Make sure your system has broad support An AMS vendor pointed out to me recently the danger of buying a new AMS (or any enterprise software, for that matter) based on the passion of one person. As he put it, “I have seen this more than a handful of times, but when that one person drives […]
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You have to have the right people in place This may seem obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: All the best technology and all the correct processes can’t fix people. If your staff won’t do the work, it won’t get done. I’ve had clients in the past who struggled with getting their systems to work. They spent
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Ask “What” not “Why” As a consultant, one of my favorite questions to ask my clients is “Why?” As in, “Why are you doing that?” Asking “why” can be an effective way of determining if a process is actually doing what is expected or needed. But I recently came across an article that referenced the book
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Engagement is Measured by the Customer I’ve written a bunch about measuring engagement in the past. (Click here to read one of my favorites.) But one thing that’s critically important to understand is that ultimately, engagement is not measured by the association, but by the member or customer. Click here for an example of what I mean. For some
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Yes, you do have a process for that When I work with clients on pretty much any issue, a question commonly asked is “What is your process for doing X?” (For example, “What’s your process for onboarding new members?”) Very often my client will respond “We don’t have a process for that.” But that answer
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“Correct your mistakes before they become your habits” Yet another great quote from James Clear: “Correct your mistakes before they become your habits.” In the data management world, you might hear this more commonly as “We’ve always done it that way.” The following is a true story: During a conversation with a client, I learned that after
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Sometimes it’s a process issue When I work with clients on developing a needs list for functionality in a new AMS, one thing that often comes up is the need to track award winners. Whether it’s awards for individuals or organizations, the association (rightfully) wants to track who the winners were, so that the history is captured and
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First ask: “How will I use this data?” Whether it’s during data conversion, adding a new data field, or reconsidering a given process, one of the first questions you should ask is “How will we use that data?” Put another way, just because we can manage the data doesn’t mean we should! For example, I
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“We run the report three times and get three different results.” “We run the same report three times and get different results.” In my 21 years of consulting, I’ve probably heard this (or something similar) dozens, if not hundreds, of times. What the user is usually saying is that when they run two different reports
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How do you know if you’re making progress? We all want to improve our data management, making it better than it was yesterday. But how do you know if you are improving? Showing progress requires two things: a benchmark and an objective. Your benchmark tells you where you are right now. Your objective tells you where
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