Wes’s Wednesday Wisdom

It’s about process I’m in the midst of adding an AI agent to my website that will allow visitors to query all of the content I’ve created over the past quarter century. I asked the agent what my most common themes have been, and one of the answers I received was “business process.” This doesn’t […]

Data integrity reports I speak and write a lot about data integrity reports. So I was pleased to see a post recently on ASAE’s Collaborate from Shaun Holloway, Director of Information Technology, at the American Motorcyclist Association, outlining a list of what he called “data hygiene checks.” As a reminder, the purpose of a data integrity

The most important training tip I’ve been sitting in a lot of database training sessions recently, and I’ve been reminded of the following: whether you are doing the training yourself, or you use your vendor or a third-party for training, when you’re teaching a process… Tell them what you’re going to do Do it Tell

Be careful about getting tangled “We had done a lot to tangle ourselves up.” – Bridget Walsh, Chief Operating Officer at Emergency Nurses Association In a discussion at AMS Fest this week, this is how Bridget Walsh characterized what their AMS of 17+ years looked like as they worked to move from their legacy system to a

Discipline. Always discipline. I’ve been producing a newsletter in some form for over 25 years now. I’ve found that certain topics are evergreen; they come up all the time and I feel compelled to write about them again and again. One of those topics is discipline. A quick search of my blog posts shows I’ve

Simpler is better Recently, a client of mine was discussing how they manage membership reinstatements. For example, if a member doesn’t renew within the grace period, is dropped from membership, and then rejoins in less than a year from dropping, are they called a new member, a renewed member, or a reinstatement? After several minutes

Baby Steps A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. You have to walk before you run. Baby steps. Just do it. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. (My personal favorite.) My clients often lament how overwhelming it can be to think about cleaning up their data.

Sometimes what you’re using IS the best option I love technology and I’m inherently lazy, so I love it when technology can do the work for me. But sometimes, there is no technology to do the task at hand, or the technology is too expensive or “too big” for the job. For example, I was

Do they hate the system? When an association asks me for help finding a new AMS, I always ask if there’s any chance the association would be interested in keeping their current system (perhaps upgrading it to the latest version). Fixing what you have is almost always less expensive and less disruptive than implementing a

Artificial Intelligence is the next revolution in data management I’ve been in the data management business for over 35 years now (and even longer if you count my days in 4-H!). And over those years I’ve seen many examples of what was supposed to be “the next revolution in data management.” In my opinion, there have