One of the greatest benefits of the internet revolution is that data management has been moved from staff to customer. For example, back when I started my first membership director position (20 years ago now), nothing was being processed via the association’s website. This meant that ALL membership joins and renewals had to be processed by […]
The inherent conflict between staff needs and customer needs Read More »
I’ve written in the past (here, here, and here) that it’s important to understand that all decisions require a trade-off. A corollary to that is that all resources are limited. Whether we’re talking about time, money, or people, any resource that is required to complete a project is, by definition, limited. And once you know
This is somewhat related to philosophy #5, in that no matter what decision you make about technology (or any other decision you make in life!), you’re going to have to make trade-offs. In philosophy #5, I pointed out that “free” doesn’t mean “without cost.” In this case, the trade-off for free software was a cost of
Technology philosophy #6 – Everything comes with a tradeoff Read More »
Just over a year ago I posted this item on how the Evangelical Press Association is using CiviCRM as its association management software system. To my knowledge, CiviCRM is the only open source product on the market that directly addresses…
Very often I learn my clients are managing data in a way that is “easier” for now, but winds up creating much more work later. Some immediate examples: Using a third party registration company to manage meeting registration (less work) and importing the attendance data back into the primary database (more work). Managing lists of