CAA Atlantic’s remote users the capability of conducting outbound membership campaigns without using the full Campana AXIS client.

AXIS Web Direct only required our remote users to have a web browser and established security credentials in our core backend AXIS system. This was especially key for us since we utilize a membership recruitment firm, working within their unique corporate infrastructure. Not installing new software with the third party was a key business requirement.

How would you have completed the same goal without AXIS Web Direct?

It replaced a legacy labor-intensive process for outbound membership campaigns. That manual system used a series of spreadsheets, encryption and file transfers between companies daily. The data captured by the membership specialists in these spreadsheets would have to be manually entered into our AXIS system on the next business day by our staff.

Now that we are using AXIS Web Direct, when a member joins through the membership specialists, they are immediately entered into our system in real-time. This has eliminated the lag time between a member joining by phone and actually existing in our live AXIS system.

Can you describe your experience in working with Campana?

Michael Estabrooks worked with us to implement AXIS Web Direct. I have worked closely with him over several projects in the past few years. His knowledge of our club’s business needs and processes, combined with his extensive knowledge of the Campana AXIS system, makes locking into business requirements faster.

That frees me up time to manage the expectations of my user base. Working together has increased predictability. User satisfaction with our IT Project delivery has also gone up.

What is the biggest benefit of AXIS Web Direct?

 Overall, the system helps us be more streamlined. As mentioned earlier, new members are added directly to the AXIS system saving us from doing manual updates.

It also helps reduce risk. AXIS Web Direct is limited to what we want our outbound marketers to do, minimizing risk associated with data corruption. And member pay card data is protected by the same security throughout.

With AXIS, we find there is minimal support needed from our IT staff, which allows the team to focus on more proactive project-oriented work rather than being reactive.

How valuable has AXIS Web Direct been during COVID-19?

Having AXIS Web Direct already implemented removed any impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.  All work, done by 20 external contractors, was remote before so there was thankfully zero impact.

How was the implementation of AXIS Web Direct?

Implementation and user adoption were strong. The project was delivered on schedule and on budget.

How much has AXIS Web Direct contributed to the overall success of your club?

The benefits of having a remote tool that can be used by a third party that is simple to support, scalable, and secure has added significant value. It has helped with member recruitment and member growth, which is significant to us.

It allows us to scale up resources working on outbound campaigns without any impact to member service or office space since the temporary staff are remote.

Jan Sliva, Director of Travel Operations at AAA Ohio Auto Club, shares her favourite things about AXIS eSign, including how quickly the Club was able to implement the electronic signature tool and how it enabled them to connect with clients the way they preferred. Jan also discusses AXIS Travel as a whole, working with the Campana team and what the Club’s future use of AXIS will look like.

CAA North & East Ontario (CAA NEO) is a not-for-profit membership organization dedicated to keeping people safe, on the road and beyond. Serving members across Ontario, CAA NEO offers trusted roadside assistance, travel services, insurance, and exclusive rewards and discounts. Behind their long-standing reputation for reliability is a story of quiet digital transformation and bold innovation.

Over the past decade, they have evolved from a traditional auto club into a nimble, data-powered member experience engine. This transformation has delivered real results, and over the past five years, CAA NEO has achieved:

• 5% year-over-year growth across every business line.
• A 50% increase in rewards engagement.
• A complete rebound in their travel business, surpassing pre-COVID levels.
• More intelligent, more strategic marketing automation, driven by member behaviour.

David Coffey, VP of Enterprise Solutions, has been at the forefront of this evolution. His tireless efforts have been instrumental in modernizing how CAA NEO connects with its members, launches new products, and scales sustainably. We sat down with him to explore the operational foundation behind the club’s growth and pin down the factors helping the organization quietly power through.

A misstep that sparked momentum

Five years ago, CAA NEO made what looked like a strategic leap. They replaced their long-standing platform, Axis, with a well-known enterprise CRM to expand flexibility and tap into more powerful data tools. However, reality didn’t match the promise, and this turned out to be a misstep.

“The biggest cost was the time and the head sink,” Coffey recalled.

With the switch, rebuilding even the most basic workflows took months. Teams slowed down and innovation stalled. Costs ballooned, not just in terms of budget, but also in lost momentum.

