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This is the third in my 2012 series of podcast interviews that I’ve been conducting with CEOs from providers of association management software. Today’s interview is with Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot of Wild Apricot. In this interview we discuss Wild Apricot's free and low-cost AMS ...

This is the second in my 2012 series of podcast interviews that I’ve been conducting with CEOs from providers of association management software. Today’s interview is with Brian Choate, President and CEO of Timberlake Membership Software. In this interview we discuss Timberlake's latest ...

Every so often, a client of mine will ask me about parallel processing. Generally they'll ask something like "How long should we be running both our current AMS and our new AMS in parallel?" My answer is always "Don't bother with parallel processing." Here are three reasons: Staff never ...

This is the first in my 2012 series of podcast interviews that I’ve been conducting with CEOs from providers of association management software. Today’s interview is with Richard Davis, Chairman and CEO of Avectra. In this interview we discuss Avectra's new technology, A-Score, and how ...

I recently received an online survey from a free newsletter that I subscribe to. The very first question asked me how long I'd been a subscriber. What? You're asking me how long I've been a subscriber? Don't you have that data? I can't tell you how many times I've seen my clients ask similar ...

One of the most common gripes I hear when I talk with business development staff within associations is that they don't have enough time to enter data, and therefore don't use the database. I think there are several things going on here: The system they are using MIGHT BE cumbersome. They've ...

I'm conducting a search for a new AMS on behalf of one of my clients. We requested responses, including pricing, from five vendors. Of the five vendors responses, THREE of them had mathematical errors in their proposals. Ironically, the only area of the entire proposal that I can judge for absolute ...

I’ve posted a new article on my website. Although every system selection process has its nuances (over the past dozen years I’ve completed nearly a hundred with my clients), there are generally seven steps that I follow for helping associations select a new association management system ...

At the session I presented at the ASAE Technology Conference last month, one of the points I made was that you should never collect data you're not going to use. Seems obvious enough, but I still see many of my clients collecting data out of habit: "Oh, we've always asked for their highest degree ...

A session attendee at the Tech Conference said (I paraphrase): "In all the proposals I've received from AMS vendors, the amount of training proposed seems ridiculously low to me. Why do the vendors underbid on the training aspect of their product?" I invite the vendors to respond here, but I ...