Wes’s Wednesday Wisdom

Not Just Technology There was recently a discussion on the ASAE online community about project management software. There were lots of recommendations about which software to use and why, but what was missing from the conversation was the people and the process. Every project or program involves people, process, and technology. All three of these elements […]

Consider quitting Patient: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” Doctor: “Then stop doing that.” Sometimes it’s just best to stop what you’ve been doing because doing what you’re doing isn’t helpful anymore. For example, I had clients who were still collecting fax numbers within the past couple of years, even though the broad use

There is nothing so permanent as business rules Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said, “There’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.” I have a similar thought when it comes to association business rules and programs. Too often, new business rules or new programs are instituted, and once in place, are never again reviewed for their

Budget for feature discovery and adoption When developing a budget for implementation of a new AMS, one recommendation I always make to my clients is to budget for things staff will discover they want to do once they’ve learned how to use the new system. In a nutshell, once staff has started using the new

Customize staff pages for better user adoption The single most important element to data management success, bar none, is user adoption of your technology. The very best technology, unused, is, well, useless! There are many aspects to user adoption, but one of the most important is the actual screens or pages that staff users see

Don’t ask questions for which you already know the answer I was recently completing an online form to submit a proposal for speaking at a conference. I had to log in to the system for it to recognize me (which it did). One of the first questions it asked me was “Have you ever spoken

All decisions involve risk Whether it’s choosing a new AMS or introducing a new product or service, every decision you make involves risk. There are two factors to risk: likelihood (probability of something bad happening) and seriousness. To illustrate: the likelihood of a plane crash is exceedingly small, but clearly, its seriousness is very high. On

Try flowcharting your processes Working with a client recently on their membership join process reminded me of the tremendous value of putting your processes into a flowchart. In their case, a single membership join (organization) requires asking three questions before the correct “join path” is determined. Drawing a flowchart of this decision process will help provide them

“I just want a system I don’t have to fight with.” I asked my client: “What are you looking for in a new AMS?” She responded: “I just want a system I don’t have to fight with.” And it struck me that this is how A LOT of my clients feel about their data management systems; that

Inertia Contributes to Bad Data Without knowing anything about your organization or its data, I’d be willing to bet you have data in your system that you are no longer actively managing/using (e.g., data that was collected long ago for some initiative at the time) or, worse yet, actively collecting data that you aren’t actually