Blog: Wes’s thoughts, articles, and insights

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My most recent posts

Why bother with a consultant when I have AI?

By Wes Trochlil | October 14, 2026

Why bother with a consultant when I have AI? As AI becomes increasingly powerful, the value of using an AMS selection consultant (and many other types of consultants!) starts to come into question. After all, with very well-constructed prompts and responses, an association could develop a very solid needs analysis and RFP that could be used to […]

Guardrails can be helpful!

By Wes Trochlil | October 7, 2026

Guardrails can be helpful! When selecting a new AMS, I find my clients are often very tempted by custom software or “platform” systems (e.g., built on Salesforce or MS Dynamics) because these systems are infinitely configurable. After all, if I can make the system do anything I want, that’s a good thing, right? Well, maybe. In […]

“If you knew this information, what might you do differently?”

By Wes Trochlil | September 30, 2026

“If you knew this information, what might you do differently?” I had a conversation with a client recently about developing KPIs, reports, and queries from their forthcoming data warehouse. My client said: “We have a ton of requests for KPIs and reports. How do we determine which to focus on first?” My response: “When someone requests a dashboard […]

Showing is not teaching

By Wes Trochlil | September 23, 2026

Showing is not teaching In my experience, when new staff members are taught how to use their AMS (or LMS, CMS, FMS, etc.) they aren’t really taught how to use the system, they are shown how to use it. So what’s the difference? In a nutshell, showing only covers the “how” and “what.” But teaching […]

Data management is improvisation

By Wes Trochlil | September 16, 2026

Data management is improvisation I was listening to a podcast recently featuring TV writer Rob Long. During the podcast he said (I’m paraphrasing) that, in order to be successful, one needs to learn to improvise, because nothing in life ever goes as planned. One of my favorite sayings is, “If you want to make God […]

Older Posts

Data management is never "done"

January 12, 2016

One of the most common services I provide my clients is system selection and implementation. Simply put, I help my […]

Budget for training AFTER go-live

January 11, 2016

As I noted in this post last month, one of the most common complaints I hear from my clients is a […]

If your dropdown menu has more than seven choices, it's useless

January 8, 2016

Which dropdown menu am I referring to? Any of them. The paradox of choice is that the more choices we […]

Better tools get better results

January 7, 2016

For Christmas I received a new cookbook, The Food Lab (which I highly recommend). Several pages of the book are […]

Do your webinars really need to be live?

January 6, 2016

I was working with a client recently and the issue of webinars came up in the conversation. The association represents a […]

New Article Posted – Using Interactional Data to Increase Engagement and Revenue

December 22, 2015

Association management systems (AMS) as a specific software product have existed for more than 30 years. Not surprisingly, the original […]

Mistakes will be made

December 10, 2015

One of my favorite comic strips was “Life in Hell” and one of my favorite strips from that series was […]

Not just training, but RE-training…

December 9, 2015

I talk to associations every week about the challenges they are facing with their data management systems. One of the […]

The rise of the data manager

December 4, 2015

In my recently released benchmarking survey of association data management, I asked the following question: “Do you have a specific position […]

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