I speak and write a lot about people, process, and technology (Here's a whole bunch on that.) In a nutshell, your highest performance will come when the right people are using the right technology in the right way (process). So whenever there is a data management challenge, we need to ask: "Is this a people problem, a process problem, or a technology problem?" (And it could be more than one!)

This point was driven home recently by a client. My client was asked by staff: "What if our members print out their invoice and send in a check for a different amount? How do we prevent that?” To which my client responded: "Until we take a human out of the equation, something can always go wrong and we can’t predict or account for that. No software will ever fix that."

That's the thing about the "people" in people, process, and technology; no matter how good your process and technology is, people will do what people will do.

So when trying to improve data management, be careful about assuming you have a technology issue. The problem might just be the people!