I like to tell my clients they'll know they've reached data management nirvana when the answer to any question about data is "It's in the database."

And I don't mean the obvious questions like "How many members do we have?" or "Who has registered for next week's event?" I mean the little details that can really add up.

For example:

• Who spoke at last year's annual conference?
• Who has volunteered to write for our publications (both volunteers and contributed)?
• Who is interested in coming to next year's annual conference?
• Who served on that committee three years ago?
• How many times has this member contacted the association with a substantive question or concern?

Every one of my clients wants to see a 360-degree view of their members and customers. But exceedingly few are actually capturing all of the ways the members interact with the association.

Is your association capturing this data? If the answer is "no," the next question should be "why not?"