I had the pleasure of speaking with Ann Hamilton of Disney a few weeks ago. During our conversation, I asked her how she liked working for Disney. She immediately replied: "Oh, I love it. It seems everything we do is always on purpose."

"Always on purpose." I love that.

Her point was that everything Disney did was done for a reason; there was nothing extraneous or superfluous about their actions or activities. Always on purpose. 

Ask yourself how much of your day-to-day activity is "always on purpose." 

I recently conducted an unscientific survey of association executives, asking them what their plans are for business intelligence. Of the 71 responses received, here were the results:

+ Only 15% said they have a business intelligence plan in place.

+ Thirteen percent said they will have one in place by the end of 2008.

+ Over a third responded that they have no plans for implementing a business intelligence initiative in 2008.

+ And finally, 1/3 of the respondents said “What the hell is business intelligence?”

So what does all of this mean to you? For starters, if you don’t have a BI plan in place, and you don’t have one planned for this year, you’re still in the majority. Fewer than 1/3 of the respondents will have one in place by the end of 2008.

This also means that there is still a lot of hype about business intelligence, but not a lot of reality…yet. But BI is real and your organization should be thinking about it, even if you’re not doing it yet.

So if you’re one of the majority, put it in your plans for 2009 to at least start discussing how BI might help your organization.

Listening to a podcast from Voices of CRM recently, I was not surprised to learn that the number one problem with large-scale CRM deployments is "user adoption." That is, getting users to actually use the system that's been implemented. Now keep in mind, we're talking about companies with thousands if not tens of thousands of users. So naturally, challenges with user adoption at that level could be expected.

And what's the biggest problem for associations when it comes to implementing a new association management system? User adoption, of course. But how can this be? Most associations are only implementing tens of users (maybe over 100, but rarely).

The reality is, software and technology are enablers. They are tools for getting a job done. But if the user doesn't understand how to use the tool, then the user will find tools they do understand. And that's where user adoption becomes a challenge.

So don't be surprised if you have challenges with user adoption; those challenges are everywhere, and not unique to industry or even size. Be prepared for user adoption issues, and have a plan in place to deal with it. Anything else is just malpractice. 

Just a few weeks ago, after more than 20 years as a PC user, I switched to Mac. I'd like to say the transition has been smooth and painless, but that would be, well, a big fat lie. I've got a lot of PC-ingrained habits (like Alt-Tab to switch windows) that simply don't work on a Mac. Oh sure, Cmd-Tab works just like Alt-Tab. But now I've got to learn the new habits while I unlearn the old ones. As a result, for the last couple weeks I've been less productive than usual.

The same is true when we move to a new association management system (or even go through a major upgrade to the existing system). The simple fact is that our users all have ingrained habits. And learning new habits while unlearning old ones takes time.

I always tell my clients that they can expect a decrease in productivity when they switch to a new system. That's right, a decrease. The learning curve is going to cause users to work more slowly than they have in the past. But eventually, if the system is set up correctly and the business processes have been well-defined, productivity will increase. I suggest that users wait at least three months before really trying to measure if things are more productive than before.

So before you decide that the new system was a tremendous waste of money, wait a bit. These things take time.

Those who know me know I'm a huge advocate of centralized data management systems. By that I mean a database that houses essentially all of your data (e.g., membership, events registration, all financial information, product sales, etc.).

One of the many reasons I like centralized data systems is that when the question "Where is that data?" is asked, the answer is always the same: "It's in the database."

All of us have experienced at some point a situation where data is needed, but the person who "owns" that data is not around, and therefore the data is inaccessible. ("Oh, Sally keeps that data in a spreadsheet on her computer. Unfortunately, she's out of the office today.") This is what happens when data is decentralized, or in silos. It becomes more difficult, and therefore more expensive (both time and money), to pull and analyze the data when we need it.

So look around your organization. When someone asks "Where is that data?" do you have an answer? And is the answer always "It's in the database."?