Your Best Analyst Is Already on Staff

Nobody sat down and decided to build a twenty year member history. It happened one interaction at a time. Event registrations, session attendance, course completions, committee service, volunteer hours, dues payments, emails, certifications. Jeff Spring says that pile is one of the most valuable assets a membership organization owns, and that most organizations have a hard time doing anything with it.Jeff has spent his career in the association space, first as an authorized solution provider in Seattle and then at ASI, where he works out of the ASI Center for Technical Excellence in Austin. He sits between clients, partners, consultants, ASI management and the development teams. James Harrison, fifteen years on the partner side with iMIS, runs the interview.Where they land: plain English reporting takes the specialist out of the middle of the question, so the person taking the member calls can ask about renewals herself and act on the answer that day. If you lead or work in a membership organization, this one's for you.📄 Show notes and full transcript: ⁠https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep16⁠⏱ Chapters0:00 Cold open: do not go looking for a system to settle a decision you have not made0:52 Riley introduces Jeff Spring and James Harrison3:03 Seventeen years as a partner, then the move to ASI in Austin4:53 How product decisions get made: an infinite backlog and a finite team6:37 The move to iMIS Cloud, and why listening to every request would have slowed it down8:03 What is new in the last ten years, starting with AI8:14 AI expectations arriving ahead of readiness8:56 The Amazon problem: expectations set by the market leaders9:33 Younger professionals, and why they may not join11:16 What has not changed: change management is the whole job11:57 Every organization is unique, and some of that is inherited12:47 Small organizations are not simpler, they do more with less13:06 The roast beef with both ends cut off15:05 Twenty and thirty years of member data, and iMIS customer number one16:18 What you have actually been collecting all this time17:15 Where to start: just start, and ask a question someone can answer18:00 Pull three years of non-renewals and look back 24 months18:30 iMIS Fusion, Microsoft Fabric, and Power BI with Copilot19:00 Make the staff guess, then check the data19:49 Give it an hour and a name20:37 Nobody needs an analyst in their title anymore21:50 Member health on the record, not a quarterly dashboard nobody opens22:56 None of this fixes bad data23:54 AI enhances people rather than replacing them24:44 What AI cannot do: connect people25:57 How to get heard: enhancements.imis.com and the monthly sprint reviews29:49 Top five for a big technology decision30:38 Talk to references who have been live for two years, not two months31:19 Any big technology project is really about people32:37 Your people and your data, for two very different reasons33:39 Riley wraps up🔗 About Bursting SilverWe're a fully remote consultancy specializing in modern CRM, iMIS, and AI solutions for membership organizations across North America.Website ▸ ⁠https://www.burstingsilver.com/⁠LinkedIn ▸ ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/bursting-silver⁠🌐 Follow the showInstagram ▸ https://www.instagram.com/burstingsilver/X / Twitter ▸ https://x.com/burstingsilverFacebook ▸ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579548728138TikTok ▸ https://www.tiktok.com/@burstingsilverYouTube ▸ https://www.youtube.com/@BurstingSilver🎵 MusicFresh Start by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarudCreative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_fresh-startMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/XN-tBgJ5CVw#TheModernMembershipOrg #iMIS #MemberData #AI #Associations #DataWarehouse #MembershipManagement #AssociationTech #BurstingSilver