“We spent so much time just trying to rebuild what already worked,” Coffey shared. “Instead of focusing on growth, we were left focusing on regaining basic functionality”, he explained.

Eventually, they made another bold move. This time, they returned to the Axis platform, which had been quietly and reliably supporting them for years.

Transitioning back to focus and growth

The return to Axis was swift and decisive. Within a mere six months, CAA NEO could fully re-migrate all business lines. At this time, the Campana team, like a true partner, handled the heavy lifting, moving data, and restoring integrations.

Operational stability returned, and so did clarity. “Getting back on a system that understood our business gave us back our time,” recalled Coffey.

With the tech foundation reset, their team could turn their attention away from system issues toward value creation, and CAA NEO wasted no time.

Building the business, not just the system

The auto club didn’t just settle for stability; they focused on accelerating innovation. With their operations streamlined and teams refocused, they set out to reimagine what membership could mean in a modern world. The result was a wave of new offerings designed to bring more value, relevance, and reach to their member base. Here’s how that looked in action:

• Everyday membership

Recognizing that not all members needed or wanted roadside assistance, CAA NEO introduced a new membership tier focused entirely on perks and everyday savings. This offering opened the door to a broader demographic, including younger audiences and urban dwellers who may not drive frequently but still valued access to travel deals, insurance discounts, and retail rewards.

• Pit Crew Services

Looking to go beyond reactive roadside service, CAA NEO developed a proactive, convenience-first approach to meeting members where they were. Named Pit Crew, this program brought services like tire swaps, oil changes, detailing, and even e-bike tune-ups directly to members’ driveways. With a member-first mindset and a flexible operational backbone, the Pit Crew service scaled quickly.

• Fleet Services & Business Memberships

CAA NEO also saw an opportunity to support small business owners and fleet managers who needed reliable service at scale. They designed tailored B2B membership packages offering customized benefits, streamlined account management, and specialized service access for vehicles under commercial use. The idea was to open up a whole new growth channel.

Each of these new developments reflected the broader shift in how CAA NEO approached membership: not as a one-size-fits-all package but as an evolving portfolio of services shaped by the needs of real people and businesses. At every point of innovation, their vision came to life quickly with Axis’s reliable operational support. They didn’t need custom development or long timelines to get their new offerings to live. “We could test, launch, learn, and keep moving,” Coffey explained.

Here is a closer look into how Axis quietly empowered them by simplifying and strengthening their operational core:

• Business intelligence tools gave the team clear insights into what worked and where to double down. Campaign reporting, dashboards, and trend analysis fueled smarter decisions in marketing and operations alike.
• Reliable, accessible data allowed for real-time personalization, whether surfacing timely offers, identifying at-risk members, or driving more innovative retention efforts.
• Workflow automation eliminated tedious manual tasks, enabling the team to push the right message or offer to the right member at the right time, with minimal effort.
• Flexible APIs made it easy to enhance or replace system parts without risk, ensuring agility never came at the cost of stability.
• Responsive, hands-on support meant ideas could move from concept to execution without getting bogged down in technical delays.
• Cost efficiency remained a constant priority, ensuring member dues focused on value, not software overhead.

Hitting bumps; moving past them

No growth journey is without its downs. In the post Axis phase, CAA NEO discovered a troubling drop in automatic membership renewals at one point. Something was off, and members were slipping through the cracks.

By studying the data in the system, they could diagnose the issue as an outdated, faulty payment integration. With support from the Campana team, they quickly rebuilt the payment stack and switched vendors.

The result? Approval rates restored to 87–89% within months. And the real win: The technical hiccup didn’t derail the business.

This moment was a reminder that simply having the right technology isn’t enough. What was equally important was a true partner that understood the industry and could support when things get tough. That’s what Campana became for them.

Looking ahead with bold moves, on solid ground.

“We’re not resting on our laurels,” says Coffey.

CAA NEO’s pace isn’t slowing down. The team is focused on building a future where value is delivered daily, not just when a member breaks down. They have ambitions to scale the business membership offering, expand Pit Crew services, and deepen engagement across channels.

The plan of action remains the same: Stay focused on finding the right rhythm, following the drill of test, refine, grow, repeat. This will be a given when depending on their trusted platform. In Coffey’s words, “Campana will be key” in this journey.