I often joke with my clients that AMS nirvana looks like this: When someone asks "Where is the data about topic X?" the answer is always "It's in the database."

• Q: "Who were the award winners in 2019?" A: "It's in the database."
• Q: "Which meetings did this person attend in the past three years? A: "It's in the database."
• Q: "Who served on our membership committee in 2021?"  A: "It's in the database."

One of the single biggest challenges (and time-wasters) that I see my clients struggle with is data being spread all over the organization, instead of being centralized in one place. Award winners are on spreadsheets. Meeting attendance is in a third-party event registration system. Committee information is in someone's Outlook address book.

Is database nirvana achievable? Since nirvana is a form of perfection, no. But we should always be striving for it.

Look around your organization. Where are the silos of data that create additional work and confusion? How can you move that data to the AMS so it can be located easily? That's how you achieve nirvana.